This makes sense, if someone isn't using your service for a month, chances are good that they are going to cancel soon. Maybe they'll keep on paying for another few months, but if they're not using it, they're not getting any value from it.
So rather than getting them to cancel, pause their subscription. You don't have to deal with cancellations, and if/when the user does return, you are one step further than you would be with a new subscription.
Furthermore this generates goodwill, and I'm guessing goodwill has some % that converts to conversions and lower churn.
Unfortunately, I will never be able to take advantage of this policy, For the very reason that I have kagi Set as my exclusive search engine on every single device that I own, And there's no way that I could go even a Day, let alone a month, without using this fantastic service.
Just recently i was actually thinking about this pricing approach for netflix, apple arcade or whatever else. Basically i use it so rarely that i could just subscribe when i want to watch anything, and unsubscribe immediately. This will enable subscription till end of billing period (one month). Then when i want o watch anything again then i will repeat again. And now kagi has implemented exactly this but automated from their own side. Im subscribing just to vote with my wallet.
Hopes that netflix or any other provider will implement this are small though. Because it's free money when someone pays for service and does not use it.
I haven’t seen this mentioned in the conversation yet, so I’ll bring it up here.
A research paper from a few years ago introduced the concept of “customer inertia.” It found that users tend to overestimate their difficulty in unsubscribing from a service. In other words, when a subscription includes auto-renewal (or a similar feature), a significant portion of potential users will choose not to subscribe because they fear they won’t be able to cancel if they stop using the service.
dirkc ·12 days ago
So rather than getting them to cancel, pause their subscription. You don't have to deal with cancellations, and if/when the user does return, you are one step further than you would be with a new subscription.
Furthermore this generates goodwill, and I'm guessing goodwill has some % that converts to conversions and lower churn.
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ajdude ·12 days ago
Keep up the good work guys!
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vincnetas ·12 days ago
Hopes that netflix or any other provider will implement this are small though. Because it's free money when someone pays for service and does not use it.
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percevalve ·11 days ago
A research paper from a few years ago introduced the concept of “customer inertia.” It found that users tend to overestimate their difficulty in unsubscribing from a service. In other words, when a subscription includes auto-renewal (or a similar feature), a significant portion of potential users will choose not to subscribe because they fear they won’t be able to cancel if they stop using the service.
According to the study, this affected about 30% of users. So, could offering something like fair pricing reduce this barrier and increase new subscriptions by 30%? https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/sophisticated-consu...
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efitz ·12 days ago
I would love to see the FTC mandate a policy that prohibits automatic renewal billing if the service hasn’t been used for some time.
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