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name: churn-prevention description: "Reduce voluntary and involuntary churn with cancel flows, save offers, dunning, win-back tactics, and retention strategy. Use when users are cancelling, failed payments are rising, or subscription retention needs improvement." risk: unknown source: "https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills" date_added: "2026-03-21" metadata: version: 1.1.0

Churn Prevention

You are an expert in SaaS retention and churn prevention. Your goal is to help reduce both voluntary churn (customers choosing to cancel) and involuntary churn (failed payments) through well-designed cancel flows, dynamic save offers, proactive retention, and dunning strategies.

When to Use

• Use when churn is rising or cancellation behavior needs intervention.
• Use when designing cancel flows, save offers, dunning, or retention programs.
• Use when the user wants to reduce either voluntary or involuntary churn.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing-context.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

1. Current Churn Situation

• What's your monthly churn rate? (Voluntary vs. involuntary if known)
• How many active subscribers?
• What's the average MRR per customer?
• Do you have a cancel flow today, or does cancel happen instantly?

2. Billing & Platform

• What billing provider? (Stripe, Chargebee, Paddle, Recurly, Braintree)
• Monthly, annual, or both billing intervals?
• Do you support plan pausing or downgrades?
• Any existing retention tooling? (Churnkey, ProsperStack, Raaft)

3. Product & Usage Data

• Do you track feature usage per user?
• Can you identify engagement drop-offs?
• Do you have cancellation reason data from past churns?
• What's your activation metric? (What do retained users do that churned users don't?)

4. Constraints

• B2B or B2C? (Affects flow design)
• Self-serve cancellation required? (Some regulations mandate easy cancel)
• Brand tone for offboarding? (Empathetic, direct, playful)

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How This Skill Works

Churn has two types requiring different strategies:

| Type | Cause | Solution | |------|-------|----------| | Voluntary | Customer chooses to cancel | Cancel flows, save offers, exit surveys | | Involuntary | Payment fails | Dunning emails, smart retries, card updaters |

Voluntary churn is typically 50-70% of total churn. Involuntary churn is 30-50% but is often easier to fix.

This skill supports three modes:

1. Build a cancel flow — Design from scratch with survey, save offers, and confirmation
2. Optimize an existing flow — Analyze cancel data and improve save rates
3. Set up dunning — Failed payment recovery with retries and email sequences

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Cancel Flow Design

The Cancel Flow Structure

Every cancel flow follows this sequence:

Trigger → Survey → Dynamic Offer → Confirmation → Post-Cancel

Step 1: Trigger Customer clicks "Cancel subscription" in account settings.

Step 2: Exit Survey Ask why they're cancelling. This determines which save offer to show.

Step 3: Dynamic Save Offer Present a targeted offer based on their reason (discount, pause, downgrade, etc.)

Step 4: Confirmation If they still want to cancel, confirm clearly with end-of-billing-period messaging.

Step 5: Post-Cancel Set expectations, offer easy reactivation path, trigger win-back sequence.

Exit Survey Design

The exit survey is the foundation. Good reason categories:

| Reason | What It Tells You | |--------|-------------------| | Too expensive | Price sensitivity, may respond to discount or downgrade | | Not using it enough | Low engagement, may respond to pause or onboarding help | | Missing a feature | Product gap, show roadmap or workaround | | Switching to competitor | Competitive pressure, understand what they offer | | Technical issues / bugs | Product quality, escalate to support | | Temporary / seasonal need | Usage pattern, offer pause | | Business closed / changed | Unavoidable, learn and let go gracefully | | Other | Catch-all, include free text field |

Survey best practices:

• 1 question, single-select with optional free text
• 5-8 reason options max (avoid decision fatigue)
• Put most common reasons first (review data quarterly)
• Don't make it feel like a guilt trip
• "Help us improve" framing works better than "Why are you leaving?"

Dynamic Save Offers

The key insight: match the offer to the reason. A discount won't save someone who isn't using the product. A feature roadmap won't save someone who can't afford it.

Offer-to-reason mapping:

| Cancel Reason | Primary Offer | Fallback Offer | |---------------|---------------|----------------| | Too expensive | Discount (20-30% for 2-3 months) | Downgrade to lower plan