By Morten Suhr Hansen
It is no secret that I am fond of subscriptions. And I have quite a few subscriptions. That is why I like to put them through a spring clean once a year. Not necessarily because I want to get rid of them, but just as much to test how well Danish and international subscription businesses handle the stages of the subscriber journey, we call sign-off and win-back. In other words: what happens when you try to cancel a subscription, and what happens in the days and weeks after it has been cancelled.
Over the past few weeks, I selected and cancelled 10 of my subscriptions across different categories and industries. Seven are Danish, three are international.
And let me be completely honest from the outset: it was a deeply underwhelming experience. Both as a customer and as a subscription professional. In fact, only two of the 10 performed well in my test – one Danish, one international. I will come back to them, but first a few words on why the experience you put your subscribers through at the moment of cancellation matters enormously to the overall subscriber experience.
The moment that reveals everything
The cancellation moment is where a subscription business meets its own reflection. It is here that it becomes clear whether the company has understood that a subscription is an ongoing relationship – or whether it treats the subscription as a transaction that is now simply over.
This matters particularly right now because many subscribers have developed entirely new behaviour. A churn-and-return pattern. Subscribers have become highly skilled at managing their own subscriptions. We turn them off when we no longer need them. We turn them back on when we want to return. A customer who cancels is not someone to say goodbye to. They are someone to say: see you soon. The cancellation moment is actually the very first step in welcoming the subscriber back at a later point. Leave a good impression. Plant the first seeds of a successful win-back.
That, I found, is something the businesses behind the subscriptions I cancelled do not yet sufficiently understand.
Let me summarise my experiences under three main themes.
Most make it reasonably easy
Most subscription businesses have understood that it makes no sense to make cancellation unnecessarily difficult. In eight out of 10 cases, it was relatively easy to cancel. Even if few actively advertise the option. The cancellation button still requires a little searching — a couple of clicks under ‘My profile’ – but it gets done.
In two cases, however, things went wrong. One stands out in particular: a major Danish media company where you cannot cancel your subscription digitally at all, but must send a message to customer service. I was told they would ‘get back to me within a few days’. Unfortunately, time passed and they actually charged me for the next subscription period, leaving me to send a bank account number to get a refund. Extremely cumbersome and highly unfortunate.
Need I repeat the point? If you want your subscriber to come back, you need to have this part of the customer experience firmly under control.
Personalisation at the point of cancellation is almost entirely absent
The cancellation moment is also a strong opportunity to show subscribers that they have been valued customers. That you, as a business, actually know them.
Ekstra Bladet is a company that understands this. When I cancelled my Ekstra Bladet+ subscription and gave ‘don’t use it enough’ as my reason, I was immediately shown that I had read 17 articles in the past month. Strong, personal communication. And perhaps a reason to reconsider. At the very least, they signal that I have found value in my subscription — important if they want to win me back later.
American platform MasterClass has similarly built strong personalisation into their sign-off flow. But the positive examples stop there. None of the other eight subscription services come close to acting personally at the cancellation moment — even though many of them do so elsewhere in the subscriber journey. There is genuine potential here for those who want to strengthen retention and customer experience.
Where are all your win-back attempts?
When I cancelled the 10 subscriptions, I fully expected to be bombarded with attempts to pull me back. Here is perhaps the biggest surprise of all: I was met with near-total silence.
Only in a couple of cases did I subsequently hear from a company with an invitation and an offer to return. Those few win-back attempts felt somewhat half-hearted. As if someone had thought: we may as well send an email. No personalisation. No reference to my time as a subscriber.
This is remarkable, because a cancelled subscriber is often the warmest lead a subscription business can have. They know the product. They have paid for it. They voted with their feet once — but that does not mean they will never return.
How does your own subscription business measure up?
My spring clean has brutally exposed the difference between doing this well and doing it poorly.
The best flows in my small test did three things: they made cancellation easy, but not insignificant. They used what they already knew about the customer. And they understood that the relationship does not necessarily end because the subscription does.
The worst flows remind me of how many people used to think about subscriptions: the harder it is to leave, the longer customers stay. That is short-term thinking that both undermines the brand and almost guarantees the customer never comes back.
Think I am exaggerating? That I have just been unlucky? Try the same exercise on your own subscriptions — you can always come back to the ones you miss. And do send me your own experiences.
Most importantly: if you are responsible for your own subscription business, consider whether now is the time to get an external perspective on how well your business handles sign-off and win-back. I would be happy to help.
