Vidyard Needs to Get Personal
Vidyard
Vidyard is a video marketing tool founded in 2010. Vidyard has garnered over 12 million users on plans ranging from completely free to $145. Vidyard is a great product with a ton of happy customers, but when a customer goes to cancel their product, the cancellation process doesn’t match the quality of their product.
Quick Hits
- Be specific: When it comes to loss aversion tactics, get specific. Exactly how many videos am I missing out on? Use the information you have on your customers to drive more loss aversion.
- Present customers with proper salvage offers: Utilizing the customer's data, it would be more effective to indicate the exact number of videos that will be lost instead of a vague 25-video threshold. On the other hand, Vidyard excels in being specific with the checkbox copy by clearly stating when the plan will expire.
- Get creative: One potentially impactful idea for Vidyard is to send personalized Vidyard videos during the cancellation process, leveraging the power of human interaction to personalize the experience, increase customer retention, and align with their video marketing product and brand.
Takeaways
Be specific
When we went to cancel with Vidyard, the first thing we get is a pop up asking us “Are you sure you want to cancel your plan?”. Although we always recommend loss aversion tactics like this, Vidyard’s attempt just isn’t specific enough. You have a ton of data on your customer, and its important to use this data to make the customer feel more loss aversion in the cancellation flow. Instead of mentioning an arbitrary 25 video threshold, mention how many videos we’ll be losing. If we have 34 videos we are going to lose - that’s a lot more painful than “anything over 25 videos”.
Despite this, they do a good job at being specific in the check box copy. They tell us exactly when our plan is going to run out.
Present customers with proper salvage offers
The next step in the cancellation process leads us to a simple survey that asks us why we are cancelling and what we planned to use Vidyard for. The survey is pretty well done. By asking what we plan on using Vidyard for, they are providing their product team with a ton of useful feedback for future projects. However, they still don’t go far enough here.
After the customer fills out this survey, that’s it. There’s no attempt to salvage them with an offer. If you are going to gather valuable information about why your customer is canceling, take it further by using that information to inform a proper salvage offer. If a Vidyard user selects “I found something I like better” offer them a discount to try and get them to stick around.
Proper salvage offers, like the ones we offer with Retain, can improve retention by 25%-30%.
Get creative
One idea we have for Vidyard is a bit of a wild card, but it’s something that seems like a no-brainer for their product and brand. As a video marketing product, we were expecting them to send us some sort of personal Vidyard video with a team member telling us why we should stay.
Showing a face within the cancellation process can be a great way of personalizing the experience and getting a customer to stick around. We’ve seen similar evidence when it comes to customer support. Showing a real human from your support team can increase retention significantly, and same goes for showing a real human during the cancellation process.
Make sure you email us at churningpoint@paddle.com or hit up Neel and Allissa to tell us who you want us to break down next.
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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:01
Neel
It feels like a missed opportunity for a product like video art to lead into their brand a bit. Hey, Neel, from video out here, I know our cancellation flow probably got you to leave, but our products are actually pretty good.
00:00:27:02 - 00:00:33:04
Neel
Hello and welcome to Churning Point, a show where we sign up for products just to see what it's like to cancel them. Im Neel Desai.
00:00:33:09 - 00:00:33:20
Allissa
I'm Allissa Chan.
00:00:34:08 - 00:00:46:03
Neel
And today we're breaking down Vidyard. Vidyard was founded in 2010 and is a video marketing platform that's used by over 12 million people. Plans range from completely free to $145 a month.
00:00:46:05 - 00:01:03:08
Allissa
Vidyards doing some really cool things, but as we'll see, there are definitely some improvements that can be made to their cancellation flow. So we'll dive into things that they're doing pretty well and some things that they're doing not too well when it comes to saving their customers before they reach their Churning point.
00:01:03:09 - 00:01:27:19
Neel
When a customer tries to cancel. You have 18 seconds to try and save them. Now, we're not suggesting you hold your customers hostage, but the tactics that we cover provide the right amount of friction to try and save these vital customers before they reach their Churning point.
00:01:27:20 - 00:01:43:22
Neel
So first up, we have actually canceling the subscription and we immediately get faced with this model that tells us that we're going to lose all videos above the 25 video limit. Now, this feels like a missed opportunity to personalize. You know, we see what they're doing here leaning into this loss aversion tactic we've seen a couple of times.
00:01:44:00 - 00:02:00:09
Neel
But video knows exactly how many videos I have. They can make me feel a lot more pain if they were just specific and told me that 17 videos, for example, were going to be deleted if I proceeded with the cancellation. Can I just say, by the way, I fully expected a video to show up. I'm sure we've all been said.
00:02:00:09 - 00:02:12:07
Neel
Those videos are videos. Hey, Neel from video right here. I know our cancellation flow probably got you to leave, but our products are actually pretty good. It feels like a missed opportunity for a product like video art to lead into their brand a bit.
00:02:12:09 - 00:02:31:22
Allissa
Now, as we progress through the cancellation flow, I do think it's interesting that they do ask two questions here. So first, they're asking us why we're canceling, but also they're asking us what we plan to use Bityard for. It's really important to call out here how robust of a resource the cancellation flow can be for product managers to really learn what users are using their platform for and where they fall short.
00:02:31:22 - 00:02:42:14
Allissa
And video does a good job of capturing these insights. But this is the fourth company that we've talked about where there's absolutely no attempt to salvage me whatsoever. One going through the cancellation flow. And that's just a huge missed opportunity.
00:02:42:16 - 00:03:02:23
Neel
Something that we've seen in the data along with Retain, is taking advantage of what we call the nostalgia effect, asking something that reinforces some positivity throughout the cancellation flow. And I think video tries to dip their toes into this a little bit here. It's actually a really good tool for product marketing managers to see if the person was that they think they're attracting are the ones that they're actually retaining.
00:03:03:04 - 00:03:25:07
Allissa
Now, lastly, I'd really like to see more companies get really creative with their cancellation flows. Vinyard specializes in video marketing, so I would have expected to see some sort of video, some sort of human element to really trying to turn me from canceling. In fact, what we've seen from the data is even putting a face to what would otherwise be a pretty dry transactional interaction can defeat cancellations by up to 7%.
00:03:25:09 - 00:03:36:08
Neel
Yeah, and this could be as simple as having an image of someone on your support team and as advanced as giving the user a way to contact, support or success right from the flow.
00:03:36:10 - 00:03:53:02
Allissa
So to recap video, I can definitely do a better job at specifying what I'm going to be missing out on if I cancel my subscription and also beyond the really interesting insights I'm sure they're capturing with those two questions, they need to be embedding salvage offers into their cancellation flow to try and save me while I'm going through the cancellation process.
00:03:53:04 - 00:04:02:15
Allissa
And finally, the cancellation flow that is the lot impression that you're leaving your customers. Right. And so you want to make sure you make that as personal and impactful of a moment as possible.
00:04:02:15 - 00:04:11:13
Neel
Interested in optimizing your cancellation flow or just generally want the retention audit reach out to us at Churningpoint@paddle.com. What's up next week or so?
00:04:11:15 - 00:04:22:02
Allissa
So next week we're diving into the world of email marketing with MailChimp. Now MailChimp is amazing, but there's definitely a lot of work that could go into their cancellation flow, so make sure you're tuning into that episode. Thanks for watching.
