Mailchimp | Our First Salvage Offer of The Season?
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a email marketing tool founded in 2001. After expanding into web design and ecommerce, Mailchimp has garnered millions of users on plans ranging from completely free to $350. Mailchmp is a great product with a ton of happy customers, but when a customer goes to cancel their product, the cancellation process doesn’t match the quality of their product.
Quick Hits
- Mailchimp is doing a good job: Mailchimp is doing a lot of things right. They have a great UX and are our first company this season that actually present salvage offers.
- The order of your flow is important: Even if you have the makings of a good cancellation flow, you should be deliberate when it comes to the order in which you present things.
- Salvage offers should be informed by data: The salvage offers you present your customers should be distributed based on their needs. Mailchimp seemed to be presenting the same offers regardless of our response.
Takeaways
Be deliberate with the order of your flow
Mailchimp has all the essential elements of a really well done cancellation flow, but they need to be more deliberate in the order in which they present them. When we cancelled, the first thing we saw was a pause plan salvage offer. Although this was the first salvage offer we received this season, offering a pause plan right off the bat seemed like an odd way to start the cancellation flow. You need to be deliberate about where you present your salvage offers.
The next thing we see is a really well done survey with these really unique and well done dropdowns. When you click on a cancellation reason, Mailchimp gives you deliberate options in an attempt to sway you from cancellation. If you’re having trouble with the UI of the product, they offer a link to customer support. Although this is great, we aren’t being presented with any real salvage offers.
Present customers with proper salvage offers
Although the survey is well designed, no matter what response we check off, we get the same discount every time. Offering a blanket salvage attempt regardless of the customer response is not as effective as a deliberate, targeted salvage offer. You need to use the information you gather from your survey to help guide your customers towards an appropriate salvage offer.
Proper salvage offers, like the ones we offer with Retain, can improve retention by 25%-30%.
Make sure you email us at churningpoint@paddle.com or hit up Neel and Allissa to tell us who you want us to break down next.
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00:00:00:06 - 00:00:29:04
Neel
Allissa, we finally have a salvage offer. No way. Yes. Unfortunately, though, it just doesn't feel like the best time to offer me a pause plan.
00:00:29:06 - 00:00:35:21
Neel
Hello and welcome to Churning Point, a show where we sign up for products just to see what it's like to cancel them. I'm Neil Desai.
00:00:36:03 - 00:00:36:14
Allissa
I'm Allissa Chan.
00:00:37:03 - 00:00:51:19
Neel
And today we're breaking apart MailChimp. MailChimp was founded in 2001 and is an email marketing and automation tool that has expanded into web design and e-commerce over the years. Plans range from completely free to up to $350 a month.
00:00:51:21 - 00:01:07:11
Allissa
MailChimp is doing some really cool things, but as we'll see, there's definitely some room for improvement here and there. So today we'll dive into the things that they're doing well and the things that they're doing not too well when it comes to saving their customers before they reach their Churning point.
00:01:07:13 - 00:01:32:03
Neel
When a customer tries to cancel. You have 18 seconds to try and save them. Now, we're not suggesting you hold your customers hostage, but the tactics that we cover provides the right amount of friction to try and save these vital customers before they reach their Churning point.
00:01:32:05 - 00:01:58:19
Neel
Also, we finally have a salvage offer. No way. Yes. Unfortunately, though, it just doesn't feel like the best time to offer me a pause plan. Here's the thing with salvage offers. It needs to be the right offer to the right user at the right time. And there's a myriad of different types of offers that you could give to a customer all the way from a change in price to a discount to a change in plan.
00:01:58:21 - 00:02:14:21
Neel
Right. And I think what MailChimp fails to do here is actually target the appropriate salvage offer based on any sort of indication from the customer why they're Churning in the first place. I would have loved to see them gather some insights through a cancellation survey or something else. First, I understand why a customer is canceling.
00:02:14:22 - 00:02:19:15
Allissa
Now, Neal, this might come as a bit of a surprise, but we have a second salvage offer.
00:02:19:16 - 00:02:21:18
Neel
No way.
00:02:21:20 - 00:02:31:05
Allissa
All right, but hang on before we get too excited is just another generic blanket offer. And there's really no information that I've given MailChimp at this point to indicate that I would even benefit.
00:02:31:06 - 00:02:46:17
Neel
At the end of the day, by giving discounts to your customers, you're going to be taking a hit on MLR and worse, potentially even some cashflow. And so you want to be strategic around who you're offering these salvage offers and not just feel like you're going through a maze of different discounts and offers on the way out the door.
00:02:46:18 - 00:02:59:16
Allissa
Now, after all of this, we do finally get to a cancellation reason survey. Now I have to hand it to MailChimp. I do quite like the UI here. I like how, depending on what reason that I select, there is a drop down here where they try and address my concern.
00:02:59:18 - 00:03:24:11
Neel
But here's the thing. Why is it at the end by then the customer has either completely blown through the couple of offers that they tried to give or quite frankly, is just trying to finally exit the flow and move on with their day. The actual survey is clever. I would have liked to see MailChimp bring the survey up earlier in the flow, try to learn from this and try to more effectively user salvage offers.
00:03:24:13 - 00:03:47:03
Allissa
All right. So to recap, of course, we were super excited to finally see salvage offers being presented in MailChimp flow, but ultimately the order of this entire flow seemed a little bit backwards. I think when you're guiding someone through a cancellation, it's it's a customer journey in and of itself, right? You want to make sure that you're making them feel heard and making sure that all the salvage offers are specifically tailored to the reasons why they're leaving in the first place.
00:03:47:03 - 00:03:50:14
Allissa
And it seemed like MailChimp kind of does that a little bit too late.
00:03:50:19 - 00:04:14:22
Neel
I think that's right, and the reality is that MailChimp is operating in a highly competitive space, right? There are a ton of email marketing solutions on the market. MailChimp needs to think about how to actually leverage the insights that are coming from the cancellation survey into actually deflecting more cancellations in the long run. If you're a MailChimp or any other company out there interested in optimizing your cancellation flow or just generally interested in a retention audit.
00:04:15:00 - 00:04:18:15
Neel
Hit us up at Churningpoint@paddle.com what's up next week Allissa.
00:04:18:21 - 00:04:28:05
Allissa
So next week we're diving into the world of social media management with LinkTree their cancellation flow was one of the better ones that we've seen. So definitely make sure you're tuning in to that episode. Thanks for watching.
