Experiments You Can Run Now

low engagement medium 360 min

Ship Retention Experiments in 15 Days Instead of Months

Most churn ideas die before they get tested. Not because they are bad ideas, but because they require engineering time, compete with roadmap priorities, and take weeks to validate. By the time something ships, the insight is stale. Teams know what they want to try. They just cannot ship it fast enough to learn anything useful. The bottleneck in retention is not insight. It is shipping speed.

Test 3-4 retention hypotheses in the time it would normally take to ship one. Learn which ideas actually impact churn before committing engineering resources. Reduce wasted development time on retention features that do not move the needle.

Recommended Tools:

UniqueSide

low engagement hard 300 min

Competitive Displacement Prevention Program

Customers switch to competitors when they see better pricing, features, or sales pitches. 40% of churn is competitive displacement.

Reduce competitive displacement churn by 35-45%, win back 20% of lost deals

poor onboarding medium 240 min

Onboarding Activation Milestones for B2B Products

40-60% of B2B SaaS trials never reach activation. Users sign up, get overwhelmed, and never experience core value.

Increase trial-to-paid conversion by 15-25%, reduce time-to-value by 40%

payment failure hard 240 min

Stabilize Usage-Based Pricing Churn Spikes

Usage-based pricing causes 50-70% higher churn when bills spike unexpectedly. Customers feel price gouged and switch to flat-rate competitors.

Reduce bill shock churn by 60%, increase customer LTV by 25%

feature adoption medium 180 min

Product-Led Expansion to Reduce Churn Risk

Customers on single products churn at 2-3x rate of multi-product customers. They have weaker lock-in and lower switching costs.

Increase multi-product adoption by 30%, reduce churn by 40% for expanded customers

payment failure medium 180 min

Recover Failed Payments with Smart Dunning

15-35% of SMB SaaS customers churn due to involuntary payment failures. Most companies send generic retry emails that get ignored.

Recover 40-60% of failed payments, reduce involuntary churn by 8-12%

support issues hard 240 min

Recover Customers After Product Downtime

Major outages cause 20-35% churn spike in following 30 days. Customers lose trust and actively evaluate alternatives during downtime.

Reduce post-incident churn by 50-60%, rebuild trust with 80% of affected customers

feature adoption medium 180 min

Mitigate Churn from Feature Deprecation

Removing or changing features causes 30-50% churn among affected users. Users feel betrayed when workflows break.

Reduce feature deprecation churn from 30-50% to under 10%

poor onboarding hard 300 min

Reduce Marketplace Seller Churn

70-80% of marketplace sellers churn within 90 days. Most never get first sale due to poor onboarding and competition.

Increase sellers achieving first sale from 20% to 60%, reduce 90-day churn by 40%

payment failure medium 200 min

Optimize Mobile App Cancellation Flow

Mobile app subscription cancellations are 40% higher than web due to App Store friction and lack of retention offers.

Reduce mobile subscription cancellations by 30-40%, retain 25% via pause feature

payment failure easy 90 min

Proactive Credit Card Expiration Outreach

25-35% of credit card expirations result in permanent churn. Customers get distracted and never update payment method.

Reduce card expiration churn from 25-35% to under 8%

low engagement easy 120 min

Win-Back Campaign for Churned E-commerce Customers

E-commerce brands lose 60-70% of first-time buyers. Most never attempt to win them back with personalized offers.

Win back 8-15% of churned customers, $40-80 average order value

feature adoption medium 200 min

Feature Adoption Campaign for Sticky Features

Customers using only 1-2 features churn at 3x the rate of power users. Most SaaS companies never educate on additional features.

Increase feature adoption by 20-30%, reduce churn for adopters by 25-40%

low engagement medium 150 min

Prevent Annual to Monthly Plan Downgrades

Customers switching from annual to monthly plans represent 40% hidden churn. Monthly subscribers churn 3-5x faster than annual subscribers.

Retain 60-70% of at-risk annual subscribers, increase ACVby 15-20%

competitive displacement hard 540 min

Detect Competitive Evaluation Before They Churn

Most churn doesn't look like churn. It looks like someone "just cancelling." But under the surface, competitive evaluation happened first. By the time they cancel, they've already decided. You lose 60-80% of customers evaluating competitors because you don't see the signals until the cancellation email arrives. Usage drops quietly, internal champions go silent, they follow competitors on social - but teams react after cancellation when it's too late.

Detect 70-85% of competitive evaluations 30-60 days before cancellation. Reduce surprise churn by 40-50%. Intervention success rate: save 60-70% of flagged accounts with proactive outreach. Cut time spent on already-lost customers by 50%.

relationship loss hard 360 min

Prevent Churn During Leadership Transitions

When your customer's executive sponsor leaves (VP, CEO, department head), you lose your champion and relationship reset risk is 3-5x higher. The new leader wants to "make their mark" by cutting vendors, renegotiating contracts, or bringing in their preferred tools. You have a 90-day window to establish the new relationship or you're out.

Retain 75-85% of accounts with leadership transitions (vs 40-50% without intervention). Build new executive relationship within 60 days.

poor product fit medium 540 min

Prevent Churn from Poor Mobile Experience

Mobile users have 2-3x higher churn than desktop users, but 40-60% of your traffic is mobile. Your responsive web design barely works on phones, core workflows are impossible to complete without a computer, and your iOS/Android apps are outdated. Users sign up on mobile, can't complete activation tasks, and churn within days. You're losing the "check on the go" segment entirely.

Reduce mobile user churn from 2-3x desktop to within 20% of desktop. Increase mobile activation rate by 50%. Expand mobile user segment from 20% to 40% of active users. Unlock "on the go" use cases.

poor product fit hard 600 min

Reduce Churn from Product Complexity Overwhelm

Power users love your 100+ features, but 60-70% of customers only use 5-10 features and feel overwhelmed. They describe your product as "too complex," "not intuitive," or "overkill for our needs." Complex navigation, feature bloat, and lack of role-based views cause new customers to churn before they see value. You're losing the "simple use case" market to lighter competitors.

