Scope

When and how to use Targeted Reason-based Offers in Chargebee Retention?

Solution

One of the most common misconceptions we see at Chargebee Retention centers around the use of Reason-Based Offers. People generally think that you will see better results if you tailor your Offers to the specific reason that the user selects in the Cancel Survey. We have found that while this can be true, it is often not the right place for customers to start out in developing their Offer Testing Strategy, So let's dig into the why behind this further. 

First off, when we say Reason-Based offer in Chargebee Retention we are referring to the Offers you can place on Reasons in the cancel survey. Chargebee Retention supports several Offer Placements, but one of the most common is this Reason-Based placement. This allows you to assign different Offers to each reason on a Page in Chargebee Retention. 

Note: Essentials customers can only assign a single Offer within a Chargebee Retention page.

When customers first come to us for onboarding support, they often have defined specific offers that they want to show for certain reasons. The trouble with this approach is that they often do not know which offers will have the biggest impact overall, and are pre-biasing this test by selecting who sees which offer by placing it behind a specific reason. A better initial strategy is to develop what we refer to as a Random Offer Test, you do this by placing a single offer on every reason within a page, and then making copies of that page and swapping out the offer for each of the different offers that you want to test. This allows you to determine which offer is accepted at the highest rate across all your users. 

Once you have determined which Offers to perform best, we then recommend getting more nuanced with your Offer strategy and considering introducing Audiences to your test as well as targeted Reason Based Offers where they make sense. 

When do Targeted Reason-Based Offers Make Sense?

Here are some common use cases we see where Reason-Based offers do make a ton of sense. 

• The product is no longer needed (Eg: Dog food subscription when the dog has passed away)
• You cannot support a certain use case (Eg: Customer needs a feature or menu item you don't have)
• You have shipping or service interruptions (Eg: Shipping delays are an issue for you right now and you want to present a specific message to users who are canceling for this reason to assure them you will fix it)
• You have already tested which Offers perform best (Eg: Once you have run a series of Random Offer tests to establish baseline performance, experimenting with targeted Reason Based offers can drive increased deflection) 
• Your audience is price sensitive and discounts are effective for pricing reasons (Eg: If you have tested Discounts against other Offer Types and find that Discounts generally work well for pricing reasons whereas another Offer works better for the remainder of your cancel reasons)

If one of these criteria is the case, go ahead and switch over to Reason-Based Offer placement where you can target specific Offers for certain reasons. However, don't cheat and default to this because it is easy. You are far better off leveraging Chargebee Retention to run a few offer tests to establish true baselines + lift than just instantly biasing the testing with targeted reasons. Trust us, we know from having made this mistake with our early customers. 

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