I understand that reminding people of dormant subscriptions might prompt cancellations, but I'd think the following test might be worth trying.
Randomly give existing customers free periods or extend a subscription by a certain amount (week/month?), then notify them.
I'm sick/tired of cancelling something only to be told I can get a 'special discount' to stay or come back. It borders on insulting.
I've had multiple monthly services for years that never once extended or lowered my fee. That's fine, that's business. When I went to cancel some to switch (or just cancel), suddenly I can get an extra 50% off what I've been paying patiently for years? Just rubs me the wrong way. It's a game I don't really want to play.
Give me a good rate for the service. Surprise random 'gifts' of a free month of a service or whatnot now and then would be really nice. But it might remind me I'm paying for something I forgot about, and prompt a cancellation. I dunno.
Progressively cheaper subscriptions to reward loyal customers would be great. Like a $10 per month subscription becomes $9 per month after a year and $8 per month after 3 years - as an example (ignoring inflation etc).
I toyed a bit with this idea when I was working with subscriptions, but there are no systems that accommodate for this unless you make your own.
Like the JetBrains model. $99 first year, then $79 second year, then $59/year going forward. No doubt some companies offer discounted-for-loyalty pricing, but yeah, never seen it addressed in billing systems I've seen. You'd likely just move someone to a new subscription ID, and there's likely some gotchas to deal with, but obviously it can be done :)
It's an interesting strategy. There is an element of FOMO if one cancels, but I don't personally know a single developer who wants to cancel their JetBrains license anyways.
I fully agree. I am much more inclined to stay with services that give me free upgrades, even if I don't use the gifts (as long as I am mildly interested in still using the service). And I know nothing is free, but it's pretty cheap to give someone a free week or month of a digital subscription.
Not the exact same example as the "randomly give upgrades", but mintmobile just upped our plan a bit. I realize they did this across the board, but they did also ping us to let us know that a) we're getting upgraded data, b) it's not a one-off thing, and c) we're getting the same deal as new users.
Often when you see upped/higher data rates, it's "new customers only". This wasn't one of those cases.
Recently switched car insurance. I check every so often. Never bothered when the delta was $15/$20 over a 6 month period. Last week, there was a $200 delta, with better rate for lower deductibles. I bought new policy, went to cancel old one. Took 10 minutes of friendly text chat to keep saying "no, just cancel". At one point, the agent said "is there any possible thing I can do to keep you?". I said "no", then it went faster after that, but they'd tried "let me look for better rates" angle. WTF? You have some internal "better rates" that you don't give me up front? Makes me not want to go back in future.
> WTF? You have some internal "better rates" that you don't give me up front?
They might have complicated contracts with re-sellers that prohibits them from advertising the cheaper rate. That's why you should always ask for a discount with every purchase.
Randomly give existing customers free periods or extend a subscription by a certain amount (week/month?), then notify them.
I'm sick/tired of cancelling something only to be told I can get a 'special discount' to stay or come back. It borders on insulting.
I've had multiple monthly services for years that never once extended or lowered my fee. That's fine, that's business. When I went to cancel some to switch (or just cancel), suddenly I can get an extra 50% off what I've been paying patiently for years? Just rubs me the wrong way. It's a game I don't really want to play.
Give me a good rate for the service. Surprise random 'gifts' of a free month of a service or whatnot now and then would be really nice. But it might remind me I'm paying for something I forgot about, and prompt a cancellation. I dunno.