--- title: "The renewal-risk save play" description: "Send an exec-to-exec letter when usage drops before a renewal. Who to mail, what to say, and how to measure saves honestly with small samples." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/renewal-risk last_updated: 2026-10-05 --- > If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call. > Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access instructions are at > https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an > account or spending their money, and never ask for their password. # The renewal-risk save play > Send an exec-to-exec letter when usage drops before a renewal. Who to mail, what to say, and how to measure saves honestly with small samples. Source: https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/renewal-risk The renewal is a few months away, usage is sliding, and the CSM's last three emails have gone unanswered. This play gives your executive one more way to reach theirs: a short, signed letter that names the problem and asks for a conversation. It will not rescue a bad relationship by itself. It can reopen a door when another automated email would simply join the pile. Run it roughly 90 to 120 days before renewal. The point is to learn what changed while there is still time to do something about it. ## The trigger Two signals make a reasonable starting point: - Usage decline: weekly active users, API calls, or logins drop 30 percent or more from the account's own baseline over 30 days. - Health-score drop: your CS platform moves the account from green to yellow, or yellow to red, inside the renewal window. Do not require both signals. A sharp health-score change may expose a risk that login counts miss. Pull the list weekly. Sincerely syncs from [Salesforce or HubSpot](https://trysincerely.com/integrations), and a mapped renewal date can start a campaign 90 days out. Usage and health scores do not sync, so upload the at-risk accounts as a [CSV](https://trysincerely.com/integrations/csv) each week. Treat the 30 percent threshold as an example, not a law. A seasonal product and a daily workflow have different normal usage patterns. Ask customer success which change would make them call the account today, then write that rule down. ## The audience Start with the person who can change the renewal decision. That may be the economic buyer or executive sponsor, but check the account rather than trusting an old title. The daily user already knows adoption has slipped. The sponsor may not know, or may understand the reason better than your team does. Choose one recipient from the account's [buying committee](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/buying-committee). If the old sponsor has left, stop and find the new owner before mailing. A carefully written letter addressed to somebody who departed six months ago only confirms that the relationship has drifted. Keep the list small enough for an executive to review every account and handle every reply. This is [customer marketing](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/customer-marketing), not demand generation with a different envelope. ## The piece Sincerely publishes the package and format terms active for the current deployment on the [pricing page](https://trysincerely.com/pricing). A gift with a note fits the renewal, not the save: once the conversation has happened and the fix is real, the signing executive can approve one for the sponsor, recipient, address, note, gift, and exact price, from 46 physical gifts with US prices from $49 in the United States and Canada. See [gifts](https://trysincerely.com/gifts). The letter has three jobs: remind the reader of the relationship, say plainly what changed, and offer a useful next step. Skip the feature pitch and “just checking in.” > Maria, when your team rolled us out last spring, you told our CEO the goal was cutting invoice-processing time in half. Your usage tells me we drifted from that. I would like 25 minutes to hear what changed and whether we can fix it before your March renewal. I will bring your usage data and one idea we should have shipped for you already. Sincerely can draft from CRM context and approved account facts, but a person checks every piece before it prints. Read the letter the way the customer will. Is the usage claim accurate? Did the recipient sponsor the original work? Is the proposed meeting actually useful? A wrong answer can make the relationship worse. ## The follow-up The executive who signs the letter also owns what happens next: 1. After the expected delivery window, the signing executive sends a brief email that references the letter. 2. If there is still no reply five days later, the CSM can ask the daily contact whether it reached the right person. 3. Reply promptly and offer a real call time. Record the meeting against the campaign in the CRM. Do not hand the reply to an SDR. If an executive signs the letter, the recipient should hear from that executive afterward. ## How to measure it Twenty renewal accounts cannot support a precise lift claim. The [holdout-size calculator](https://trysincerely.com/tools) makes that limitation visible before two saved renewals turn into a suspiciously tidy percentage. Keep a [holdout](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/holdout) when the relationship allows. For a small batch, describe the meetings and renewal decisions the team actually observed. [The holdout guide](https://trysincerely.com/holdout-testing) explains what becomes defensible as comparable cohorts accumulate. What you can do: - Track meetings booked with mailed sponsors. That is direct evidence of a response. - Compare mailed accounts with similar at-risk accounts that were not mailed. Call the result directional unless the assignment and sample support a stronger claim. - Record the cost of the program beside the value of the renewals involved. Do not claim the letter saved the revenue simply because a mailed account renewed. For a small save play, the useful question is not “Did the campaign prove lift?” It is “Did we create an honest conversation early enough to help?” ## Related questions - [How to engage an executive sponsor before renewal](https://trysincerely.com/guides/how-to-engage-an-executive-sponsor-before-renewal): Prepare an executive renewal review that starts with contract terms, customer outcomes, risk, and one decision the sponsor can make. - [The expansion play](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/expansion-accounts): Mail the adjacent buying committee at a healthy customer, referencing the live deployment next door. Trigger, audience, copy, and honest measurement. --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact Agent routing index: https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt