Often Overlooked, Always More Profitable
I’m always amazed by internet marketers, teaching internet marketing, who miss the marketing boat.
I unsubscribed to several marketing related membership sites today. I’d been with all of them for extended periods and, other than slow content production, I really didn’t have a problem with them.
It is important to note I wasn’t leaving angry.
There are several lessons in what happened today, after I unsubscribed, but for the sake of brevity, I’m only gonna talk about one of them.
This will only take a minute, anyway.
Here’s what happened:
I decided to cancel some recurring payment memberships billed through PayPal.
I went to PayPal and found the relevant subscriptions. Then I clicked on “Cancel Membership” and this is what happened…
>>insert long silence here<<
Yeah, exactly, nothing happened. I got freakin’ crickets.
Sure, I received notification from PayPal saying the memberships had been canceled, but I didn’t receive a single email from ANY of the marketers/businesses in question.
- I didn’t get a pointless “We’re sorry to see you go” Good Bye Email.
- I didn’t get a “Please take a second to tell us why you’re leaving” Exit Survey.
- I didn’t get a “Wait! You can have X bonus if you’ll give us another try” Bribe Offer.
And I damn sure didn’t get an email doing all three of those things.
**FAIL**
Nope, they just let me, and my money, slip away.
Sad. So, so sad.
Now, obviously, I could tie this into my previous post on reducing attrition, but it’s a bit soon for that. No, instead, we’re gonna touch on Points of Contact.
These marketers failed to maximize all of their touch points.
I doubt if they went through the trouble to sit down and map out every single point of contact with their customers. If so, they wouldn’t have let me get away so easily. I doubt they would have just idly watched my money walk away. No, they would have used this opportunity to try to either get useful information out of me or talk me into staying a member.
But they didn’t.
And you don’t have to make that mistake.
You CAN sit down and map out every pre-sale and post-sale point of contact with your customers. You CAN figure out ways to optimize every single one of those occasions. You CAN increase your revenues, your retention rate, and the size of the checks you cash by analyzing and optimizing your POCs.
You just have to put a little thought into it.
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Excellent, except a teeny, tiny thing…
There’s no way for the membership site to know it was you who unsubscribed. It’s a real loophole in the process. They may not know anyone at all unsubscribed until it’s time to rebill you.
Just my 2 pennies!
Cheers -
Lisa
No shit? You’re serious?
You mean to tell me that PayPal can notify ME in an instant, but doesn’t notify the site owner?
I haven’t used paypal as a merchant account, so I’m not familiar with the process (everything I’ve done has been affiliate - I just drove traffic.)
Well, shit. That throws a wrench in my whole post. Grrr.
Thanks for the heads up, Lisa.
I think I’ll leave the post up anyway, just to see how many people comment to tell me the same thing.
Actually, Tony Blake gets the kudos on catching that one. But I’m pretty smart too, sometimes.
To everyone reading this:
Okay, after spending a significant amount of time reading though every single shed of “subscription relevant” information on the PayPal website, I’ve concluded that PayPal DOES send instant notifications to membership site owners. It is called IPN and, as you’ve probably figured out, it stands for Instant PayPal Notification.
The information delivered is so detailed I’m surprised they don’t have my son’s astrological sign included in the delivery options.
After I did that research, I got on the horn (read: IM) with some folks I know using PayPay to process subscription payments.
Here is the problem with the system: you have to manual open the email and record the personal information of the unsubscriber. I imagine there are scripts out there that can extract the info and automatically add it to a database though. But I’m not sure. Either way, the process can still be automated (in a sense.)
One option we came up with for automation is to set up the IPN to be automatically forwarded to a 24/7 outsourced customer service center. They are then responsible for send out the message you want to deliver. Hell, a lot of those services even have outbound calling option. So, you don’t even have to use email. Or, you could use a combination of email and live person.
Cost on this *should* still be insignificant when contrasted to the profits made from keeping a subscriber. It might take a while to average out the “Extended Customer Value” vs. “Attrition Mitigation Costs”, but I suspect it will ultimately prove profitable.
I’m sure there are other ways to make the process hands-free, too… if one bothers to invest the brain power required.
So, after all the research is said and done, my very broad finger pointing (used as context for discussing Points of Contact), was very likely justified.
okay, I’m done.
I’m in the airport headed back home (netherlands atm - I do want to visit Slovenia in a few months, should be fun, will get to hang out with a good Slovenski oblikovalec friend of mine) Anyway I just felt like I had to state that in case I end up hitting send before I’m done with this long post, as requested by you on the blog ladies blog post thing. Ah yes Sean bribed me to post! Shame Shame!
But I managed to link drop none the less! *smirk*
Ok on a more serious note, I agree 100% with what you said in the first post, about internet marketers doing the ‘need to do’ crap and not going that extra step to making an actual effort.
I for one had a few on going subscriptions here and there, most lifetime but some I get billed for monthly, some marketing related others monthly listing sites for some of my sites. Anyway, after reading your blog I went ahead and tested it out. I actually unsubscribed to one of the services I have been paying for, since back in 2001. $70 a month., so I’m a valuable client no doubt. guess what….
chirp chirp or whatever the hell crickets sound like here
Nothing. They let me go! I’m expecting them to bombard me with emails soon though (i hope) so as to feel loved and pay up again every month, because in truth I need their services
But we’ll see, maybe they’ll find out and contact me, maybe they wont care, which will only prove your prev point even more.
Oh well, personally when my clients come to me and ask for traffic, pay me on a monthly basis, if someone dares unsubscribe, i’m at their doorstep with a baseball bat, simple as that.
It didnt give me your message is being moderated or whatever…so if my prev long ass message vanished, i’m going to shoot someone.