Skip to main content
Cost per Trial Activated is your total ad spend divided by the number of trial_activated events your site tracked, for the same dates. It’s for SaaS and other trial-based businesses that track activation as its own step.

​
Formula

Cost per Trial Activated = Blended Spend ÷ Trial Activated

​
How it works

Two independent totals are lined up by day: For each day, spend is divided by that day’s activations. For the period total, Upstack divides total spend by total activations, so a day with spend and no activations doesn’t break the result. The two sides aren’t connected by visitor. Spend from a Google campaign and an activation from an organic sign-up both land in the same day’s figure. The metric tells you what activation cost across all ad spend, not which channel produced it. Activation is whatever your product decides it is. The trial_activated event fires when your code calls it, for example after the first integration is connected.

​
Worked example

A project-management SaaS fires trial_activated when a trial workspace creates its third project. In June: Activation costs three times as much as a trial start because only one trial in three activates. If the team improves onboarding and activations rise to 450 on the same spend, Cost per Trial Activated drops to 40 while cost per trial start doesn’t move. That’s the reason to track both: one measures acquisition, the other measures acquisition plus onboarding.

​
How to interpret it

  • Read it with Cost per Trial Started. The ratio between them is your activation rate expressed as cost.
  • Check for double firing. Because events are counted, an activation event sent twice for one account halves the apparent cost. Fire it once per account.
  • Expect lag. Activation can happen days after the trial starts, so a spend spike shows up in this metric later than in trial starts. Weekly or monthly views are steadier than daily ones.
  • Don’t split it by channel. The spend and activation sides aren’t joined by visitor, so a per-channel version would mix one channel’s spend with all activations.

​
FAQ

No. It uses all Channel Spend for the dates selected, including campaigns with other goals.
Per event. Each trial_activated event counts once, so send it once per account.
No activation events were tracked that day, so there’s nothing to divide spend by. The period total still divides all spend by all activations.
See all Conversions metrics →