Hulu recognized that a major customer pain point and barrier to entry are the commercials. So wisely, in early September of 2015, Hulu released the No Commercials plan which is the first time ever viewers could watch new episodes of the latest TV shows commercial-free. It seems weird, to thank someone for canceling their subscription. But, that’s how Hulu’s grown. By listening to the criticisms and the poking and prodding. By internalizing them and getting a tad hurt. Then taking it out passive-aggressively during the company softball game. But eventually admitting that they’re right - and making a change. So, the brand wanted to thank those who canceled their Hulu subscription. Thank them for sharing how much they hate commercials. For telling friends not to subscribe. It’s because of those who canceled, that Hulu introduced a commercial-free offering, improved the service, and became the best place to watch television.

Targeted and personalized emails were sent to viewers who had canceled their subscription, telling users that Hulu heard their frustrations and was making a change. The emails asked viewers to give Hulu another chance to prove that the service is the best place for their TV experience by offering them a free trial of the new commercial-free option.

The Open Rate for our email campaign was 21.1%, a very strong open rate for this channel, on-par with a lot of Hulu’s brand emails. We saw a 2.0% Click-Through Rate, far exceeding Click-Through Rate of Hulu’s content emails which average 0.5-1%. Most importantly, the email campaign was successful in converting both Current Subscribers and At-Risk Cancelers with a switch rate of .005% and .002%, respectively.

The No Commercials plan campaign helped Hulu begin to cultivate a deeper, two-way relationship with its customers. Email allowed us to bring this to life in a more traditional, direct marketing tactic. By putting the viewer at the center, we created a personalized response-driven email campaign that made the viewer feel like their voice was impactful in improving Hulu’s product experience, and asking them to give the service another chance to satisfy their streaming needs.

Our research gave us a new insight – we learned that today people expect a different relationship with TV – consumers now want a two-way relationship. Ultimately, the key insight, was that reciprocity was a critical piece of this new relationship with TV. “I want the television to care about me and my experience as much as I care about it, “ one respondent in research told us. We realized that in this new era of TV, there had to be more than just our love for TV in this relationship. Today, we want TV to love us back—and that’s the territory that Hulu could own.

This email campaign, “Thanks for Canceling” was the start of a larger campaign to bring to life this idea of a two-way relationship by taking actions that demonstrate to viewers that today, with Hulu, TV loves you back.

Hulu was about to launch a commercial-free option, a huge announcement for the company. This campaign’s objective was to drive awareness for this option. We used email to specifically target users who had canceled their Hulu subscription and identified “ads” as the reason for canceling.