We lost a lot of churned subscribers to refunds and silent churn. Moving refunds and a simple win-back flow to the web gave us a few levers we didn’t have in-app: flexible partial refunds, trial extensions, and targeted email campaigns tied to the web record.
By analyzing which win-back offers worked on which cohorts I raised 30 and 90 day retention and the effective LTV. The key was being able to test different offers quickly and track the full outcome in analytics.
What types of win-back or refund offers have you tested on the web and which proved most effective for long term retention?
I started with small partial refunds and 7 day trial extensions for users who canceled within their first month.
Tracking the cohort that accepted the offer versus those who did not made the impact obvious. The web flow made it simple to automate the refund or extension and record the result. I prototyped the workflow quickly using a funnel JSON and then hardened it.
We used two winback variants: an immediate discount and an extended trial. The extended trial group had better retention at 30 days.
Running both on the web let us scale the winning offer quickly. Having a web admin to trigger refunds and extensions without app updates was a real time saver.
I found trial extensions beat one time discounts for our audience.
We offered a tailored onboarding email plus a free week and saw better reactivation quality.
Free trial beats tiny refund usually
Measure net impact. Some refunds look good in the short term but reduce LTV if they attract users who would have stayed. We ran controlled tests. Offer trial extensions to high intent users and price discounts to price sensitive ones. Log the entire funnel and follow cohorts to 90 days before calling a winner.
The web makes cycling through offer types far cheaper than app store workflows.
We tied winback offers to the reason for cancel if available. Targeted offers performed better than blanket discounts.
Also test timing. An offer right after cancel worked differently than one sent after a month. The web lets you run both easily.
We automated refunds on the web and tracked which refund size brought back users.
Smaller refunds plus a trial often worked.
Make sure refund events sync to your analytics so you can see long term effects.