If you leave me now: the microcopy of saying goodbye
What to say (and what not) to users who’ve decided to leave or declined your incredible offer
One of the most effective ways to check if someone truly loves or appreciates you, and if this person cares — is saying NO.
The way people react to a refusal or a rejection can teach you a lot about them — and about the nature of your relationship.
It works inside the family (hey ma, I can’t come this weekend), with friends (sorry, this week is crazy, I can’t help you with that), with clients (nope, a discount is out of the question), and it also helped me screen idiots and find a brilliant partner with a heart of gold.
Here’s the thing:
If someone really has your best interests in mind — when you say no to them (an inevitable situation in all healthy relationships), the first and natural response will be offence, but it will quickly turn into an objective conversation, examining the situation from both sides to try to work out a good way forward. If you stick to your choice, this person will eventually accept it and continue loving and appreciating you.
On the other hand, refusing an offer from someone who has only their own interest in mind, will yield a completely different response, starting with extreme offence and continuing with relentless attempts to change your mind. You are likely to encounter off-topic arguments meant to persuade you to change your mind, delivered with a dose of guilt tripping, emotionally manipulating you to feel bad for not changing your mind.
How do you say goodbye to users?
- Too often, users will unsubscribe from a mailing list.
- Leave a website without following through on any action.
- Stop their subscription.
- Remove software.
- Reject a perk giveaway.
- Would rather not pay.
How do you respond when users let you know, one way or the other, that they’re not interested in your value proposition?
Do you respect them? Understand where they’re coming from?
Or do you go about a convincing campaign, full of crocodile tears and empty in value?
Emotional manipulation is for the weak
I'll admit, at first it was funny.
This exit pop-up by GetResponse was hilarious.
And just because something is funny and surprising, might trigger them to take action.
But then it became trendy, and writers began choosing this style by default. Brand after brand burst into tears when users leave them, say they miss you already and promise ‘we’ll get better, we swear, just please don’t leave!’
The thing is, what was amusing for the first few times, is no longer funny on the ten thousand time. Now it’s used and abused, and mainly — lazy. Instead of dedicating real thought in the users themselves and the reasons they chose to go, writers go for the quick fix: it’s much easier to write “We miss you, come back!” than actually check, or at least estimate, why users are leaving and what can be done to retain them.
Who’s on your mind when you write a goodbye message?
User abandonment, or in other words — when users leave a product or service, exit a website or remove an app — can have really good reasons:
- They used to need the value the product provided, and now their lives changed (permanently or temporarily) and they don’t need it anymore.
- They thought the newsletter will be useful, but it ended up not answering their needs.
- They found a more suitable service.
- They went over their budget and decided — something’s gotta go; even though they do like the product.
- They’re not sure and don’t have the time to make up their minds right now, so they rather postpone the decision.
- The product is simply not good enough.
- The offer is not attractive enough.
And many more reasons.
None of these reasons are well addressed with silly popups and heartbroken messages about the product’s own separation anxiety.
For example, Shoval began setting up a new account and didn’t sign into it for a few days. She got this over-kill email:
Let’s say this works and she completes her account setup because this email triggered an emotional response and amused her — then what? Where do we go from here? How long will she continue using the product based on this feeling?
It’ll be more beneficial to invest creative thought into an email that lets the user actively extract an immediate benefit from the product, so she’ll want to keep using it for her own good — not because the product misses her.
It’s the other way around
These popups do the exact opposite of user experience ABCs, the fundamental and rather basic part of UX in general and microcopy in particular: they revolve around the product or service instead of being user centred — focused on the client’s state of mind.
In fact, they go completely against marketing convention and the logic behind calls to action. To persuade users to do anything, you have to give them a really good reason to do so — something good that will happen in their lives. Of course, you can motivate users even without providing rationale like value, but that works only if you’re hilarious, or very surprising, or come up with something so new and cool that in itself brings about value.
However, from the day that whiny popups and heart-breaking messages became a tiresome routine — they were stripped of novelty and humour, and became nothing but nagging.
Sorry our product sucks :(
Wait a minute, hold on, don’t jump the gun with the “we screwed up, we’re letting our programmer go” shtick.
It may very well be that your product is excellent, but is just not a good fit for this particular user, right now or in general, due to various reasons that might not have anything to do with you.
