How marketing’s broken promises are sinking your renewal rates

If we’re all honest about living and working in 2025, then we’d admit we’ve been suckered by a slick pitch — a course, coaching program or SaaS tool that promised the moon but delivered moon pies — tons of calories, zero substance. By the time they come back for more money, you’re already out the door, drafting the “see ya” email.

I’ve got the “double-shame” of falling for multiple coaching scams. They always hype with big results, but when they try to “enroll me into their super fantastic supreme wigwam of wisdom,” I fire them. Not because the content sucked and the people were jerks (although sometimes…) It was because their story broke — what they sold me didn’t match what I got or what I needed. And it shattered my trust that they ever could.

This isn’t just a story. It’s happening in your business right now, with your customers (especially in B2B SaaS). And there’s a metric screaming the truth, but I bet it’s not on your marketing dashboard. It’s contract renewals. And no, it’s not just customer success’s problem. It’s yours. 

The moment the story breaks

Customers don’t buy products. They hire them to make progress — specific outcomes they need. At some point, they hit a moment of truth, weighing three things:

• What they needed.
• What your marketing and sales promised.
• What they actually got.

If those don’t align, the story breaks and the customer isn’t just walking. They take their cash to your competitors and warn others. “Read the fine print.” “Not as promised.” “Scam!” Your contract renewal rate tanks, sales conversions crash and your reputation is damaged. Suddenly, your brilliant acquisition strategy looks more like a leaky bucket.

This isn’t a customer success issue. It’s a marketing issue. The story you craft to get customers in the door sets the foundation for their entire experience. If it doesn’t hold up, no shiny features, discounts and AI-driven acquisition tools can save you.

Dig deeper: Brand trust is the most valuable asset your company owns

Why marketing owns contract renewals

Marketing is the optimist in an organization, chasing the next big lead. It’s important. But let’s be real — too often, too many teams act like they’ve passed the baton post-close. “Good luck, pal! You’re customer success’s problem now.” And frankly, it’s a big mistake.

Because marketing’s job isn’t to bring in leads. That’s just how it manifests. It’s to communicate value to customers, all the way through their journey. At renewal, customers judge whether your product delivered the progress you promised or just another moon pie. Yet how many marketing teams ask, “Did we make promises our product couldn’t keep?” How many check if their messaging wrote a check the product couldn’t cash? In my experience, not enough. And it’s killing their ROI.

Look at it this way: we obsessively track ROI to measure our effectiveness. We focus on increasing lead volume because more leads = more conversions, right? But there’s a smarter way: make each lead worth more. You can try to raise prices, which is tough in a crowded market and you can get more of your customers’ money through add-ons, upsells and renewals. It extends their lifetime value. Every renewal means more revenue from the same marketing spend. That’s a lever marketing can pull, but only if you’re watching renewals.

Trust is the real KPI

Renewals aren’t just about revenue. They’re about trust — the lifeblood of any brand, including yours. Lose it and you’re not just losing a customer, you’re losing goodwill and that’s the magic that keeps brands alive.

Take Domo, a $317 million B2B SaaS company with a sales-heavy team. Its strategy has always been to outsell its churn, but it’s failing. Their subscription revenue and software billings flatlined for the past 12 months and contract renewals are only 71–79%, much lower than the industry standard, even in tough times.

Domo’s product story keeps breaking. Customers bought the hype, but didn’t get the outcome they were promised, so they churned. Marketing sold a Ferrari, customers got a lawnmower. And new competitors, poor product fit and pricing pressures only expose the broken story more. Now, Domo is left without any good options as it tries to fix its churn problem. But nothing fixes a broken promise and marketing only has themselves to blame for making promises the product couldn’t keep.

Now contrast that with Disney. Their goodwill — accounting speak for trust, reputation and customer loyalty — was valued at $73.3 billion in September 2024, 37% of the company’s total assets, which includes its theme parks, merchandising and IP. It’s not pocket change, and it’s built on marketing stories it can deliver. When customers come back to a Disney park and see a Disney movie, they say, “I trust you.” And that trust is literally money.

Every failed contract renewal puts a crack in your goodwill. It’s not just a lost subscription. It’s another hole in your reputation, and eventually you will die by a thousand cuts.

Dig deeper: How to build a B2B brand that delivers lasting value

3 ways marketing can own renewals

What can marketing teams do to own contract renewals, other than tracking it? 

1. Audit your story — ruthlessly

List every claim in your campaigns. Then, grill customer success to find where you are and aren’t delivering. If you’re selling “easy setup” but customers are always calling in for help, your story has holes and you’ve got to fix the messaging and work with product to close the gap. DOMO’s churn shows what happens when promises don’t match reality.

2. Map the renewal moment

Study when and why customers renew — or don’t. Use interviews to ask churned customers, “What fell short?” Combine that with usage data like key feature adoption to spot patterns. Then, tweak campaigns and messaging to set realistic expectations matching your product’s strengths. This keeps trust intact and can help boost ROI by prolonging customer lifespans. 

3. Reinforce messaging post-sale

Create a content playbook that will allow you to maintain positive contact post-sale. I once helped a company boost retention by 12.7% and reduce post-90-day accounts receivable by 53%, simply by following up after the sale and connecting customers with key resources like onboarding guides and feature tutorials. It’s story maintenance, keeping trust alive through renewals.

Dig deeper: 3 must-follow marketing copy rules to win your prospects’ trust

Winning the trust game

If your renewal rates suck, your marketing might too, even if you have all the “right” metrics. It’s not because you’re bad at your job, you’re just missing half of the equation and didn’t know it. Acquisition may be sexy, but retention is where the money is. And studies show that it’s at least 7 times more expensive to land new clients than keep existing ones.

After high-fiving over lead gen targets, ask: 

• Is our story holding up? 
• Are we promising something we can’t deliver? 

If you’re not, leads won’t stick. They’ll churn, trash-talk talk and take their money to your competition. If you’re hitting your acquisition targets, but still bleeding revenue, it may be time to ask tougher questions about what happens after the close and your role in it. Because when the story breaks, customers don’t renew — they disappear.