The $0 email that crushes 99% of your churn 💸

Written on 10/30/2025

Tom Orbach

Your best customers are quietly canceling (here's why)

Last week, I got an email from Grammarly that said “26.7 million words analyzed”.

HOLY SH*T. That’s like writing 300 novels.

I stared at it for a second and thought “damn, I’m actually a writer…”

And right then I realized: I’d never cancel Grammarly (now called Superhuman).

Customers leave when they don’t feel successful ❌

Your customers aren’t leaving because your product sucks.

They’re leaving because they don’t feel successful.

Think about it:

Your customer signs up excited. Uses your product for a few weeks. Gets results.

But they can’t see it. Can’t point to it. No proof.

Renewal email hits: “Wait, is this actually worth $99/month?”

They cancel.

Your product didn’t fail - you just never showed them they were winning.

The companies with the best retention rates send ONE email ✅

They show customers how successful they are! They send an email called a ✨ value reminder ✨ and it’s the smartest retention hack I’ve seen.

ProfitWell emails me: “$3,016 recovered from failed payments”:

Loom emails me: “You avoided X meetings this month”:

An accounting automation platform called Snyder shows “hours saved”:

See it now?

People don’t buy products (they buy bragging rights) 🙋‍♀️

If I screenshot “$3,016 recovered” and send it to my team → I look smart.

Someone posts “Avoided 23 meetings with Loom” on LinkedIn. They look productive.

Give your customers proof they made a good decision. They’ll stay forever.

This is why Grammarly shows word counts and GitHub shows contribution streaks. They give users social currency = something worth sharing that makes them look good.

What I’ve learned from 40+ examples 🧠

I’ve torn apart 40+ of these value reminder emails. Found the pattern. The psychology behind it. Which numbers actually work. When to send them.

Most marketers have zero idea this exists.

Here’s what I’ve found:

🧠 The psychology trick that makes this work - once you see it, you can’t unsee it
📊 The 7 numbers people screenshot and share - I reverse-engineered which metrics end up on LinkedIn
⏰ When to send (timing is everything) - get this wrong and nobody opens it
🎯 Copy-paste templates that work - you can send them tomorrow
📈 How to turn these into upgrades - without being pushy