---
title: "ShotDeck Case Study — From Black Box Cancellation to Real Retention Levers"
description: "How ShotDeck used Churnkey to gain visibility into churn patterns, automate payment recovery, and convert monthly cancellers to annual plans."
canonical: "https://churnkey.co/case-studies/shotdeck"
category: "case-study"
related:
  - /case-studies/index.html.md
  - /feature/cancel-flows.html.md
  - /feature/adaptive-offers.html.md
  - /feature/payment-recovery/index.html.md
last_updated: "2026-02-25"
---

# How ShotDeck Used Churnkey to Finally Gain Real Retention Levers

## Company

ShotDeck is the largest collection of fully searchable high-definition movie images in the world. Founded in 2014 by Lawrence Sher, ASC, ShotDeck serves as a visual bible for filmmakers and creatives. It offers a searchable, high-quality collection of cinematic images that are meticulously tagged and curated to help teams translate ideas into visual storytelling across pitch, prep, and production. Their users range from film students to the Russo brothers, directors of Avengers: Endgame.

## The Challenge

Even with rising usage and a thriving creative community, ShotDeck faced a familiar SaaS reality. Their cancellation flow had become a black box — they had no reliable way to capture cancellation insights, leaving them blind to the real patterns driving churn. Billing operations were growing heavier as their subscriber base expanded, consuming valuable team bandwidth. And despite their product's creative impact, they lacked the retention tools needed to intervene when subscribers were at risk of leaving.

> "Our cancellation flow was basically a black box. We couldn't see why people were leaving or what was actually happening inside the flow."
> — Ethan Young, ShotDeck Co-Founder and COO

## The Solution

Churnkey quickly became the backbone of ShotDeck's retention efforts. What had felt like a black box turned into something visible and workable:

- **Structured Cancel Flow surveys** gave the team clear insight into user segments and churn patterns
- **Automated Payment Recovery** filled in the gaps left by Stripe's basic retries, freeing the team from manual billing work
- **Adaptive Offers** made it possible to present timely options such as discounts, pauses, and switches from monthly to annual at the point of cancellation — without needing developer involvement each time

> "What really helped was finally seeing why people were churning. Realizing that less than 1% were leaving for competitors, and that most cancellations came from budget or usage reasons gave us clarity. Those are things we can actually work on."
> — Ethan Young, ShotDeck Co-Founder and COO

## The Results

- **Less than 1% of cancellations due to competitors** — most were budget or usage-related
- **Monthly-to-annual plan conversions at the cancellation point** — users who intended to cancel ended up choosing higher-value plans
- **Automated billing resolution** — billing issues that once lingered were resolved automatically
- **Faster experimentation** — the team could try new experiments, refine flows quickly, and evolve their retention strategy with far less friction

> "We had users go to cancel their monthly plan and end up switching to annual instead. That was a tremendous win we never could've done before."
> — Ethan Young, ShotDeck Co-Founder and COO

## Churnkey Products Used

- [Cancel Flows](/feature/cancel-flows.html.md) — Structured cancellation surveys and retention experiences
- [Adaptive Offers](/feature/adaptive-offers.html.md) — AI-driven offer personalization including monthly-to-annual switches
- [Payment Recovery](/feature/payment-recovery/index.html.md) — Automated failed payment recovery beyond Stripe's basic retries

## Related

- [All Case Studies](/case-studies/index.html.md) — More customer success stories
- [Cancel Flows](/feature/cancel-flows.html.md) — Core retention feature
- [Adaptive Offers](/feature/adaptive-offers.html.md) — AI-driven offer personalization
- [Payment Recovery](/feature/payment-recovery/index.html.md) — Failed payment recovery