B-Side: Not all who cancel are lost: How to win back customers

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We are so over. You live here. I hate you.

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We should stop seeing each other

when a customer breaks up with you.

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It's hard not to take it personally.

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You worked so hard to woo them.

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You spent the cash.

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You even answered

that support ticket on Saturday night

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when you were supposed to be out

with your friends.

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And then one year without explanation,

they are gone.

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Well,

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yeah.

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What if I told you

that not all who cancel are lost?

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What if I showed you

that you could woo back

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four out of every ten customers

who hit that horrific cancel button?

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You probably act just like jilted lover

and say

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they're never coming back.

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But fret not.

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There's hope that show

you with the best subscription companies

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in the world are doing by going through

why this is even possible.

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Who to target to recover how

to actually recover those lost customers

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and how to re onboard them

so they stick around into the long term.

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So before we get into all that,

I need you to comment

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below your best breakup remedy

because if I don't get

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100 comments,

Jenny said our engagement is probably off.

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Not sure exactly how I feel.

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But first,

why is it even possible to save customers

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who have already left you,

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much like a romantic

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relationship value in a subscription

relationship changes over time.

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You add more features or increase

your brand equity.

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That value formula goes up.

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The customer is happier

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you have massive AWG outages

and haven't shipped anything in months.

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The value formula goes down.

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Your customer is less happy.

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We're pretty good at measuring value.

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We do customer research.

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We create personas

and our most valued personas.

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Use the right integrations, fit a certain

business profile, and love our product.

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Our anti personas need features

you're not going to develop for years

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and are in verticals you don't support

and even probably won't even try

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the product.

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Here's the problem though.

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Personas aren't individual people.

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Don't get me wrong, they're incredibly

useful to make decisions.

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Yet when it comes to churn,

there's a myriad of reasons

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why someone cancels,

even if they fit your perfect persona.

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This means our ideal personas are bunched

up on the right side of the spectrum,

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but are still spread

throughout An ideal customer could churn

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because they're going on vacation

and intend to come back.

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Another could be dealing

with budget issues and need a break.

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Others may have office politics

forcing them to try your competitor

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for a few months.

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Many of these value factors

you can't control.

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And to give you some data, since I know

we tend to attract a skeptical audience.

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Here's a breakdown of churn reasons across

a spectrum of B2B and consumer products

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that we categorize as customers, control

features, support problems, etc.

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and those that aren't budget timing, etc.

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Four out of ten cancelations

have nothing to do with you.

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That's a sobering data point.

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What do we do with this data,

and what's ultimately the point

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of everything that we're talking about?

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And of course, I'm glad you asked.

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The answer is, is that your churn recovery

strategy means you fight

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at an individual level,

not at the persona level.

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When you fight at the persona level,

you tend not to do anything

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because you say things like,

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Well, if the product was valuable enough,

they would have stuck around

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while at the same time rationalizing

through that customer just wasn't for us.

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Well,

both of these statements can be true.

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They are woefully incomplete.

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So how do we fight

at the individual level?

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The quick answer is win back campaigns,

but the longer answer is

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let's walk through

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how to actually recover ten to 30%

of those customers who have canceled

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when back campaigns

are actually pretty simple

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when you think about them

just as marketing campaigns,

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the people who already know you exist,

you already did the hardest part.

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Yes, they canceled, but they know you

exist and just need an offer to come back.

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Three big stages here.

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Identifying the right targets the actual

win back campaign and re onboarding.

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So first up, who do we actually target?

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If you want to be basic,

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you can just spray and pray offers

to every single customer who cancel.

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You'll come off desperate.

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But it's better than doing

absolutely nothing.

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We want to be more sophisticated, though,

because even with basic segmentation,

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you'll get better results

by aligning the right offer.

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And message to the right customer.

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How do we know this works well?

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Admittedly,

we have a product called Profitable Retain

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that now automatically does

win back campaigns.

