You can create advanced cancel flows but it doesn’t take a lot to get started. Stripe lets you redirect users to a custom link on cancellation. This is what OpenAI uses for feedback collection alongside Qualtrics.

When cards fail due to reasons like insufficient funds, you can simply retry the card without emailing the customer. Mastercard and Visa have some limits how often you can retry. Retries are usually very impactful, and require zero engineering lift to turn on. 

Dump the CSV in any AI tool and ask it to cluster (example prompts). Assume some inaccuracies. 

Show what users will lose at point of cancellation. Canva does this well showing how many pro features the user has used.

Sometimes the buyer and user of the product are two different people. Display in-app paywalls with card-updater on the same page. Offer grace periods instead of revoking immediately. DIY or use a solution like Churnkey. 

Users turn off auto-renew. Find creative ways to encourage them again (read Elena's article). Some companies roll over credits if you don’t let your subscription cancel.

If you detect low usage or a drop off after a trial, extend it automatically. If it's a paid trial, offer an extension at point of churn.

Run friction logging with new hires to capture points of friction/errors. Ben Williams shares how to effectively run it. I ran one for Dropbox and can share privately. 

When people ask for refunds due to budget reasons, make an offer. Chess.com does this when students churn. 

Send dunning emails via different senders to maximize deliverability and open rates. Prevents email threading. Easy to do via lifecycle marketing tools instead of sophisticated tools like Churnkey but they lack in certain ways. 

Show grandfathered users or folks on a discounted plan the dollar values of what they would lose if they cancel. People often appreciate a disclaimer and will retain. 

Segment cancel flows based on user’s age, tenure, region, plan etc. A/B test and make different offer types to identify best for each segment. Available with Churnkey.

Monitor people that visit the cancellation page but don't cancel. They're either dissatisfied if tenure is long or want to see how easy it is to cancel if they perform this within the first few hours of signing up.

Add a confirmation step, “Are you sure?” instead of immediately cancelling. This goes a long way and people often change their minds. Comply with laws like FTC's click to cancel so your flows aren't annoying to cancel. 

Let people pause their subscription and pick a custom pause length. Test different lengths to see what maximizes revenue for you. 

Do you send emails to users whose cards are about to expire? If so, test without it. Card tokenization has made it a thing of the past in some regions and can hurt more than it can help. 

If you have an international audience, localize the cancel flow in their language. Your brand marketers will love it too. Sometimes, required by law.

Give users something that prevents a cancellation. Like unused credits roll over if they stay subscribed. Having a sunk cost prevents cancellation. 

Continuously map feedback to MRR lost so you can prioritize feedback by revenue whether it's feature gaps, bugs, or competitors. 

Run a churn risk model. Train it based on dozens of variables (tenure, LTV, features used..) so that the mdoel returns whether a user is likely to churn or stay. View tutorial, SaaS, research paper.

If users don't use all your features, let them downgrade to a lite plan at the point of cancellation. No need to clutter up your pricing page with this. Canva, Adobe, Spotify all offer daily, weekly, monthly and yearly plans in-app but not on their pricing page.

Dunning emails and SMS links should take people to the card updater page. Without forcing a login. You’re fighting procrastination, more so with consumers, so each step is a drop off point. 

Charge 30 days prior to renewal for yearly renewals (if it makes sense for your business). Website builders do this.

Offer longer than 1 year subscriptions. Domain registrars offer 2-3 year contracts because they know it’s an impulse purchase most of the time. 

Automatically reduce invoice if product is underused. Slack doesn’t charge for inactive users and it proved well. Some companies that cater to seasonal businesses auto discount subscriptions for a portion of the year. 

For products with an on-and-off use case or a low switching cost, reactivation campaigns help. Make a great offer and reduce friction best you can (eg, no logins required). Typically hard to pull off. 

Remind people that they need to use you, outside of your product. Oreo used Got Milk and the entire desserts range.

If your product has some sort of a network effect, don’t gate it. If it doesn’t, try to add one creatively. Eg, sharing your daily workout wasn’t done before Strava decided to make it cool.

Swag retains. Hard to scale. Tools: loopandtie or ongoody.com but you can also make it artsy like Figma.

If your free tier has a limit that causes people to drop off (eg, Dropbox’ 2GB storage), let them raise this limit by helping you. Like a referral program. 

If your core product has natural churn, layer on a secondary product. People use Zillow to buy homes. You don't purchase homes often. To offset that, Zillow launched Zillow Zestimate to increase retention. 

If your core product has natural churn and a definite day when they don’t need you anymore, get users to switch. Bumble launched Bumble for Work and Friends. Consider using a different brand though.