The Retention Blog by Brightback

In an ideal world, it should be easier and more affordable to retain existing customers than acquire new ones. But in practice, being best-in-class at digital retention is a key challenge for most startups and enterprises, as it requires significant engineering to connect 3 to 5 systems of record (e.g. billing, product, CRM, support), to deploy and test personalized user experiences that actually save customers, and to hire product managers with the time to run ongoing experiments, track results, and optimize at scale. Factor in the huge uptick in global demand for online subscriptions services that arose through the pandemic, and we see that succeeding at retention has never been more important, and becomes a key differentiator for those who do it.

We started Brightback in 2018 with a vision to automate customer retention for digital subscriptions to improve the consumer experience throughout the journey, deliver measurable revenue ROI to the retention manager via Brightback’s churn deflection funnel, and free up product managers to focus on core services and acquire more customers.

Since then, we’ve come a long way, from user testing wireframe prototypes with dozens of product retention and growth experts (before writing our first line of code), to delivering hundreds of thousands of live monthly cancel sessions that saves millions of dollars for some of the world’s most recognized consumer and B2B brands, to growing system-wide churn deflection benchmarks from ~10% (2018) to 23% today (and more than 40% for some customers).

Along the way, we’ve evolved our product to offer randomized multivariate testing, machine learning, or rules-based targeting, which empower our customers to make better decisions and get results faster. We have defined the benchmarks and best practices by which E-Commerce, SaaS and D2C subscription businesses should think about creating a memorable “last impression” with their customers, targeting real-time offers and messaging that convince users to stick around (while still letting them quit easily), and streamlining learnings and retention workflows and data exchange across teams and tools.

A few months ago, I connected with Germain (Chargebee's SVP of Corporate Strategy) and then Krish (co-founder & CEO) to discuss our product roadmap and Chargebee integration, get to know our team, and brainstorm how we could extend our retention vision together to benefit tens of thousands of companies globally. As we talked more, both teams got more and more excited to learn that Chargebee’s mission of delivering full revenue management solutions to high-growth subscription businesses aligned perfectly with Brightback’s stance that today’s most successful subscription services focus on retention from day one, to build better products, stay closer to customers, and accelerate recurring revenue growth and financial performance. I believe that within three years, all companies will use a retention tool to grow LTV, reduce churn, and amass customer intelligence...but we wanted to look even further into the future.

So today, we’re delighted to announce that Brightback has joined Chargebee (see Chargebee's Press Release), where we will extend our personalized churn deflection and retention capabilities to create the best revenue management and early intervention platform in the world. Our mission is to help any subscription business deliver high-performing, multi-channel retention workflows that grow customer lifetime value at scale, with no code required. By connecting Chargebee’s subscription billing record with product usage, engagement, and demographic data, our combined customers will ultimately have new ways to predictively engage, grow, and retain subscribers long before they want to cancel, leveraging our benchmarked intelligence and testing features.

I couldn’t be prouder of what our mighty Brightback team of 13 has accomplished, including walking the walk of customer-centricity, staying focused on results (e.g. tripling revenue last year by helping the likes of ClickFunnels to save 230% more customers), and growing our remote-first collaborative culture that has successfully grown with customers, consultants, vendors and partners located around the world. So a huge thank you to our team, as well as investors, advisors, and stakeholders, without who's generous contributions Brightback would not be the company we are today, as well as to our new Chargebee family for the warm welcome.

What’s Next?

Brightback’s team will join Chargebee in various offices and remotely across the world, including the addition of Brightback’s executive team to Chargebee’s leadership team. This is the latest acquisition for Chargebee after acquiring revenue recognition provider RevLock last year to expand product offerings based on feedback received from clients and growing market demand.

For our customers who Stripe Billing, Recurly, Recharge, Zuora, or home-built subscription billing systems, we are committed to supporting you as we do today. We are innovating in the areas of audience targeting, predictive intelligence and engagement, repurchase-based revenue attribution, and multi-channel engagement, leveraging our native integration with Chargebee's billing and revenue recognition products. We thank our customers for the support, feedback and trust that has inspired our team and fueled our growth - and we look forward to growing for many more years together.

About Chargebee

Chargebee is the subscription management platform that automates revenue operations of over 3,500 high-growth subscription-based businesses from startups to enterprises. The SaaS platform helps subscription businesses across verticals, including SeaS, eCommerce, e-learning, IoT, Publications, and more, manage and grow revenue by automating subscription, billing, invoicing, payments, and revenue recognition operations and provides key metrics, reports, and business insights. Founded in 2011, Chargebee counts businesses, like Okta, Freshworks, Calendly, and Study.com amongst its global customer base.

See today's Press Release Announcement: Chargebee acquires customer retention leader Brightback, expands revenue management offerings