Jesse Weaver wrote a brilliant article about it — “To Keep a User, Sometimes You Have to Let Them Go”. It’s eye-opening and has the potential to completely transform your attitude towards user abandonment.
I don’t want to register, deal with it
The same goes for confirmshaming, also known as manipulink. Those are the buttons or links that are supposed to make users feel bad about themselves if they don’t accept the enticing offer at hand, like registering to a mailing list, joining a club or generally remaining in a website for a while longer.
You can take a look at an impressive amount of confirmshaming examples in this Tumblr, like this one:
So you offer value to users, they read it and –
Either they embrace it and join / register, which makes everyone happy all-around,
Or it wasn’t sufficiently interesting for them, or just plain not good enough. In this case, it’s in their full right to completely reject an offer without getting insulted in the process.
And if you think this approach pays off because it converts, try examining your cost-benefit in the long run. In this excellent article named “Stop Shaming Your Users for Micro Conversions”, Kate Moran and Kim Flaherty from the Nielsen Norman Group write:
It doesn’t matter if more people signing up for your newsletter if you had to bully them into doing it. This approach will negatively impact your user’s experience in ways that aren’t as easily quantified with A/B testing. Are a few more newsletter signups worth a loss of credibility and users’ trust? Sacrificing your relationship with your users just to get a few more email addresses misses the forest for the trees.
Which brings me back to the first point made in this post: if someone in real life tries to guilt-trip you into something you’re not comfortable with, you’ll probably feel you can’t trust them and that they don’t really care about you.
That’s not something you’d like clients to feel towards you.
Read more about confirmshaming and being on the users’ side in chapter 3 (“Microcopy that motivates action”) of Microcopy: The Complete Guide.
So what should you say when users say no?
1. First, answer this question: how will your offer make their lives better?
If you want users to use your app more often, don’t tell them you miss them. Remind them why it’s worth their while to do so — how it promotes and supports their interests.
When the (amazing) writers at Headspace wanted me to use their app more often, they didn’t bombard me with “oh we miss you, our meditation doesn’t work without you, come back!” They never even mentioned themselves or the product. They talked only about ME, and how meditation can benefit me. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep that awesome push notification, but it was something along the lines of:
A lot of us see meditation as a solution for moments in which we’re stressed or overwhelmed. And that’s true, it does help at these moments. But continuous daily practice, in good days also, will significantly reduce your overall stress level. Give yourself a few minutes’ worth of relaxation >
When I read such a push notification, I truly believe that the people of Headspace want to improve my life.
Bottom line — did it work? I don’t have the numbers of Headspace of course, but on a personal note, since I got that message it really stuck with me, and I use the app much more now. I’ll bet I’m not the only one.
2. Ask why
Don’t assume you know why your users decided to go. Ask them why, and give a proper and respectful response when they answer.
The next one is a screenshot from Spotify’s unsubscribing process, taken from Jesse Weaver’s article mentioned above (don’t forget to read it right after this one, it’s so good). Spotify ask why a user is leaving, and then try to give a good response to that answer.
3. Offer real value with the user at its center
When users are about to leave your website, for example, offer them a high-quality online guide, one that promises added value that’s super-relevant to the target audience of your brand.
This is Marie Forleo’s exit popup. She is a successful businesswoman and international mentor. Notice the tasteful closing link, simply stating “No, thank you”, with lots of self-respect and zero drama.
4. Make them curious
This one is THINX’s exit popup:
5. Surprise them with an interesting and relevant question regarding the service you offer
This is Panaya’s exit popup:
6. Offer alternatives
J. Peterman offer me alternatives, and also ask me why (answering is optional). Take a look at their nifty tooltip — this is how you call to action while offering real value.
6. Treat users leaving with the same respect they got when they first came in
Duolingo do a great job at this. Even if a user unsubscribes from one mailing list, Duolingo ask themselves — hey, how can we further help them? And they go ahead and give people a link to exit other mailing lists if they’d like!
If you want people to believe you have their best interest in mind, show the same confidence and respect without any strings attached. Be like Duolingo!
And this one is from Microsoft. They give abandoning users all the information needed to uninstall, just as they would do with active users — in a super friendly way, and without showingany trace of hard feelings:
Simply offer leaving users a simple and nice goodbye, that will leave them feeling that whenever they wish to come back — they have a good place to come back to. For a perfect ending, this one is again from Headspace. Did I already mention how much I like them?
