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What is marketing churn?

Definition and strategies to help B2B marketers with churn reduction

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Illustration representing marketing churn

It often costs B2B marketers more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. That’s why businesses must track and minimize B2B marketing churn.

This guide explains what marketing churn is and how to reduce the rate at which customers leave. We’ll also provide automated strategies to win churned buyers back.

Learn more about Marketing Churn:

What is marketing churn?

What is a marketing churn
rate?

Different types of
marketing churn

Strategies to reduce
customer churn and
boost retention

Reduce B2B marketing
churn with LinkedIn Ads

What is marketing churn?

Marketing churn, or attrition, refers to the number of customers who stop using a product or service over a set period. Churn occurs when users cancel their software-as-a-service (SaaS) or app payment subscriptions, stop buying from a B2B ecommerce site, or opt out of receiving a product or service.

Why should businesses care about marketing churn?

Regularly churning customers results in companies losing monthly, quarterly, or annual recurring revenue. It's particularly troublesome when marketing teams cannot acquire new customers at a faster rate over the same period.

Churn can also have long-term adverse effects on a company’s stock price, as well as brand awareness and favorability. That’s why tracking and addressing a business’s marketing churn rate is essential.

Churn Rate = (Number of Customers Lost During the Period / Number of Customers at the Start of the Period) x 100

Illustration representing churn

What is a marketing churn rate?

The marketing churn rate is the percentage of customers who discontinue regular payments for a product or service. For instance, if a marketing team begins the year with 100 customers but loses 20 by year-end, the annual churn rate would be 20%.

Illustration representing churn rate

Different types of marketing churn

There are two types of marketing churn that B2B organizations must address.

Voluntary or active marketing churn

Customers actively discontinue product or service use for various reasons, including inadequate support, lack of upgrades, and pricing concerns. Unexpected cost increases for material expenses can also impact customers who cannot afford higher fees, leading to churn.

Illustration representing voluntary churn

Involuntary or passive marketing churn

Involuntary churn refers to customers who stop using a product or service unintentionally. For instance, a customer may forget to update new credit card information for their software subscriptions, or software products may update beyond a customer’s phone model, browser version, or operating system, effectively locking the customer out.

Illustration representing involuntary churn

Strategies to reduce customer churn and boost retention

Many businesses focus on increasing customer acquisition, retention, and re-activations, to ensure the company’s revenue is higher than its churn.

Here are some useful steps to follow to reduce churn in business:

Strategy 1: Analyze customer feedback, reviews, and social comments

To keep marketing churn rates low, track customer feedback through online customer surveys to learn what features are resonating and find areas for improvement.

B2B marketers can also launch net promoter score (NPS) surveys to gauge whether existing customers would be willing to recommend a product or service to their friends and family, on a scale of one to ten. A low NPS score indicates dissatisfied customers.

Also, be aware of the brand sentiment customers share on social media and through first and third-party product reviews. Use sentiment analysis tools to review text-based audience tone and intent regarding a product or service.

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Strategy 2: Improve customer service and support

Work with customer success teams to improve the overall support strategy. Sitting in on or recording customer calls for quality assurance are ways to learn which product support tactics are working or not.

Also, conduct a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to compare what services competitors offer regarding support to reduce churn. For example, if a SaaS company loses clients because competitors provide 24/7 live customer support, then consider offering the same solution.

Many of the most successful sales organizations segment their most valuable customers from smaller revenue-generating buyers or clients. This marketing retention strategy is called the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, which says that the top 20% of customers often bring in 80% of a business’s recurring revenue.

Over-servicing a business’s top 20% of customers allows marketers to boost their satisfaction rates and continue to grow their clients’ lifetime value (CLV) or recurring revenue.

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Below are ways to provide premium services to top-tier clients.

Offer customer training and content marketing solutions:

Such as online courses, live webinars or in-person events, videos, ebooks, and blogs to explain product use cases, new features, industry trends, and overall solutions.

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Offer multiple ways for customers to get support:

Via 1-800 numbers, email, online chatbots, and text messaging. Provide self-service solutions for customers who prefer to troubleshoot issues independently. Also, create and host product user forums and online FAQs to retain customers and reduce churn.

