Cohort type

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What it is

cohort_type names what started a cohort. A cohort is a set of customer accounts that went through the same event at the same time, and are then followed as a set rather than one at a time. The type is that event: accounts that became customers in the same month, accounts whose revenue started in the same month, accounts first reached by the same campaign. One account belongs to several cohorts of different types at once — the month it was first touched by your marketing, the month it became a customer, the month its revenue started, the campaign that first reached it. All of them are correct. They answer different questions, and a figure from one is not comparable with a figure from another.

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How it is calculated

Measured. The type is not derived from the accounts in the cohort. It is the event the cohort was opened on, recorded. There are thirteen types, and each one is an event that places an account in the cohort: Three types carry a name. A Campaign, Channel or Entered lifecycle cohort comes with the name of your campaign, channel or lifecycle, your own lifecycles included. The name is part of the type: a Spring Launch campaign cohort and a Webinar Series campaign cohort are different cohorts. How the name is published on the cohort object is not fixed yet, and will be stated here when it is. Most types open once per account. The first six happen at most once in an account’s life, and each named type opens at most once per account per name. The four revenue movements can happen again: each month an account expands, contracts, churns or reactivates places it in that month’s cohort for that movement. The revenue types read the account as a whole. Revenue started, Expanded, Contracted, Churned and Reactivated are worked out from the account’s total recurring revenue across all of its subscriptions, and a month takes at most one of them. So a new subscription bought by an existing customer raises the account’s total and opens an Expanded cohort, not a Revenue started one. A month where one subscription churns and another grows is classified on the net change. The set of types is fixed and is the same for every company. You choose which cohorts to open and which dimensions to cut them on; you do not define new kinds of cohort. Adding a type is a change to Beacon, not a setting. Enumerated values are lowercase with underscores on every door.

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Where it comes from

The type comes from the cohort’s own definition, which is set once and stored with it. The accounts that fill the cohort come from whichever connected system records the event: your marketing sources for first touch, campaign and channel; your CRM for pipeline entry and won deals; billing for the five revenue types; product usage for first value; your lifecycle setup for lifecycle entry. Two types are not available for every account. Became customer exists only for an account that has a won deal. An account that signed up and paid without one, as self-serve customers usually do, never has it. Reached first value exists only where a first-value milestone has been set up for the account’s segment. Where either is missing, no cohort of that type opens for the account, and nothing is put in its place — not the sign-up date, not the first payment, not the first login. The account still belongs to every other type that applies to it. Where a source is not connected, cohorts of the types that depend on it are not opened. Nothing is estimated in their place.

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How fresh it is

The type is fixed when the cohort opens and does not move afterwards. The cohort under it does move, through three states. It is open while it is still accumulating and its outcome window is incomplete. It is closing once enough of that window has passed for provisional results. It is closed once the window is complete and its outcome is final. The transitions happen on fixed thresholds, set out on the cohort object page. A cohort is not closed early because an answer is wanted sooner, and it is not held open to allow late additions.

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Currency and rounding

Neither applies. The type is a label.

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What changes it

Nothing, in normal operation. The type is part of the cohort’s definition. Where a definition turns out to have been specified wrongly, the cohort is retired and a new one opened under the corrected rule; the original is not edited, and its results are kept and marked as retired. Population does not change it either. Once a cohort opens, its members are frozen. An account that qualifies later belongs to a later cohort of the same type, never to the one already open. The set of thirteen changes only when Beacon adds a type, and a type is added only when it names a real event with a clear source. A label that describes a group already formed — a segment, a lifecycle pattern — is never a type; it is a dimension or an attribute.

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What it is not

• Not the cohort’s name or identifier. The type says what kind of group it is; the identifier says which one.
• Not cohort_dimension. The type is what opened the cohort. The dimension is what it is cut by afterwards. A campaign cohort can be cut by segment; a segment is not a type. Acquisition period is a dimension too: it groups accounts by the month of the same won deal that opens a Became customer cohort.
• Not segment. A segment is a commercial group an account belongs to now and can move between. Cohort membership is fixed at entry and never moves.
• Not lifecycle_stage. A stage describes where one account has reached. A cohort type describes a population.