No. 6Retention & churn14 min read

The anti-churn playbook

8 June 2026

You have measured churn and diagnosed it. This is the ranked list of what to actually do, from dunning (cheap, mechanical, immediate) through to the cancel flow (subtle, easy to get badly wrong) — with the specific mechanics for each and a clear line around the dark patterns that make next quarter worse.

The short version

→Rank interventions by return per hour, not by how strategic they sound. Dunning beats lifecycle email beats health scores beats win-back, almost always.
→Dunning — smart retries, card account updater, pre-expiry warnings, in-app failure notice. This is the free money and most products leave it on the table.
→The cancel flow should be honest and short. Offer one genuinely useful alternative (pause, downgrade), not a maze. Obstruction is now illegal in several jurisdictions and always expensive.
→Pause beats discount. It keeps the account, costs less, and converts better with the 'need changed' cause, which is the one most likely to come back.
→Health scores are worth building only when you have enough accounts to act on them and a human who will. Otherwise it's a dashboard.

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