How to use customer data to boost retention and drive expansion

During our annual sales conference, Unleash 2025, I kicked off my session with a simple question: “How many of you only find out a customer is unhappy when renewal is around the corner?” Nearly every hand went up. 

That’s why I was excited to lead a packed session on “Using Data to Drive Retention and Expansion.” 

During the session, I walked through how retaining an existing customer costs five times less than acquiring a new one, but most teams don’t take action until the client is already unhappy or considering leaving. 

Industry data backs this up: improving retention by just 5% can lead to a 25-95% increase in profits, and repeat customers spend 67% more than new ones. So why are we still getting it wrong? 

In this blog post, I'll share some of the key strategies we use at Outreach to tap into data—not just at the acquisition stage, but for a long-term customer engagement.  

Retention starts with insight 

The core issue I see is that retention data often goes unused. Teams still rely on spreadsheets, manual follow-ups, and broad email blasts. These methods are slow, impersonal, and disconnected. 

“They're time-consuming, eating up hours that could be spent on strategic work,” I told the audience. “They're also impersonal, and they're based on siloed data, which leads to missed opportunities.” 

By the time these traditional approaches detect a problem, the client has already mentally checked out. Which is why smart businesses are taking a different route. They use customer lifecycle insights to identify problems early, such as declining usage patterns, reduced feature adoption, and changes in user behavior that highlight problems before renewal discussions begin. 

With the right metrics, you can identify these uninterested customers early. Imagine if your data could surface these insights at exactly the right time to engage with your clients. That's incredibly powerful. 

Making customer retention data work 

Change really starts when you move away from spreadsheets and into automated workflows. At Outreach, we’ve connected our Snowflake data warehouse directly to our Sales Execution Platform, which gives us a real-time view of customer health. 

Before that, all the critical metrics—license usage, weekly active users, account health—lived in Snowflake and were hard to access. Most companies only sync basic CRM data. We took it further by pulling live product usage directly into Outreach, removing the need for data juggling across platforms. 

Now, when a customer’s engagement dips, our sales reps gets a gentle nudge to check in. If a new customer isn’t adopting key features, we know early and we can offer support before it becomes a churn risk. 

We use the five steps below to make this system work—and any team can do the same. 

Step 1: Identify Target Use Cases 

Begin with a business analysis to identify engagement patterns that indicate potential expansion opportunities or predict churn. Focus on one or two use cases rather than trying to track everything. 

Step 2: Configure Objects in Outreach 

Decide whether to enhance existing accounts and prospect records or create custom objects tailored to your specific use cases. 

Step 3: Prepare Data in Snowflake 

Collaborate with business analysts to write SQL queries and table joins so it's ready to be pulled into your platform. 

Step 4: Configure Snowflake Enrichment 

Create a new Snowflake connection via the Outreach Admin UI, select refresh frequency, and verify data points flow between systems. 

Step 5: Set up Triggers and Content 

Create alerts with advanced conditions to filter out false positives, then configure appropriate actions, such as task creation or sequence enrollment. 

Finding growth opportunities in customer retention data 

The same insights that help prevent churn can also uncover new paths for growth. For example, a sudden spike in license usage might signal that a team is expanding and could benefit from more seats or advanced features. With the right signals and rules in place, Outreach makes it easy to spot these opportunities and engage with timely, relevant messaging. 

To ensure those signals are accurate, our team built layered conditions into each trigger. A dip in license usage, for instance, might flag a churn risk, or it might just mean the customer recently added new seats and hasn’t activated them yet. These smarter triggers help account managers avoid false alarms and stay focused on what matters. 

But we’re not done there. AI personalization capabilities take this one step further. Instead of generic outreach, accounts receive communications like, “We noticed your team has been actively using our reporting features…here's how our advanced analytics package could save you even more time.”  

The same data that once sat unused in a warehouse is now driving smarter retention, targeted growth, and more meaningful customer engagement. 

Making the data work for GTM teams 

My advice to teams is: don’t try to do everything at once. It’ll just lead to decision paralysis and way too much data for teams to efficiently act on. Instead, start with the basics:  

• Pick 1-2 health metrics that matter most (like weekly active users) 

• Get your data flowing cleanly between systems 

• Make sure different departments can see comparable customer information 

Then, follow the 5-steps above. It’s not going to go perfect the first time, so here are some common mistakes to avoid:  

• Trying to track too many things simultaneously 

• Setting up alerts without proper filtering (which creates incorrect alerts) 

• Forgetting to verify your data setup actually works 

Departments should start with a test project, assess what works, and build upon it from there. The goal is proactive account management, not perfect data tracking. 

Turning metrics into meaningful growth 

Companies that tap into customer retention data are already seeing results. They catch problems early and spot growth opportunities before competitors do. 

At Outreach, we’re using this approach in real time. By tracking metrics like license usage and WAUs, we’ve built alerts that automatically notify reps when something’s off. 

Leveraging analytics isn't just nice to have—it transforms how you interact with customers. Proactive engagement means reaching clients before problems escalate, making data-driven decisions, and reducing manual effort at scale. 

The shift from reactive to proactive customer management isn’t a future goal—it’s happening right now. Teams that wait, risk falling behind as competitors double down on revenue strategies that anticipate customer needs, reduce churn, and drive expansion. 

I left my audience with this idea: “It’s not the future. It’s the present.” 

Don’t get left behind. See how Outreach’s Sales Execution Platform helps GTM teams stay one step ahead.