Cancellation is one of the most sensitive moments in the subscription lifecycle. It’s also one of the most overlooked.
Most Shopify subscription apps still require that you send every subscriber through the same generic cancel flow, failing to adjust based on who they are, why they’re leaving, or what would actually help them stay. For teams that care about long-term subscription retention and data-backed optimization, that approach leaves revenue on the table and puts unnecessary strain on CX teams.
That’s why Stay AI is rolling out Cancellation Flows powered by RetentionEngine. Built as a visual builder inside the Stay AI merchant portal, Cancellation Flows gives teams the control to design segmented and on-brand cancel experiences that are easy to launch, easy to iterate on, and easy to understand.
This is a purpose-built system for ecommerce and retention marketing teams who own retention metrics and want to cut subscriber churn, but may not have engineering resources on standby.
The Problem: Cancel Experiences Are Rigid, Generic, and Hard to Improve
Most cancellation experiences today look the same. Brands are forced to:
- Pay additional fees for advanced cancellation flow tools
- Capture standard-level cancellation reasons
- Accept default layouts, copy, and UX that don’t match their brand and don’t offer personalized experiences to customers.
For example, a first-time subscriber who has too much product shouldn’t have the same experience as a long-time VIP relocating to a different country.
On top of this, advanced cancel flows are often painful to build, especially if you’re running a lean operation. Segmentation logic lives in sprawling mind maps, design and branding live somewhere else, and reporting might as well be a different platform (and often is!). Changes either require ops/engineering help or are gated behind paywalls, so teams hesitate to test, iterate, or experiment.
When segments, design, and reporting aren’t connected, you’re forced to guess at what’s working to retain subscribers. Without access to real-time, easy-to-understand, and extractable data, the result is often lost revenue and preventable customer churn. Beyond that, the siloed approach means losing any insights that could have informed future education messaging, plan changes, or smarter save offers.
The Solution: Smart & Segmented Cancellation Flows
Cancellation Flows give Stay AI brands a native, visual builder to design smarter cancel experiences that improve subscription retention – directly inside the same merchant portal they already use.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all flow, teams can:
- Route subscribers by real-time segments
- Control copy, layout, colors, fonts, images, and video on every screen
- Stack multiple save offers in a single path
- Coming soon: Track performance for each save offer from the same place you build your flows
Let’s explore each of these features more in-depth:
Segment and route subscribers in real-time
Ensure each subscriber enters the most relevant cancel path from the very first screen. When the customer portal loads, RetentionEngine evaluates real-time attributes, rather than using static lists.
Teams can route segments by:
- Subscription status
- Created date or tenure
- AOV
- Geography
- Product or cadence
- And more
Stack save offers in a single flow
Instead of forcing teams to choose one save offer that feels like an ultimatum, Cancellation Flows let you stack them to create a thoughtful sequence that increases subscription retention and save rate.
For example:
- 20% discount
- Then, 40% discount
- Finally, swap or delay
And all of your save offers across flows are saved using a shared library, so you can easily adapt flows and tune escalation according to performance.
Take full control of UX and branding
Since Cancellation Flows are built natively inside Stay AI, every cancel experience looks and feels like your brand – and remains compliant in every market.
That means:
- Full control over colors, fonts, layouts, button copy, and rescue and confirmation screens
- Per-screen control of images and video
- Compatibility with translation plugins for global brands
Coming soon: track and improve performance right where you edit
One of the biggest failures of traditional cancel tools in most Shopify subscription management platforms is fragmented reporting. But, with Cancellation Flows, you’ll be able see analytics for each save offer and instantly understand how many customers saw, accepted, or rejected at each step of the flow.
You’ll see exactly where subscribers drop off or convert, and performance will be visible in the same canvas where you edit flows. With a comprehensive view of customer segments, design, and analytics living together, you’ll be fully equipped to iterate your subscription retention strategy efficiently: remove underperforming steps, tune escalation, and improve outcomes over time. Look out for this feature coming soon!
Cancellation Isn’t Just a Subscription Retention Metric
Subscribers don’t churn just because they see a cancel button. That decision happens before they even enter the portal, and your cancellation survey can be the make-or-break that prevents them from leaving.
With Cancellation Flows, Stay AI gives teams the insights they need to prevent churn before it happens, and the tools to design cancel experiences that improve save rate when it’s crunch time.
Think about it like this: when you see again and again that customers are leaving because they “don’t feel the effects”, that’s an education opportunity. You can improve your post-purchase flow, sending out emails in the right cadence that describe what subscribers should be feeling now and the changes still to come.
And for actually building and optimizing save offers, you deserve the smartest tools. Create segmented, flexible, measurable, and on-brand flows in Stay – more quickly and easily, and without any feature-gating or reliance on dev bandwidth.
If you want to turn cancellation into a controlled and iterative part of your subscriber retention strategy, Cancellation Flows are built to do exactly that.
Get a demo to see what the future of retention marketing looks like.
FAQs
No. Stay’s proprietary machine learning model never invents new offers on its own. The AI in RetentionEngine only evaluates and selects from the treatments you’ve explicitly configured, applying strict eligibility, gaming-prevention, and contextual rules before anything is shown.
Yes. Preview mode is the standard view of Cancellation Flows. There is no separate tab you need to enter for previewing, as it is the default view that lets you walk the save flow and choose conditions to see the path a subscriber would take. You see what your customers will see at every step.
Your new survey starts fresh – you can still view legacy save rate separately. To view your save rate, head to Analytics in the menu bar, select Churn, then click RetentionEngine Reporting.
Yes. Cancellation Flows are native (no iframe), removing prior blockers to localization and translation.
