Let’s talk churn

How do you win back churned users?

Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋

I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.

Every Tuesday I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.

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Someone canceled their subscription or didn’t convert on their trial.

Oh well, I guess we give up on them.

We know that’s the wrong answer, but what should you do?

First, let’s understand what type of churn.

For example, how we treat these two users should be different:

• Active user, canceled subscription

• Inactive user, trial cancellation

If someone isn’t actively using your product, why should they pay?

Try to get them active first, and then focus on the monetization.

Ideally, we’re preventing them from becoming inactive in the first place, but that’s not always possible.

Are they active? Ok, then at least we’ve got a fighting chance.

Note: It’s okay to start simple and target all user types with the same type of messaging. Just don’t stop there.

Let’s start with:

Existing subscriber who canceled their subscription so it doesn’t renew

• They paid for your product and then decided they didn’t feel it was still worth it

  • You want to try to get to the heart of “why”

Tip: Price is rarely the real answer for why someone doesn’t convert. If your app is $59.99, they spent that on dinner last night. The issue is the value they are receiving isn’t aligned with the price. Dig deeper to find the real answer.

When they cancel, trigger an email confirming they canceled.

It should include:

• A link to a survey asking them for feedback on why.

• A link to resubscribe

Subscription cancellation confirmation emails will get higher open rates than survey emails. Once they’re in the email they may respond to your survey and a small percentage will resubscribe.

You can try adding a discount.

• If it’s an iOS or Android subscription it can get a little hairy because you have to move them over to a new SKU and so for a period they could be subscribed to two different SKUs

• Direct them to a web subscription from the email so you save money. And you have much more control and flexibility with a web subscription

Email from RISE:

Try again when their subscription is almost over:

• Send one more Subscription Cancellation confirmation email with another link for them to resubscribe

• Use “loss aversion” type messaging and describe what they’ll lose access to (benefits over features).

Do you have grace periods set up on your subscriptions in Apple and Google?

• This gives you a little extra time to win users back if their payment fails or they don’t renew so you can get them back on the same subscription vs having them purchase again.

• Read more on RevenueCat’s blog here

Did you win them back?

No? Damn. And now their subscription has ended.

Let’s get the winback campaigns out!

Try a limited-time offer of 50% off

• All sales should be only available for a limited time, otherwise, that’s just the price

• 50% off will usually convert way better than 25%, 30%, or 40% which makes up for the extra discount.

• Go multi-channel. Try 2 push notifications, 2 emails, and 2 different in-app messages. You’ve got nothing to lose at this point

Want to get fancier?

• Segment based on activity levels to create more relevant messages

• Include the price or savings in local currency with personalization tags

• Trigger additional follow-up messaging if they engage with the app or an email, but don’t convert

Continue to use Loss Aversion throughout.

People hate losing stuff way more than they like gaining something new. (check out Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman for some light reading on the topic)

Wait 30 or so days and then try the sale offer again.

• I’d change up the offer slightly. Raise the discount a little, lower it a little, do something to make it seem different. People ignore things that they’ve seen before.

They still didn’t convert?

If you love something, set it free…

Note: I purposefully didn’t talk about product cancellation flows here. Most of my focus is on mobile apps, and most app cancellations happen outside the app, so it’s usually a smaller lever than you think. Maybe topic for a future post 🙂

Let’s shift to focusing on Trial churn

Oh no! Someone started a trial for your app and then decided to cancel it! Get used to it.

The tactics are similar to normal subscription cancellations, but we want to be more careful about handing out the discounts so quickly.

When they cancel their trial:

• Send an email or in-app message confirming their cancellation.

• Include a survey asking them why they canceled.

• If they select “Price”, then offer them a discount.

How much you discount is up to you and what you can tolerate with your margins. Someone who doesn’t convert on a trial, and only converts later because you offer them a discount will likely have a lower LTV.

If they cancel their trial but are still using the free version of your product, try to monetize through different offer types. Check out my other post here on how Fabulous does this really well.

Wait! What about involuntary churn? (aka payment failures)

I could attempt to write about this, but instead, I’m going to direct you to Reid Deramus’ post here:

Battling Payment Issues to Improve Retention

This article is excellent and I’d be doing you a disservice by not just sending you there.

TL;DR:

• Prompt users many times letting them know their payment failed across multiple channels

• Try to store different payment methods (not always possible with iOS/Android payments)

• Adjust grace period

Churn happens, so we need to fight it.

Have other strategies you have found effective to fight churn? Let me know!

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