Reduce early-stage churn (first 90 days) by 30-40%. Increase activation rate by 25%. Improve product satisfaction scores from 6/10 to 8/10 for SMB customers. Expand addressable market to "simple use case" segment.

compliance security hard 900 min

Mitigate Churn from Compliance Requirement Changes

Customers in regulated industries (healthcare, finance, government) churn when their compliance requirements change and you can't quickly prove adherence. HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR, FedRAMP certifications take 6-18 months to obtain, but customers need proof within 30-90 days when their auditor flags your tool as non-compliant. You lose the deal before you can certify.

Reduce compliance-related churn by 60-80%. Increase deal win rate in regulated industries by 40%. Unlock new market segments (healthcare, finance, government).

corporate restructuring hard 420 min

Reduce Churn from M&A Integration Issues

When your customer gets acquired, 40-60% of vendor relationships are terminated within 12 months. The acquiring company has preferred vendors, procurement wants to consolidate, and your champion loses decision-making power. Your contract is suddenly "under review" and you're competing against the acquirer's incumbent vendors.

Retain 70-80% of acquired customers. Convert 20-30% into expansion opportunities by selling into acquiring company. Extend contract length by 1-2 years.

low engagement easy 90 min

Prevent Multi-Seat License Downsizing

Teams reduce seats by 20-40% at renewal as employees leave or budgets shrink. Seat reduction is a churn leading indicator.

Reduce seat downsizing by 40-50%, increase expansion revenue by 15%

technical migration hard 720 min

Prevent Churn from Breaking API Changes

Technical migrations (API version deprecation, infrastructure changes, auth updates) cause 15-30% of technical customers to churn. Developers hate migration work, and if your deprecation timeline is aggressive or documentation is poor, they'll switch to a competitor rather than invest engineering time fixing integrations that "worked fine yesterday."

Achieve 90%+ migration rate before deprecation deadline. Reduce developer churn from breaking changes by 70%. Maintain customer satisfaction >8/10 during transition.

competitive displacement hard 300 min

Recover Customers Lost to In-House Solutions

Enterprise customers build internal tools to replace your product, citing "unique requirements" or "cost savings." In reality, 70% of in-house projects fail or underperform within 18 months due to maintenance burden, feature gaps, and opportunity cost. But by then, they're locked into their decision and won't admit the mistake. You need a win-back strategy that gives them a face-saving way to return.

Win back 15-25% of "built in-house" churned customers within 24 months. Convert to higher ACV contracts due to API/infrastructure usage. Improve win rate against "build" objection in sales.

budget constraints medium 240 min

Mitigate Churn from Budget Cuts and Layoffs

During economic downturns or when your customer does layoffs, procurement reviews all vendors and cuts 20-40% of SaaS spend. You get an email: "We're reducing costs. Cancel or cut your contract 50%." Every vendor is getting the same message. Without a rapid response plan, you get lumped into the "nice to have" category and cut entirely.

Retain 70-80% of customers facing budget cuts (vs 40-50% without intervention). Extend contract terms by 12-24 months. Reduce discount depth by 20% through value documentation.

pricing changes hard 480 min

Mitigate Churn from Price Increases

Price increases cause 12-25% of your customer base to churn within 90 days. Most companies announce price changes poorly, giving customers no advance warning, no value justification, and no grandfathering options. The result: mass exodus of price-sensitive customers and damaged relationships with loyal users.

Reduce price increase churn from 20% to 8-12%. Retain 90%+ of high-value customers. Maintain customer satisfaction scores above 7/10.

poor onboarding medium 360 min

Reduce Free-to-Paid Conversion Abandonment

Freemium models have 2-5% conversion rates, but 40-60% of users hit paid limits, see the paywall, and churn instead of converting. They reach workspace limits, feature gates, or usage caps, get frustrated by the upgrade prompt, and abandon your product entirely. You're losing the most engaged users right when they should be converting.

Increase free-to-paid conversion from 2-5% to 4-8%. Reduce churn at paywall by 50%. Improve LTV by 30-40% through higher conversion. Reduce time to paid conversion by 20%.

poor onboarding hard 480 min

Prevent Churn from Implementation Quality Issues

Enterprise customers churn within 6-12 months when professional services implementations fail. Poor scoping, missed deadlines, consultant turnover, and blame-shifting between vendor and customer IT create toxic relationships. Customer pays $50-200K for implementation that doesn't work, then churns on first renewal. You lose both product subscription and services revenue.

Reduce implementation-related churn from 25-30% to under 10%. Increase implementation on-time completion from 60% to 85%. Improve customer satisfaction scores at handoff from 6/10 to 8.5/10. Create cross-sell opportunities from successful implementations.

low engagement hard 360 min

Health Score Monitoring for Enterprise Accounts

Enterprise accounts churn silently. By the time sales notices, renewal is already lost. 70% of enterprise churn is predictable 90 days out.

Reduce enterprise churn by 15-25%, increase renewal rates by 10-20%

seasonal usage medium 360 min

Prevent Churn from Seasonal Usage Drops

Seasonal businesses (retail during holidays, education during school year, accounting during tax season) have 60-80% usage drops during off-season. When they see zero activity for 3-4 months, they cancel to cut costs. Then they re-subscribe next season - churning and re-acquiring them twice a year hemorrhages LTV and creates admin burden.

Reduce seasonal churn from 40% to under 10%. Increase customer lifetime from 1-2 years to 3-5 years. Eliminate re-acquisition costs. Improve annual retention by 30-40%.