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Build stronger relationships through loyalty and rewards programs:

Create a tiered incentive program to reward customers for buying more or referring other clients. Likewise, allow VIP customers to accumulate points to redeem new feature upgrades, early access to beta programs, tech giveaways, or discounts based on high order volumes.

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Enhance the overall customer experience:

For software-as-a-service, online education, and B2B ecommerce sites to boost retention and CLV. Invest in web analytics software to learn more about online user behaviors and discover where valued customers may drop off in the product user flow or checkout process. Then, make adjustments to websites or products to improve those workflows.

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Strategy 3: Use online marketing to win back customers

B2B marketers can use automated email and online advertising solutions to re-engage and win churned customers back. Some strategies include emailing customers who recently canceled or whose credit cards expired, and using account-based marketing (ABM) with retargeted ad campaigns to churned clients or companies that have recently discontinued using a product or service.

Illustration representing using online marketing

To develop an online win-back ad campaign for B2B buyers, follow the steps below.

Learn why they stopped buying:

Insights from customer surveys and sentiment analysis tools will help B2B marketers craft the right messaging and special offers to re-engage churned customers.

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Create a segmented list for retargeted ABM ad campaigns:

Group churned customers by their reasons for leaving, past purchase frequency, and account value or volume of past contracts. Create lists using an Excel spreadsheet or .CSV file, then upload them to an ad platform like LinkedIn to target specific churned user accounts. Marketers can even specify which job titles or roles to target at those companies (e.g., Managers and Directors) might be interested in repurchasing the product or service.

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Create segmented ad campaigns:

Based on related offers and incentives that address their reasons for leaving. For example, a targeted campaign might offer a free 30-day new product trial to customers who left because of poor product quality.

Ensure the messaging is relevant to crucial marketing churn complaints, personalized to the company or account, and timely (e.g., sending messaging to the most recently churned customers). Also, be sure to use a compelling call-to-action (CTA), such as “Subscribe,” “Sign up,” “Download,” and “Learn more.”

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Select platforms with highly-targeted audiences:

Use ad platforms and formats that target and appeal to the desired audience segments for the campaign (e.g., ad networks, social media platforms, email, and traditional media websites).

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Use retargeting and email marketing or direct messaging to follow-up:

Once a prospect has entered the new campaign’s B2B marketing funnel, capture those leads through lead-generation pages and ad tracking pixels. B2B marketers can then nurture those leads through email marketing, direct sales follow-up, and ad retargeting.

Watch the video below to learn more about creating lead-generation forms to nurture new win-back leads throughout the sales funnel.

Retargeting also helps B2B marketers re-engage their desired target audiences to boost conversions and deepen relationships with recently churned customers. Retargeting is based on past user behaviors, such as the pages they previously visited on a branded website. It is also based on the target user’s previous interactions with online ads.

B2B marketers advertising on LinkedIn can use a retargeting pixel, also known as the LinkedIn Insight Tag. It tracks visitor data to retarget ads or to enhance other paid ads or sponsored content campaigns.

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Measure and optimize results over time:

When recently churned customers interact with online ads and email, marketers can use campaign reporting tools, conversion tracking, web analytics data, and their integrated sales CRM systems to monitor and nurture them through the sales funnel. These strategies also help to track and optimize ad and email campaign performance over time.

Finally, B2B marketers can measure and boost the impact of different online ad design elements (e.g., headlines, copy, and images) using A/B testing to win-back more churned business.

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Reduce B2B marketing churn with LinkedIn Ads

Regardless of why customers stop buying a product or service, a high rate of B2B marketing churn can significantly impact a sales organization's brand reputation, and recurring revenue. Knowing how to calculate churn rates is important to properly track and develop appropriate strategies.

B2B marketers can reduce and prevent churn by boosting their customer retention rates through improved customer support, and user experiences. They can also create loyalty and rewards programs to keep their valued customers happy and boost their lifetime value (CLV) with the company.

Additionally, businesses can launch online win-back campaigns using automated email, account-based marketing (ABM), and retargeting strategies to re-engage and convert recently churned customers.

Visit LinkedIn Marketing Solutions to discover online advertising strategies to attract and convert B2B target audiences.

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