Practitioner pattern · Sara Grana (Yousician, Babbel)
Send an offer to people who turn off auto-renew
Looked great, but users refunded first and then took the offer; net negative
Failedcancellation-flowanalytics-attribution
What they did
When a user cancels auto-renewal, send them a discount offer to win them back. The headline numbers looked strong, but many users switched off auto-renew right at the start, requested a refund, and then took the offer, making the campaign net negative. Check refunds and chargebacks alongside win-back conversion.
What happened
Campaign was net negative once refunds were counted.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Stop Celebrating Conversion Wins Before Checking Renewals – Sara Grana, Yousician“Okay, you look a bit more deep and you realize, oh, a lot of people are cancel, putting their auto-renewal off right at the beginning, and what they are doing is they're asking for a refund and then they're getting the offer. So you are actually net negative.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Babbel: Chart revenue from new, upgrading, renewing and returning subscribers, then explain each spikeSurfaces which past decisions moved revenue, e.g. a lifetime plan launch; no numbers
- Yousician: Set calendar reminders to recheck price tests at 3 and 6 monthsCatches price 'wins' that flip once renewals come in; no numbers
- Yousician: Before calling a paywall test, wait two weeks and check refunds and chargebacksRefunds show up fast and can erase a paywall win; no numbers
- Judge a new lifetime plan against what a subscriber pays over timeTests otherwise wrongly crown lifetime, e.g. 250 vs 100 instead of 250 vs 300 euros
- Split renewal rates by plan, discount, and web vs app before reading themWeb buyers renew much better, so blended renewals rise from mix shift alone
- Yousician: Use monthly-plan renewals to set a warning threshold for yearly-plan test winners