It's not like getting back with your ex. ?

Scary subject line? It was Halloween just a moment ago...wait...I blinked and it's suddenly December?????

December. This time of the year again. The time of the year when we all get emails from various companies with?these?last-ditch efforts to close the quarter with dignity?

Your inbox?will be full of suddenly-free-trials from?PLG-averse companies?that swore blind?they'd never let you touch their product?before you've parted with $10,000.

But as you know from my recent rant about Black Friday sales...I'm not a big?fan of?discounts.?They attract the wrong crowd. Creating this unnatural sense of urgency may push people to take hasty?decisions that they will later regret, and guess what - churn. Instead, today I'd like us?to think about how we can drive more sustainable revenue with?more value...and?win over a large part of your churned customers.

TL;DR? Watch the video rant instead

How to win back churned customers?

Prevention is better than cure, but some companies take it a tad too far. Do you think that in order to prevent churn, you should:?

• Remove the ability to delete seats
• Charge for deleted seats anyway
• OR maybe…
• Remove the ability to cancel the subscription altogether? ??

3 x WRONG.

And yet, this is something I’ve literally seen and experienced in one of the tools I’m using ??

*Don't try this at home.*?It will push your customers into full-on Karen mode and make sure they don't get back together with you,?like, never, ever, ever.?

OK, so now for real - how do you win back customers that churned??

First of all - you need to know whom you can possibly woo back. If you really crossed a customer, and they left singing Taylor Swift...

...you're likelihood of getting them back is close to zero. So don't bother with the hopeless cases.

There are plenty of customers that churned and that are actually?likely?to come back. And your relationship with them is likely to be?better?after the reunion, not worse, if you do it right:?

Delinquent Churn?

It's otherwise called "involuntary churn" and for a reason. Your customer doesn't want to churn.?

Still, SaaS companies lose over 1% of their customers every year like that on average ??.

Source: a?study by Recurly.

This happens for a few petty reasons:?

• the card attached to the account has expired.
• there were insufficient funds in the account.
• the bank went bananas and tried to protect your customer from themselves...or there was some technical glitch.?

What you can do in such situations is to promptly follow up with your customer, and inform them in-app about the failed payment/ impending card expiry date with a?pre-dunning message:?

?Yes, you can build such banners in Userpilot in minutes ???Try it for free!?If the customer's payment failed already - first of all, don't turn off their account access!?

It happened to us once - one of the tools we're using with our whole team shut our account down the moment our card failed, for an unknown reason, on a bank holiday. It was annoying and unnecessary. Such acts of no-goodwill will push people dangerously close to becoming Swiftie fans - don't go into that territory.

If your customer hasn't updated their cards and continues using the account - add?progressively more assertive in-app messaging?requiring them to do so. You can e.g. remove the?"X"?button on a slideout/banner, add a?countdown timer?after which their account will be disabled (with e.g. loss of data), or add a full-page alert.

Like how one of our customers, Osano, is doing?it using Userpilot:?

If your customers don't react - grab a phone and start calling.?

Churned because of missing features/ security requirements

Ok, this happens to the best of us. Your marketing/sales team overpromised and your product underdelivered.?

Or the customer 'grew out' of your solution and needed something more sophisticated at this point.?

There's always this type of churn. But here's what you can do:?

1. Collect feedback from the customers why they decided to leave your product from a?churn survey. Ask specifically which features they were missing:?

2. Segment the customers by the reason they churned, including which feature they were missing.?

3. Keep in touch with these customers, sending them value-packed newsletters from time to time, aligned with their goals.?

4. When you've launched the relevant features which were the reasons for their churn, send them an email asking if they'd be open to giving you a second chance.?

5. At the same time, start running retargeting campaigns to them on social media.

6. Check if they had gone with one of your competitors - you can either ask them or check with a tool like?Built With.

7. If so, you can offer them to buy back their remaining subscription and help them move back under your roof.?

Churned because they didn't have the resources/ were too early/ financial situation

This one is pretty easy. If you're using a business intelligence solution like?ZoomInfo, you can set up alerts when the company that has churned for financial reasons raises funding or starts hiring more people (which is a good indicator they have recovered from the bad situation.) If you get a notification of that trigger, email/message/call them to discuss coming back and picking up where they left off with your tool.

Also - if your customer is churning for financial reasons - you can?offer them to pause their subscription for a while?without losing their data. This will create a lot of goodwill and will make you their go-to choice when they've recovered from financial difficulties.?

This is?exactly what we did in March/April 2020, when the first covid wave hit and affected several of our customers, especially in the travel and hospitality industry.?

Hope this helps!?

P.S. Of course, it's easier to prevent churn than cure - and relevant onboarding is the best way to prevent churn by making sure your customers are actually getting value from your product.?Our?Onboarding Audit?offer is still on the table - grab it while it lasts!

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See you next week!?