Conversion Events
A conversion event is a meaningful money moment in a customer's life. Signal Sparrow tracks seven of them, and they all come straight from Stripe — you don't send or configure any of them by hand.
The seven events
| Event | What it means | Effect on revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Trial Started | Someone begins a free trial | None yet (no money) |
| Trial Converted | A free trial becomes a paid plan | New revenue |
| Subscription Started | A new paid subscription begins | New revenue |
| Upgraded | A customer moves to a bigger plan | Expansion |
| Downgraded | A customer moves to a smaller plan | Contraction |
| Churned | A customer cancels | Lost revenue |
| Refunded | Money is returned to a customer | Negative |
New, expansion, contraction, churn
Those revenue effects add up to the standard way SaaS teams think about growth:
- New — fresh revenue from new paying customers (Trial Converted, Subscription Started)
- Expansion — existing customers paying more (Upgraded)
- Contraction — existing customers paying less (Downgraded)
- Churn & refunds — revenue lost (Churned, Refunded)
Together they explain how your MRR moved over any period — and, thanks to attribution, which channels drove each kind of movement.
A Trial Started event is useful to see, but it carries no money — so it never inflates your revenue numbers. Only when that trial converts does it count.
You don't fire these yourself
Because these events come from Stripe, there's nothing to instrument on your website. The one thing that makes them attributable is identifying your users so each Stripe customer can be matched to their original visit.
Next
- Stripe Sync — how these events are produced
- Refunds & Churn — how lost revenue is handled