Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do With Churned Customers?
You put them into a Get Them Back bucket and re-market to them with a dedicated program. And you have sales especially follow-up twice. Once in about 90 days, to see if they might want to come back — importantly. at no cost to them. And then again in about 8-9 months. A good time to steal before a renewal!
As painful as it is losing a customer of any material size, customers are often not gone forever. Yes, it’s really tough to lose them. But they may come back if they have a bad experience with a competitor. Or if other things change. Or if a new leader comes in that knows you already, or wants to make a change.
#1, Put them in a dedicated marketing bucket for Reacquisition. They’ll need special webinars, content, and offers focused on ex-customers. Seasoned VPs of Marketing often have done this before. If not, ask them to figure it out.
It’s worth it if you are going long.
#2. And whatever you do, let them go. Let the take their data. Don’t rip them off. No threats or games. If you do that, they’ll only come back if they absolutely have to.
#3. If they want to keep a pocket of users on your app, let them. It doesn’t usually make much difference per se, but it leaves a pocket of champions for you to leverage to steal the deal back later.
(note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer)
