Learn more www.brightback.com | Your subscribers don’t want to cancel—at least, not all of them. So how can you find out which subscribers have problems you can fix? And how can you solve their problems in the moment?
Meal delivery subscription Freshly has beaten back high customer churn by looking at the moment of cancel differently. Freshly product manager, Adrienne Bouchie, and Brightback co-founder and CEO, Guy Marion, dive into how they did it.
This presentation covers how Freshly retained over a million dollars in revenue as the pandemic transformed customer needs. Learn best practices for a successful churn deflection program that you can use for your business including:
- How to A/B test your current cancel process
- Running experiments to save more subscribers
- Identifying the subscriber groups most likely to be retained
- Analyzing performance based on LTV
- Identifying the ROI your business needs
- Planning for the future: Make retention a part of your roadmap
4. Ask us anything
Hit the Q&A button to
submit a question
#SubscriptionShow
@brightbackio
@freshly
5. 5
Enter to win free subscription self-care from Brightback customers
#subscriptionshow
brightback.com/subscription-show
6. 6
Agenda
● Overview: Managing Churn Online
● Retention-Led Growth at Freshly
● Six Steps to Creating Freshly’s
High Performance Retention Flow
● Q&A
#subscriptionshow
7. 7
How to manage digital subscriber churn at scale
#subscriptionshow
● Brightback: digital retention leader
▪ Founded in SF (2018)
▪ SaaS-based retention & testing platform
▪ Serving E-Comm, Digital Subs, SaaS
● Key benefits of online churn deflection
▪ Save 10% - 30% of cancels and reduce CAC
▪ Testing agility without engineering lift
✔ Churn deflection
✔ Retained LTV
✔ Cancel reasons & benchmarks
8. 8
Retention-led growth at Freshly
● Freshly: the food delivery leader
▪ Founded in 2012
▪ Shipping 1m meals / week
▪ Wide variety of customers
● Product Retention at Freshly
▪ Subscriber engagement Pod
▪ North Star KPIs
✔ Profitability
✔ Retention
✔ Cancel completion %
#subscriptionshow
9. 9
How the Pandemic has impacted subscriber
retention
● At the onset, new signups spiked
▪ Priority: fulfill demand
▪ Halted new user signups
▪ Retention skyrocketed
● Two groups of buyers emerged
▪ High intent to purchase
▪ High intent to cancel
#subscriptionshow
Freshly New User Sign Up: 3/8/2020 - 3/21/2020
10. 10
Pivoting retention strategy through the pandemic
● Pre-pandemic retention activities
▪ A/B test cancel flow
▪ Test new offers
▪ Map to LTV
▪ Generated significant lift
● What happened during the pandemic?
▪ Cancel completion and retention
increased
▪ Although save rate decreased, the LTV
of our retained customers increased
significantly
#subscriptionshow
Save Rate Delta- March 2020
11. 6 Components of a
High Performing
Retention Program
#subscriptionshow
12. 12
1. Goals for a multi-phase (3-6 month) pilot program
● Goal: Prove cancel flow performance by A/B
testing in-house cancel flow vs. Brightback
● Goal: Optimize offer & page deflection via
sequential, multivariate testing
▪ Phase 1 - Test five different offer categories
▪ Phase 2 – Test offer strengths within a
category
▪ Phase 3 - Target offers to specific users
● High Level Learnings
▪ Low risk ability to rapidly test hypotheses
▪ Time to analyze and digest with team
#subscriptionshow
Cancel Completion Rate: Control vs Variant
1.2%
*
13. 13
2. Assess overall flow performance via A/B testing
#subscriptionshow
● Goal: determine lift
▪ Launched pre-Covid in Jan 2020
▪ Key differences: personalization,
dynamic offers, audience targeting
▪ Side by side funnels w/Brightback +
Segment + Amplitude
● Key Learnings
▪ Pre-Covid
▪ Post-Covid
▪ The Winner
Control: % who entered
web flow > canceled
Treatment: % entered cancel flow
> saw targeted offer > canceled
14. 14
3. Determine highest performing offer categories
(Phase 1)
#subscriptionshow
● Goal: which offer categories are most effective for
saving customers
▪ Randomized offer testing against a control
● Key Learnings
▪ Winning categories: Price & Flexibility
▪ Losing categories: Contact Us & Change Plan
● Next steps:
▪ Created multiple offers in each category
▪ Measure impact on cancel completion rate
Control
A
B
C
D
Categories
15. 15
4. Eliminate poor performers, then test multiple
offers within the winning categories (Phase 2)
When analyzing the success of phase 2, we had
multiple variables to consider:
▪ Offer acceptance rate
▪ Deflection rate
▪ Incremental revenue from accepted offer
#subscriptionshow
Categories
Strengths
16. 16
5. Target offers to specific users to maximize LTV
Impact (Phase 3)
Once we have identified the most successful offers
blended across customers, next target them using
customer attributes to entice the user and grow LTV:
● Lifecycle tenure
● Total spend
● Cancel reason
Examples
● Lost Job: User loses their job, is a loyal customer,
selects “It’s Personal or Financial” > help us through
● Student on vacation: wants to stop meal deliveries
during break > pause over the summer.
#subscriptionshow
17. 17
6. Establish the ROI of your customer saves program
#subscriptionshow
1. Calculate Incremental Lift
Find Avg Weekly Saved Customers
- Cancel Completion Rate Decrease (1.2%) x Avg Number of Weekly Cancels = Avg Weekly Saved
Customers
Find Avg Weekly Additional Orders
- Avg Weekly Saved Customers x Avg Additional Orders from Retained Customers = Avg Weekly
Additional Orders
Find Annual Incremental Revenue
- Weekly Additional Orders * Avg Revenue per Order = Weekly Incremental revenue x 52 = Annual
Incremental Revenue from Saved Customers ($>1 million)
2. Calculate Costs
- Total Avg Monthly Sessions * Cost/Session = Total Monthly Cost * 12 = Total Annual Cost
3. Calculate ROI
- (Annual Incremental Gain - Annual Cost) / Annual Cost = ROI of Retention Program
18. 18
So what comes next?
● Increase segmentation and
personalization within our offers
● Develop automated winback campaigns
● Proactively engage with at risk
customers through our churn
prevention model
#subscriptionshow
The Future of Brightback
& Retention at Freshly
19. 19
Key Takeaways
● Start small and test often
▪ A/B test your existing flow against a variant to validate the incremental lift
▪ Then expand to all platforms
● Identify which offers work best for your customers AND for your business
▪ Look at the whole picture of metrics, not just highest accepted offer
▪ These offers need to work for both groups, the customer and the business to drive
retention
● Take time to run the analysis and continue to improve
▪ Compare testing phases
▪ Compare incremental revenue gained
▪ Iterate on your learnings
#subscriptionshow