Slow Churned: How To Target Retention Efforts So They Don't Backfire

There's a lot of talk in on the Internet about retaining subscribers, but very little of it has hard data behind it. Here’s a look at several academic research papers on the topic of why retention efforts can actually increase churn, and how to tailor retention programs so that they work the way they are intended.

The easy way to do retention is to blast out special offers and rewards to loyal customers, lumping all the steady subscribers, the sleeping dogs, the irregular users, and other at-risk customers into the same anti-churn program. Research shows that, compared with control groups of customers who are not targeted at all, some retention programs actually inspire existing customers to cancel. Here are some of the factors and methods to consider in avoiding that failure mode.