Template

Trial expiration email

Three emails around the end of a trial, and the one that matters is written differently depending on whether they actually used it.

Your Product <[email protected]>

to [email protected]

Your trial ends Friday. Here is what you built

Four reports, two schedules, one alert. All of it stays.

Your Product

Your trial ends on Friday

In two weeks you built four reports, put two of them on a schedule, and set up one alert. That is more than most accounts do in a month.

Reports built: 4

Scheduled: 2, going to 6 people

Alerts: 1

If you keep the account, all of it carries on exactly as it is. If you do not, nothing is deleted for thirty days, so there is no rush to export anything.

Keep your account

If the answer is not yet, reply and say so. We can extend it once, and it is easier than setting all of this up again in March.

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 trial ends Friday. Here is what you builtshown above
Three days left, and what happens to your data
Friday: keep it, or let it lapse
Your four reports, and what happens to them
Trial ends Friday. Nothing gets deleted

When it fires

Trigger: Fires on the trial end date held on the account, counted backwards, so the sequence is anchored to the real expiry rather than to a signup date plus fourteen.
Timing: Three days before, on the day it ends, and three days after. The middle one is the shortest of the three and the one people act on.
Conditions: Branch on whether the trial was actually used. An account with four reports gets the email above; an account that never completed setup gets a different one that offers help rather than a price, because asking for a card for something they never got working is asking the wrong question.
Anybody who upgrades leaves the sequence immediately, including between the send and the delivery of the last email.
If the account was invited into a workspace by somebody else, send the expiry notice to the owner rather than to every member.

The body, block by block

The date, in the first line
Not "soon", not "shortly". The day. This email is a deadline notice and everything else in it depends on the reader believing the deadline is real.
What they actually built
Their own numbers, from their own account. This is the block that makes the difference, because it converts an abstract decision about a subscription into a concrete one about work they have already done.
What happens to it
Both branches, stated. What continues if they stay and what happens if they do not, including the retention period. A reader who is not sure whether their work will be deleted makes the safe decision, and the safe decision is exporting and leaving.
One button
Straight to the upgrade, with the plan preselected if you can. A trial-end email that lands somebody on a pricing table asks them to make the decision twice.
The extension offer
Offer it as a reply, not a button. Somebody who is not ready is a better outcome than somebody who lapses, and an extension asked for by reply gets you the reason as well.
No discount
Do not put one here. The people about to convert convert anyway, and the ones who were not going to are being taught what to wait for next time.

The rest of the sequence

Three days before expiry
The email above. The date, their own numbers, and what happens either way.
Subject Your trial ends Friday. Here is what you built
The morning it expires
Two sentences. The account is now read-only or closed, the data is kept for thirty days, one button.
Subject Your trial ended. Your data is still here
Three days after
One question, not an offer: what stopped you. This one is research, and it is the last email in the sequence whatever the answer is.
Subject What stopped you?

When to use it

For any product with a time-limited trial, and it is worth writing carefully because it is the highest-intent email you will ever send. The person has used the product, they know what it does, and they are about to make a decision either way. Almost nothing you write changes their mind about the product; what you can change is whether they make the decision at all, because a large share of lapsed trials are not rejections, they are a deadline that passed while somebody was busy.

That is why the personal numbers matter more than the copy. A reminder that a trial is ending is a fact about your billing system. A summary of the four reports somebody built is a fact about their work, and it is the one that gets a decision made. It also does the honest thing, which is to make the value of staying visible rather than asserted. If the numbers are embarrassing, that is worth knowing too, and it is what the second branch of this sequence exists for.

What kills this email

Sending the same email to everybody
An account that built four reports and an account that never logged in need opposite emails. The first needs a date and a button; the second needs somebody to ask what went wrong, because a payment page is meaningless to them.
Not saying what happens to the data
Silence on this point is read as deletion. A reader who thinks their work is about to disappear exports it and leaves, and you lost the account to an unanswered question rather than to a decision.
Discounting at the deadline
It converts people who were converting anyway at a lower price, and it teaches everybody else that the way to buy is to let the trial lapse. If the price is wrong, change the price.
Sending a single notice on the last day
One email on expiry day reaches the people who happened to be reading their mail. Three days before is the one that gets acted on, and the day-after email recovers a real share of the rest.

When not to send it

Do not send the payment ask to somebody who never completed setup. They cannot evaluate what they did not use, so the useful email is an offer to help or a question about what stopped them.

Do not keep sending after the account converts. An upgrade between the schedule and the send is common, and a "your trial is ending" email to a paying customer is the sort of thing that gets screenshotted.

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