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We found definitively

that mapping your users for segmentation

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increases yield by two to three X,

which obviously is a ton.

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Retain does this and you can do this too

by identifying

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two main axes

First is customer health score.

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We built health scores

based on engagement, financial history,

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former graphics, and a dozen other factors

to categorize how likely a canceled

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customer is to come back The second piece

here is Cancelation Flow Insights.

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As a feature that collects data on

why someone is canceling retained,

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then tries to save them.

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But if unsuccessful, that data

gets factored into the win back campaign

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to bring this to life a little bit.

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A power user who loves the product

and just needs a break

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would get a very small offer,

whereas a customer who was already at risk

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of churning, who indicated

that they had a bad support experience,

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would then get a larger offer.

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The point here is to align the right offer

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with the right messaging at the right time

to the right customer.

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Next up, we want to run the win back

campaign after segmentation

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is completed and reality

that should be running in real time.

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You obviously need to message folks.

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We found with proof

will retain that a drip

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campaign of two emails with one SMS

text works really, really well.

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Here's what should go into those emails.

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Plain text always across

a few million emails at this point,

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we have found that plain text gets over

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50% better engagement than highly designed

marketing emails.

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Poll number based offers.

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Don't use percentages.

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Humans graphs.

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Whole numbers, $10 off, one month

free, etc..

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Much better than something like 10% off.

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You'll typically see ten to 20% higher

take rates from the whole number offers

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versus the percentage

based on those aligned copy.

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Remember, these are your former customers.

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You have a relationship with them.

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Bring in why they left

and what they loved.

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Remind them of those new features

Offer size.

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Your margins will determine your limits,

but folks who didn't love your product

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typically require

a larger offer to come back.

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Those who used you a long time

normally just need a little bit of a nudge

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frequency.

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One campaign every 45 days works really,

really well.

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Oh, and one final note. Do not

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do not.

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I said do not make people log back into re

sign up to become a customer again.

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This increases the friction considerably.

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Instead,

make it a one click opt in experience

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and with proper will retain

the user simply goes to a landing page

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where they opt back in

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and automatically picks up

where they left off before they churn.

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If you can't use proof, will retain

or build your own version of this feature,

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then simply have them reply to the email

and handle this all through support.

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Making them go to the billing

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settings page will drop your win back

rate likely by half

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on that note.

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One more actual thing here.

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Make sure you set up re onboarding.

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Too many brands

treat customers coming back as brand new,

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asking them

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the same questions,

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treating them as if they don't know

anything about the product, etc.

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You don't have to do anything complicated,

but set up an onboarding flow

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that recognizes where that user left off.

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Some of the best brands out there

have a whole different email drip

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that not only re-orientate the customer

with the product, but collects information

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as to why they came back.

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The very best brands out

there will get on the phone

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with as many of these customers

as possible

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to learn more about why they left and

of course, why they ended up coming back.

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Technically, not treating these customers

as new can get tough because it's easier

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to just delete their information and have

them create a brand new account to help.

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There we created something in profile

called Lock Out that basically locks out

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anyone who's turned

or who hasn't updated their credit card

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One of the

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hardest aspects of growth

is getting your buyer to know you exist.

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There's so much noise in our markets

and buyers are entrenching themselves

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more and more and more.

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Customers who cancel and churn

are obviously painful.

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The silver lining is they know you exist.

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Make sure you're taking advantage

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of that silver lining by at least

having basic win back campaigns

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and combined

with other areas of tactical churn,

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there's little

that can stop your momentum.

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Of course, as these cohorts stack up,

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I'm sure you have a ton of opinions

about this,

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so let me know that I inspired a Rethink

Your Reactivation and win back strategy.

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Are you already hitting up

your team members

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to send some more win back campaigns?

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Any strategies that have worked

well for you that I didn't mention?

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Leave a comment below and as diehard

profile fans know, especially

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if you've been to a webinar or two,

I answer every single question.

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I respond to every single comment.

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So I'll see you down there

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