Template

Cancellation email

What to send after somebody cancels, and the one thing that decides whether it works: answering the reason they gave rather than the reason you wish they had given.

Your Product <[email protected]>

to [email protected]

Your cancellation is done. One thought on the price

No action needed. Your account runs until 14 March.

Your Product

That is cancelled

Your subscription is cancelled and your account runs normally until 14 March. Nothing else is needed from you, and this is not an email asking you to reconsider.

You said it was the price. That is the reason we hear most, and usually it means the plan was sized for a bigger team than yours. There is a smaller one at a third of what you were paying, with the report limit dropped and everything else the same.

See the smaller plan

If that is not it, ignore this. Your data is exportable for thirty days and I can send you the file myself if that is easier.

Alex, Your Product

Your Product Inc, 1 Example Street
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A worked example of the blueprint below. The brand, the names and the numbers are placeholders; the structure is the part to copy.

The blueprint

Rebuild it anywhere

Subject lines (5 options)

Your cancellation is done. One thought on the priceshown above
Cancelled. Your account runs until 14 March
That is done, and one option if it was the price
Confirmed, plus the smaller plan nobody sees
Your cancellation, and what happens to your data

When it fires

Trigger: Fires on a tag your backend adds when a cancellation completes, carrying the reason given, so the send can branch on it.
Timing: Two to four hours after the cancellation, not immediately. The confirmation goes out at once from your billing system; this is a separate email, and it needs to arrive after the person has left the cancellation screen.
Conditions: Branch on the reason given at cancellation. Price gets the smaller plan, a missing feature gets a real date or an honest no, complexity gets a person, and no reason given gets a single question instead of an offer.
If the reason was a company closing down, a role change or anything you cannot answer, send the confirmation and nothing else.
Send once. There is no second save email, and the follow-up you are tempted to write is a win-back, sixty days later, if at all.

The body, block by block

The confirmation, first
The cancellation happened. Say so before anything else, and say that no action is needed. An email that buries the confirmation under an offer is the reason save flows have the reputation they do.
The end date
The exact day access stops. It is the question the reader has, and answering it in line two is what earns the sentence after it.
Their reason, named
Repeat the reason they gave at cancellation. This is the branch: an email that answers price when they said missing features is an email that was not listening, and it is worse than sending nothing.
One specific answer to it
A smaller plan for price, a date for a missing feature, a person for complexity. One answer, and only if you have a real one. "Is there anything we can do" is not an answer.
An explicit way out
"If that is not it, ignore this." It costs nothing, it stops the email reading as a negotiation, and it is the line that makes people reply with the real reason.
The data question
Export window, retention period, and an offer to do it for them. This is the part they will remember if they ever consider coming back.

When to use it

Every time somebody cancels, because the confirmation has to go out anyway and this is that email written properly. The version that does not work is the interception: a page or an email that stands between the person and the cancellation, offering discounts before the thing they asked for has happened. It converts a small number of people and it costs the goodwill of everybody else, including the ones who would have come back.

The version that works confirms first and answers second, and it only earns the second part by doing the first properly. The delay matters for the same reason: an offer that arrives while somebody is still on the cancellation screen is part of the cancellation flow, and it is read as an obstacle. A few hours later it is a separate email from a person, and it can be ignored without effort, which is exactly what makes it readable.

The branching is the rest of it. A save email that answers the reason somebody actually gave is a useful email even when they do not take it up, because it tells them the reason was heard.

SendHeron runs a cancel-save on its own account list, branching on the reason given at cancellation. The four-hour delay is in it deliberately, for the reason above.

What kills this email

Putting the offer in front of the cancellation
A save flow that makes cancelling harder converts a few and annoys the rest, and the annoyed ones tell people. Let the cancellation complete, then send the email.
Offering a discount regardless of the reason
Somebody who left because a feature was missing is being told their reason was not heard. The discount is only the right answer to the price reason, and using it for everything is how you find out what your list thinks of you.
Sending it in the same minute as the confirmation
Two emails arriving together makes the second one part of the first, and the offer reads as a condition of the cancellation. A few hours of separation changes what it is.
Not saying what happens to their data
This is the question every cancelling customer has and almost no cancellation email answers. Say how long you keep it and offer the export. It is also the thing that makes returning possible later.

When not to send it

Do not send the save half when there is no honest answer to the reason given. A company that shut down does not need a smaller plan, and offering one is the point at which an automated email becomes obviously automated.

Do not send it more than once. A second save email after a cancellation is the clearest way to turn somebody who left neutral into somebody who complains, and complaints from cancelled customers cost more than the account did.

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