We experimented with targeted refunds and win-back offers on the web. One play gave churned users a partial refund plus a timed discount to stay, and surprisingly many reactivated and spoke positively about the experience. It cost us short term revenue but improved LTV and brand sentiment for that segment.
We measured impact by cohorting refund recipients and tracking renewals and lifetime value over 90 days.
How have you balanced refund generosity versus long term unit economics?
We built a small backend hook to refund the latest paid invoice and then display a winback offer.
It required careful checks so we only refunded paid and active invoices. The nice thing was we controlled the offer logic on the web so no app review delays. For the implementation I leaned on a simple template from Web2Wave.com and adapted it to our refund API.
Treat refunds and winbacks as a targeted acquisition channel. We offered larger discounts for web payers because the fee burden was lower and tracked cohort LTV for refunded users versus control. That let us optimize the winback amount and timing quickly since changes were immediate on web.
We tested a half refund plus a 6 month discount. Many people stayed and gave great feedback.
It was a bit of work up front but net LTV improved for that group.
refund then offer discount it worked
Winbacks via web are powerful because you control the payment relationship and fees. Build a clear eligibility check so you only refund valid paid invoices and only cancel active subs. Run the winback as an experiment with an A/B control. Measure short term conversion and then LTV at 30, 90 and 180 days. If the LTV lift exceeds the refund cost plus acquisition margin then scale. Keep the logic flexible on the web so you can tune offers quickly.
We set a rule to only refund within the first two billing cycles and to log the reason code.
That made cohort comparison easier and let us tune which refund amounts returned the best LTV.
Refunds are a tool not a bug.
Use them for targeted winbacks and measure cohort LTV.
Make sure your refund flow writes the event to analytics so you can measure impact.