“It makes sense that sleepers churn: They aren’t getting much value from their subscription. Yet they don’t churn right away. In any given month, 90% of sleepers will simply continue to stay inactive. It’s only when they wake up again and come back that their cancellation rates soar, generally accounting for about 30% of active churn.
This makes re-engaging sleepers difficult. How do you bring them back into the fold and “wake them up” without prompting them to cancel?”
They are advising to trick users into continuing their subscription by not reminding them they are subscribed.
I am sure they are also against reminding folks when it is time to auto renew.
These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription industry by making people not trust companies. The ethical thing to do is ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice.
I've seen the hazards of "raise the dead" campaigns before. You send out a campaign to your inactive users and get 20% engagement. Half of those are cancellations. With 30% sleeper rate, you just immediately 3% of your users. Not fun.
What I haven't seen is an analysis of the effect on retention rate. That's going to play out over time. Some of the users who cancelled were going to anyway and some people you reactivated were saved. It would be very handy to have a formula of what values make sense to send out these campaigns so you can stomach the short term loss for the long term gain.
> These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription industry by making people not trust companies. The ethical thing to do is ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice.
Tragedy of the commons.
See also: taxis. Uber succeeded in part because taxi cartels had become so incredibly unlikable.
“It makes sense that sleepers churn: They aren’t getting much value from their subscription. Yet they don’t churn right away. In any given month, 90% of sleepers will simply continue to stay inactive. It’s only when they wake up again and come back that their cancellation rates soar, generally accounting for about 30% of active churn.
This makes re-engaging sleepers difficult. How do you bring them back into the fold and “wake them up” without prompting them to cancel?”
They are advising to trick users into continuing their subscription by not reminding them they are subscribed.
I am sure they are also against reminding folks when it is time to auto renew.
These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription industry by making people not trust companies. The ethical thing to do is ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice.