Every year, the same question echoes across ecommerce teams: How deep should we discount this Black Friday?

This year, the savviest subscription brands are asking something different: how can we make BFCM fuel lifetime value, not just a weekend spike?

During our recent webinar, The Subscription Guide to Winning BFCM, three of the brightest minds in retention—Thomas Keller of Oats Overnight, Daniel Nunn of Carpe, and Kendall Singer Cook  of Arrae —joined Andriy Rudnyk to unpack how they’re navigating this season differently.

Their takeaway? The most profitable brands this BFCM won’t win with deeper discounts, they’ll win with deeper relationships.

1. Resist the discount reflex

For many brands, BFCM feels like an annual test of nerve. But Thomas Keller, Director of Ecommerce at Oats Overnight, believes the better move is restraint.

“As a general company philosophy, we offer a large discount for first time subscription, and we really try to not offer other discounts. We do offer a discount for recurring subscription, but it’s like a pretty modest discount, really. And we want to make it enticing to subscribe any day.”

Thomas Keller, Oats Overnight

Oats Overnight focuses instead on making every day the best day to subscribe. Their offer is always clear: flexible, zero-risk, and built for daily use. That consistent value proposition attracts loyal customers year-round, not just when prices drop.

For brands in similar categories—everyday essentials, wellness, food & bev—discounting can be a trap. A steady, trustworthy offer paired with transparent messaging about ongoing subscriber benefits often outperforms the rush of flash sales, building a loyal base of recurring customers.

Make subscription your default buying experience on product pages, communicate savings clearly, and let your customer portal reinforce that subscribing is the smarter way to shop.

2. Reward loyalty before chasing new signups

While most teams scramble to acquire new subscribers in November, Kendall Singer Cook, Product Manager at Arrae, argues that the biggest win may be protecting the ones you already have.

Last year, Arrae noticed loyal subscribers canceling just to rejoin under stronger BFCM promotions. The fix was surprisingly simple: reward loyalty.

“We offer [current subscribers] additional credits if they continue to purchase and continue to stay with us. Just fully trying to remind them that, like, the more you invest in us, the more we’ll invest in you, and you don’t have to gamify the system.”

Kendall Singer Cook, Arrae

The lesson? Retention is acquisition—especially during the holidays. Communicate early with your subscribers, highlight their exclusive benefits in email and SMS, and remind them that being a long-term customer pays off. Even small gestures, like bonus credits or early access to promotions, make subscribers feel seen.

3. Know your customer cohorts and accept their differences

Not every customer you acquire during BFCM will look like your evergreen subscriber. Winning brands treat these customers differently  by design.

That means using cohort analysis to monitor how these subscribers behave over time, anticipating slightly higher churn, and preparing retention strategies accordingly. For Arrae, this includes additional credits, personalized cancellation flows, and pre-renewal communication to reinforce ongoing value.

Daniel Nunn, Head of Ecommerce at Carpe, takes a similar approach.

“We make it our goal to segment out these BFCM customers. In the portal, if someone normally gets a 20% discount on the next order, a Black Friday customer might get 30% for life. So just be aware of the fact that these customers are value oriented, so you’re gonna need to meet them in the middle.”

Daniel Nunn, Carpe

By segmenting BFCM subscribers and adapting communication to match their motivations, Carpe turns value-seekers into loyalists—proof that with the right structure, even deal hunters can become high-LTV customers.

4. Redefine success beyond the weekend

If there’s a single theme uniting these perspectives, it’s patience.

These customers aren’t necessarily less sticky. They’re just really value oriented. And so, like Kendall said, we’re giving them credits. We’re giving them extra lifetime discounts. Just trying to keep them in it for the long term with that value.”

Daniel Nunn, Carpe

For these brands, success isn’t measured by weekend revenue, it’s measured by how many subscribers remain as time goes on.

Whether it’s a disciplined ad strategy, leveraging loyalty credits, or cohort-based retention offers, the most successful brands are optimizing for profitability and LTV over promotional volume. 

And for subscription businesses, that’s the difference between chasing a sale and building a brand.

The bottom line

This BFCM, sustainable growth will come from focus, not frenzy.

• Resist deep discounts that attract one-time bargain hunters.
• Reinforce loyalty with meaningful subscriber rewards.
• Treat BFCM customers as their own cohort with unique retention needs.
• Measure success in retention curves, not revenue spikes.

This season will test every brand’s discipline, but the ones who prioritize lifetime value over last-minute sales will come out stronger, steadier, and far more profitable.

To explore the tactics behind these insights—from loyalty credits to cohort analysis—tune in to the full webinar replay of The Subscription Guide to Winning BFCM.

The post Why Smart Subscription Brands Are Skipping the Flash Sale: A Sustainable Path to LTV This BFCM appeared first on Recharge.

The good news? Fixing these pitfalls doesn’t require a full rebuild. With the right tactics, and solutions like Concierge SMS and Upsell/Cross-sell tools, you can turn common BFCM challenges into long-term growth.

Here are four of the biggest subscription revenue killers to tackle before the rush.

1. Ignoring your subscribers

Too often, brands pour their energy into new customer acquisition during BFCM and forget about the people who are already most valuable: their subscribers. When subscribers see promos aimed only at first-time or one-time buyers, it creates churn risk. They stop feeling like VIPs and start feeling overlooked.

What to do instead:

• Run subscriber-only offers like early access to BFCM discounts, exclusive products, or increased loyalty credits
• Spotlight their value: remind them of their perks and consider gifting them something extra for sticking with you
• Leverage them in your acquisition efforts by creating opportunities to earn rewards for BFCM referrals

Turnkey tactics:

The most important tool here is foresight – planning a unique BFCM experience for your subscribers to mitigate churn risk and maximize value. Be sure to communicate subscriber benefits to subscribers early on by leveraging email marketing, and in-portal banners. Take your tactics a step further with Retain, and leverage Recharge’s Rewards and Referrals to build exciting incentive programs to increase engagement. 

2. Missing cross-sell opportunities

Deep discounts can work against you if you’re not careful—customers check out with only best sellers or promoted products and nothing more, leaving average order value flat despite the surge in traffic. When you overlook the chance to nudge shoppers toward complementary products, you miss out on incremental revenue that can make the season profitable.

What to do instead:

• Showcase relevant add-ons and can’t-miss offers when buying intent is at its peak 
• Incentivize larger carts using tiered offers (ex: deeper discounts over $100, free gift over $250)
• Create holiday bundles that pair slower-moving products with best-sellers to spread demand and increase perceived value

Turnkey tactics:

Promoting additional products doesn’t have to be complex. In just minutes, brands can turn on Checkout and Post-purchase Cross-sell tools to recommend complementary items at the right moments, or use flexible bundling to create curated packs without adding SKU bloat. 

3. Chasing one-time buyers

BFCM traffic is a gift, but if your subscription offer isn’t front and center, you’re letting those shoppers walk away after one purchase. A one-time spike looks good in November, but recurring revenue is what pays off in Q1 and beyond.

What to do instead:

• Position subscriptions in BFCM campaigns—email and social media marketing, paid ads, banners, and checkout messaging.
• Make your subscription widget unmissable with clear perks like savings, flexibility, and exclusivity.
• Leverage cart and checkout upsell tools to convert one-time shoppers into subscribers with a single click.

Turnkey tactics:

The subscription widget is highly customizable, allowing you to flaunt the advantages of subscribing on your product pages and A/B test designs. To capture subscribers at every touch point, all Recharge plans include our suite of upsell tools, making it easy to upgrade one-time purchases to subscriptions in cart and at checkout. 

4. Letting new subscribers churn 

Winning subscribers on discount is easy. Keeping them when the deal ends? That’s where most brands struggle. Retention requires two things: thoughtful engagement that reinforces value and a seamless subscription management experience. Without both, new subscribers often cancel before their second shipment.

What to do instead:

• Audit your onboarding flow to reinforce subscription value right after purchase
• Engage subscribers with proactive, conversational texts that makes managing their orders feel seamless.
• Set up loyalty bonuses for hitting the second or third order milestone

Turnkey tactics:

Features like Cancellation Prevention and Failed Payment Recovery are table stakes in the fight against both passive and active churn. But winning brands go further using Concierge SMS to create a simple, personal way for subscribers to manage their orders through AI-powered conversational texts. The result: fewer cancellations, happier customers, and a retention engine that scales.

Bottom Line

BFCM moves fast, and brands can’t afford to leave money or subscribers behind. Set yourself up for holiday season success by:

• Treating subscribers like VIPs 
• Maximizing AOV through cross-sells and bundles
• Turning new customers into subscribers at every touchpoint, and
• Retaining new subscribers beyond the weekend

And the best part? With Recharge, most of these fixes can be switched on and customized quickly, no engineering lift required. Now is the perfect time to schedule time with our team to learn more or connect with your CSM to develop your BFCM Subscription Success Playbook.

Done right, this BFCM can be the moment you turn seasonal demand into year-round growth.

Want even more holiday support? Join our webinar, The Subscription Guide For Winning BFCM. Register here.

The post Four Black Friday/Cyber Monday pitfalls subscription brands can turn into growth appeared first on Recharge.

Reminder emails lost in spam folders, disjointed login flows and what feels like monthly password resets before your customer can make a change. By the time they get to their portal, they’re not looking to manage their subscription, they want to cancel and never look back. 

In fact, nearly 70% of churn happens before the third order, and often it’s not the product that missed the mark, it’s the experience. 

Customers worry they’ll be charged for something they don’t need, or are frustrated by having to email support to make a simple update to their order. Paired with acquisition costs at an all time high, this retention problem eats directly into your business’ margins. 

The solution won’t be found in incremental fixes. Subscription management has to be rebuilt around the customer.

A vision for the future: conversational subscription management

That’s why we built Concierge SMS: an AI-powered, text-based subscription assistant that lets your customers make changes in seconds.

No apps. No logins. Just a natural, two-way conversation.

Imagine a customer stuck at a red light, juggling a work call and daycare pickup. All they need to do is reply “skip” to a text so their favorite protein powder isn’t delivered while they’re out of town. 

Done. It’s fast, human, and perfectly fits into modern life.

That’s what Concierge is built for. It’s proactive, reaching out before an orders ship, before a payment fails, and well before frustration creeps in.

It gives your brand the ability to meet customers where they already are—on their phones—and deliver real convenience when it matters.

Powered by Recharge AI

This isn’t just a smarter way to manage subscriptions. It’s a fundamentally different kind of software.

Concierge SMS is powered by Recharge AI, trained on insights from over 100 million subscription interactions. That scale gives us an edge that few can match, but we didn’t stop there. 

Recharge AI does what most software doesn’t: take action on behalf of the customer, instantly and accurately. Here’s what it delivers:

• Proactive intelligence: Detects upcoming orders, failed payments, and reaches out before they become problems.
• Natural language understanding: Interprets plain-text messages like “Can I get this next week instead?” and responds like a real conversation.
• Context retrieval: Seamlessly references order history and subscription cadence.
• Confirmation & execution: Verifies the request, confirms the action, and completes the update instantly with no need for the customer to log in.
• Trust layer: Validates every change for accuracy and escalates anything that needs a human touch.

It’s the most human-like automation we’ve ever released and the results speak for themselves.

Early wins: Engagement, retention, and trust

Over 200 Recharge brands are already live with Concierge SMS, using it to deliver healthier routines, better sleep, safer skincare, and more.

And the data? It’s early, but powerful:

• 4x higher action rates than traditional emails
• 86% of cancel requests converted to delays
• More than 4 in 5 customers prefer SMS over portal management

Take it from our friends at Nordic Naturals:

“Concierge SMS has been incredibly helpful—instantly deflecting the routine questions that used to flood support. It’s saving time, reducing costs, and freeing our CX team to focus on higher-impact work.”

What’s next

We started with the biggest pain point for your customers: subscription management. But the future is even more exciting.

We’re also working on ways to help you:

• Learn more about your customers through natural, lightweight feedback loops
• Grow revenue with personalized product recommendations
• Deliver tailored product education that deepens loyalty

All of this, through simple, effective text conversations.

Let’s talk

If you’re ready to rethink retention and make subscription management work for your customers, we’d love to show you Concierge in action.

Schedule a call with our team

The post Concierge SMS: The AI-powered shift that’s ending subscription friction appeared first on Recharge.

Shopify’s commerce infrastructure delivers reach, checkout performance, and omnichannel scale, while Recharge adds deep subscription functionality, real-time analytics, and AI-powered retention. Together, they form a composable growth engine that powers the full customer lifecycle from first click to long-term loyalty.

Innovate faster with composable tech

Forget brittle workarounds and multi-year dev cycles. Shopify + Recharge are fully integrated, endlessly extensible and enterprise-ready from day one. Brands can launch new storefronts in minutes using Shopify’s Hydrogen framework, then deploy tailored subscriptions with Recharge’s developer-friendly APIs and SDKs. You get the speed of SaaS and the flexibility of custom with none of the baggage.

Experiment at scale with a unified growth platform

Recharge does more than power subscriptions. It’s a fully integrated growth engine built to optimize every stage of the customer journey. From churn prevention and loyalty programs to upsells, cross-sells, and referrals, all the tools you need are native to the platform—freeing you up to test, iterate, and optimize faster. AI-driven analytics surface what’s working so you can double down, turning experimentation into a repeatable growth motion.

Deliver world-class CX with an AI-powered retention engine

With Recharge, personalization and scale go hand in hand. Features like Failed Payment Recovery and Concierge SMS, our text-based subscription management tool, are powered by best-in-class AI models to drive retention without piling on headcount or complexity. From day one, out-of-the-box flows and retention automations help reduce churn, boost LTV, and simplify subscription management, ensuring that your subscribers return again and again.

Built for migration at scale

Replatforming a mature business is a big decision, even when the benefits of SaaS are clear. Through countless joint migrations, Shopify + Recharge have built proven, battle-tested playbooks to guide enterprise brands through every step.

Brands like quip and Apothékary have moved from homegrown, legacy systems with zero downtime, zero data loss, and immediate performance gains. The result? A future-proof foundation that lets your team focus on scaling, not rebuilding.

The right tech can transform your business. Take a look at how leading brands have used Shopify + Recharge to decomplicate their tech, customize their experiences, and fuel subscription-led growth.

How to build a holistic growth engine

Apothékary’s natural remedies and herbal droppers have helped the brand cultivate an ardent following. Their products inspire long-term loyalty that makes them a natural fit for the subscription model.

Far from taking that at face value, Jen Lewis, Director of Retention, and the Apothékary team used insights from Recharge’s analytics tools to validate their assumptions and optimize their subscription program.

“Recharge has helped us improve key KPIs like LTV and purchase frequency. Recently, we pulled a report comparing subscriber LTV to that of one-time purchasers, which gave us clarity on where to focus our 2025 roadmap. Subscriber LTV was over 60% higher, so our 2025+ strategy is heavily centered on growing our subscriber base.”

Jen Lewis, Director of Retention, Apothékary

Armed with evidence of subscribers’ value to the business, the next decision to make was how to maximize that value: acquiring new subscribers or retaining existing ones.

“After confirming that subscribers are our highest LTV customers, I knew we had to double down on retention. We implemented Recharge’s Cancellation Prevention tool, which turned out to be one of our most successful rollouts. It’s been live for 8 months and has delivered a save rate of nearly 20%.”

Jen Lewis, Director of Retention, Apothékary

When customers move to cancel their subscriptions, Cancellation Prevention presents a survey to find out why they’re leaving, then incentivizes them to stay with compelling, personalized retention offers. In Apothékary’s case, the offers worked—20% of customers opted to keep their subscriptions open instead of cancelling.

But Cancellation Prevention’s value isn’t limited to the cancellations it stops. The data it collects can show a brand where prices exceed customer expectations, which products ship too frequently or in too great a quantity, or any other factor upstream that causes churn downstream.

“By diving into analytics and listening to customer feedback, we made changes that enhanced the overall experience and boosted retention. We used cancellation data to guide front-end improvements—like updating order frequency options and optimizing the subscription experience.”

Jen Lewis, Director of Retention, Apothékary

Recharge’s tools don’t live in a vacuum. They form a unified ecosystem that aggregates customer insights, then uses them to improve themselves (and each other). Brands that use Rewards to power their loyalty programs, for example, can integrate it with Cancellation Prevention—the cancellation flow can be configured to display customers’ remaining rewards balances, reminding them of what they’ll miss out on by cancelling.

That holistic integration is how brands like Apothékary are setting themselves apart. They start with real insights, then apply them everywhere in the business that they can make an impact. The result is constant improvement based on a keen understanding of their customers.

Expanding capabilities at lower cost

When oral care innovators quip first launched their subscription-based ecommerce program, the tech options for DTC brands were still in their infancy. quip filled the gap by investing in a homegrown ecommerce platform that would propel them to the top of their market.

Eventually, though, two things changed. First, quip began to outgrow their platform. As the company scaled, maintaining their custom tech required more and more resources that otherwise could have gone toward forward-looking ventures like R&D or subscription feature development.

Second, the tech market caught up. A custom platform had originally been the best way to deliver the subscriber experience quip envisioned. But before long, SaaS platforms like Shopify and Recharge had not only reached feature parity with the custom platforms built by early DTC pioneers like quip, they had surpassed them—and continued delivering features faster than any in-house team could.

“While we were proud to have built an incredibly savvy model when quip launched in 2015, we know there was immense opportunity to level up our functionality—specifically as we migrated to become a Shopify-platformed business. SaaS allows us to not only ensure we are providing best-in-class functionality, but also allows us to have a more predictable spend and reduce the amount of resources spent on building and maintaining custom tech.”

Meredith Glansberg, CEO, quip

Like many brands in the same position, quip selected Shopify as their ecommerce platform. But as a subscription-led brand, they would also need a subscription platform that not only integrated seamlessly with Shopify, but enabled them to customize their subscription program and quickly launch new features.

“At a minimum, we needed a subscription solution that not only captured the capabilities we had built and were proud of, but also allowed for us to quickly roll out new functionality that we didn’t already have. Recharge’s flexibility helps ensure we are meeting unique consumer and product needs. Additionally, we were evaluating different ecommerce platforms and we ended up going with Shopify, so we wanted a solution that worked seamlessly with the platform.”

Meredith Glansberg, CEO, quip

They selected Recharge. Within 90 days, millions of current and past customer’s subscription data was imported with zero data loss and quip was ready to launch. This new SaaS-based platform simultaneously accelerated the rollout of new storefront and subscription features and granted quip a more predictable, manageable cost structure than an expensive in-house platform could offer.

“At this point, we are up and running better than ever with Recharge and the entire migration was a success because of how well everything translated over to the new platform. This partnership allows us to continue to do what we do best: provide the best and most enjoyable experiences for our subscribers and drive better oral health outcomes”

Meredith Glansberg, CEO, quip

Crafting custom experiences with off-the-shelf tools

Breakfast mainstays and long-time Recharge users Oats Overnight have been subscription-first since their early days, a strategy that’s paid dividends for them: 90% of the brand’s DTC sales come from their enthusiastic subscriber base.

In 2023, Oats Overnight identified that their customer portal held untapped potential for engaging subscribers. They planned to overhaul it with custom branding and a slew of new features for customers—all of which were possible with Recharge’s API and SDK.

“In addition to creating a really good product that customers love, providing a subscription experience that is personalized has contributed to our success. Using the Recharge API and SDK, we revamped our customer portal back in 2023 to create a beautifully branded unique customer portal. Not only does the upgraded portal allow customers to manage their subscriptions with the typical skips, swaps, and cancellations, but it provides exclusive benefits to subscribers including perks, tasting notes, and year-round access to seasonal flavors.”

Thomas Keller, Director of Ecommerce, Oats Overnight

The new portal not only made it easier than ever for Oats Overnight’s subscribers to manage orders, it saved their team time by taking order management issues off of their plates and freeing them up to focus on their real mission: delivering the breakfast their customers love.

And the enhancements didn’t end with the portal itself. The Oats Overnight team even implemented Recharge’s passwordless login feature to remove every possible bit of friction from their account management experience. And once they implemented Failed Payment Recovery to cut down on passive churn, they’d smoothed away some of the most common pain points for their customers and their team—all with tools built right into Recharge.

“There are so many ready-to-use tools that have been small but mighty improvements to our business. For example, using Recharge’s passwordless login solution, we were able to simplify our customer portal’s authentication flow making it that much easier for customers to log in. And on the payments end, Recharge’s Failed Payment Recovery flows have helped us reduce unintentional churn. It’s a lot of these easy levers that Recharge provides that add up, helping us make significant gains.”

Thomas Keller, Director of Ecommerce, Oats Overnight

Modernizing the stack for global growth

As one of Europe’s most iconic subscription brands, Estrid had built a devoted customer base and a standout brand in the hair removal and body care space—offering premium razors, deodorants, and more. But behind the scenes, their legacy tech was holding them back. Scaling new features was slow, cross-market agility was limited, and their platform couldn’t keep pace with the business’s momentum.

“To keep innovating at the pace we move, we needed a platform that wouldn’t slow us down. Shopify and Recharge gave us the flexibility to build faster, test smarter, and scale our subscription experience across markets without friction.”

Alva Hemer, Senior Product Manager, Estrid

To future-proof their growth and improve operations across regions, Estrid partnered with ecommerce experts Woolman to replatform to a new stack: Shopify + Recharge.

Together, the teams executed a large-scale migration—successfully moving millions of customers with zero disruption to the subscriber experience.

With Shopify and Recharge, Estrid finally has the freedom to experiment without relying on engineering. Their teams can move fast, test new ideas, and hone in on the strategies that drive long-term subscriber value. A sleek, self-serve customer portal empowers users to manage subscriptions with ease, reducing CX overhead while maintaining a premium experience.

Freed from maintaining complex systems, Estrid is now focused on growth—refining journeys, responding to customer needs, and scaling with confidence.

“Now we’re truly built for scale. With Recharge, we can launch and iterate without relying on dev support, which has created real momentum. Retention flows are now core to how we operate.”

Alva Hemer, Senior Product Manager, Estrid

Explore what’s possible—or talk to our team about rethinking your subscription stack.

The post Why the most innovative subscription brands are scaling on Shopify + Recharge appeared first on Recharge.

We launched the Tomorrow Brand Challenge in 2024 with one big idea: to spotlight the brands building the future of commerce—not through short-term hacks, but by delivering subscription experiences built for long-term success.

Hundreds of ecommerce brands joined us, committing to a six-month journey to scale their subscriber base, build stronger customer relationships, and prove the power of retention.

Today, we’re proud to announce the three winners of the Tomorrow Brand Challenge:

Champion winner: Inspired Go
A healthy meal delivery service redefining fresh food subscriptions

Challenger winner: Fuzzball
A UK-based cat food brand building a loyal subscriber community

Startup winner: Bioligent
A wellness brand helping customers biohack their way to better health

Each of these brands delivered standout performance in subscriber growth and loyalty, and they’ve proven what’s possible when businesses invest in long-term customer relationships.

Together, these winners will receive nearly $1 million in total prizes, including:

• $100,000 cash
• $50,000 to fund a big marketing bet
• $50,000 to fund a team retreat experience
• Two tickets to Recharge’s brand trip to the the big race in Monza, Italy

To mark the moment, Recharge co-founder and CEO Oisin O’Connor personally called each winner to deliver the news.

This challenge was about more than prizes and rewards. We wanted an opportunity to celebrate the boldest builders in our industry. The ones creating subscription experiences that truly serve their customers and set new standards for what’s possible in ecommerce.

To every brand that joined us on this journey: thank you. The challenge may be over, but the mission continues. Tomorrow belongs to the brands bold enough to build it.

The post Meet the winners of the Tomorrow Brand Challenge appeared first on Recharge.

Past 

Allow customers to turn back time and easily add to an order they just placed. Studies show that buying intent spikes after checkout, so extend the post-purchase satisfaction by presenting hyper-personalized offers—perfect pairings, proven favorites or timely seasonal picks—when they want them most. Who says impulse buys can’t be smart?

Present 

Make the most of the moment. When a customer reaches the cart, their intentions are clear. Now is the time to optimize their experience and maximize your revenue by offering one-click subscription conversion, spotlight perks like free shipping to keep them moving and use curated cross-sells to increase order value. 

Future

Anticipate what your subscribers need before they have to ask. Whether it’s offering delay options to prevent “too much product” churn or recommending relevant add-ons based on past behavior, these forward-looking touchpoints—delivered by email or SMS— are all about proactive retention. Meet subscribers where they are, deliver what they need, and turn routine reminders into revenue.

The post Bend time to boost revenue: How to unlock hidden value across the customer journey appeared first on Recharge.

Recharge’s subscription widget helps you do exactly that. It gives you the tools to highlight your subscription offering, match it to your brand, and test what works best, all right from your product page. 

Here are three simple ways to convert more subscribers.

1. Make subscriptions the default decision

When people shop, especially for a new product or with a new brand, they tend to go with what’s easiest. That’s often the first option they see. That’s why setting subscriptions to the default purchase option on your product pages can make such a big difference—it takes the friction out of subscriptions and makes them the smart, simple choice.

It works: Brands that lead with subscriptions on their PDPs earn 4 times more subscribers than those that don’t.

Try this

Make subscriptions the default option on your PDPs, and make sure to highlight subscription benefits with, for example, a “Save 20%” badge. The easier you make it to subscribe, the more likely shoppers are to opt in.

2. Design for your brand, test for results

Your subscription widget shouldn’t feel like an afterthought; it should feel like an integrated, intentional part of the shopping experience. It’s often a customer’s introduction to the idea of subscribing, so it deserves the same care and intention as the rest of your site. A well-designed widget reinforces your brand and clearly communicates why subscribing is the better choice.

Try this

Make sure your widget matches your brand by adjusting fonts, colors, and tone. Integrate social proof to help customers purchase confidently. Keep the copy simple, focusing on perks like free shipping, discounts, flexible delivery, or surprise gifts.

Then test your widget’s performance to optimize it, experimenting with different aspects:

• Copy. Elevate different subscription perks to see which are the most compelling.
• Visual style. Test bold colors or quiet consistency to see what drives more engagement.
• CTAs. Test traditional discount-led CTAs like “Subscribe & save” against perk-driven options like “Subscribe for exclusive perks.”

3. Find your conversion sweet spot with testing

Not all discounts deliver the same impact. A 10% offer might not move the needle, while a 15% offer could significantly boost conversions. The key is finding the right balance between value for the customer and sustainable growth for your business. A/B testing gives you the data to make confident, performance-driven decisions, not guesses.

Try this

Run a simple, structured A/B test to optimize your discount offer.

1. Set your discount offers
   We recommend testing your current subscription offer against an offer 5% higher, e.g. 10% off vs. 15% off.
2. Run the test for at least two weeks
   Give the test enough time to collect meaningful data and reduce noise
3. Track key metrics to find the winner
   Focus on metrics like subscription opt-in rate, total revenue, and conversion rate to identify your top performer.
4. Set the winning variant as the default
   Apply the top-performing version as the default on your PDP to drive the best results.

Start turning shoppers into subscribers

Subscriptions offer more than just convenience—they build long-term relationships between brands and customers. Subscribers stay longer, order more often, and become your most valuable customers.

Your product page plays a key role in driving subscriptions. By leading with a subscription-first experience, aligning it with your brand, and testing what performs best, you create a clear path to more subscription revenue.

Start using Recharge’s subscription widget to put these best practices into action.

The post 3 ways to acquire more subscribers using your subscription widget appeared first on Recharge.

So we tapped three of our elite agency partners—CQL, eHouse, and Iamota—to share how they’re helping brands turn one-size-fits-all journeys into tailored, high-impact experiences.

From transforming the customer portal to mapping out the first 180 days of onboarding and using subscriber signals to power retention, these strategies are designed to boost engagement and lifetime value without adding complexity.

They’re simple, effective, and yours for the taking.

Transform the customer portal into a dynamic marketing tool

CQL

“Recharge’s solution empowers brands to personalize the customer experience by transforming the customer portal into a dynamic marketing tool. By leveraging Recharge’s existing customization capabilities, brands can take transactional ‘My Account’ customer portals and optimize them into a canvas for marketing efforts—introducing upselling, cross-selling, and subscription modification options without compromising ease of use.

By enhancing the customer portal, brands can maintain a seamless user experience with the website and the subscription experience, encouraging deeper customer engagement and increased lifetime value.”

Prioritize their first six months

eHouse

“Focus on the first 180 days. At eHouse, we’ve seen that the most successful subscription brands prioritize onboarding. Mapping out those first six months with thoughtful education and personalized touchpoints can dramatically boost retention and engagement. Start by auditing your customer journey and identifying ways to add clarity and value early on—because first impressions really do matter.”

Leverage Subscriber Data & Analytics to power retention plays

Iamota

“The best retention plays are rooted in understanding your subscribers—not just who they are, but where they are in their subscriber journey. Dig into key signals like order history, order cadence, churn risk, and engagement. These can inform simple, but powerful retention plays that feel personal and timely.

This could be a win-back offer triggered by a skipped order or a loyalty boost for a long-time subscriber. It’s all about leveraging touch points that show you’re paying attention, adding value and keeping the relationship strong.”

The post Steal this Strategy: Personalizing the customer experience appeared first on Recharge.

The most successful subscription brands are built into their customers’ daily routines. Each one aims to craft products and experiences so essential that customers reach for them again every single day. And with many customers starting their days off with breakfast, the morning meal could be the perfect foothold for the right brand.

Oats Overnight recognized that opportunity early on, which was step 1 of their growth into one of the DTC industry’s leading food brands. Forming the idea was the easy part, though—their subsequent explosion into the breakfast of choice for hundreds of thousands of subscribers took years of meticulous product development and smart scaling.

Brian Tate, the founder and CEO of Oats Overnight, recently explained how listening closely to customers, using data to spot trends early, and making their subscription service easier and more personal helped grow the brand into a big success across both online and in-store shopping. Here’s an inside look at one way a brand can scale from an idea to an enterprise, without ever losing sight of the customer.

2016-2020: Big things brewing

All in: Former poker pro bets big on breakfast & finds a gap in the market

A quick scan of Brian Tate’s résumé might surprise you. Before he leapt into entrepreneurship as the founder of Oats Overnight, he spent 12 years on professional high-stakes poker circuits—long enough to see the game make the leap into the digital world and transform into a strategic, data-driven venture.

At the time, Tate began most of his days with a mason jar of overnight oats. Ever the problem solver, he optimized his breakfast over time: swapped the clunky jar for a portable shaker bottle, added protein to round out his macros, increased the milk ratio for texture, and so on.

During his latter years at the poker table, as he considered his next move, he wondered if there might be a way to blend easy eats with big data. After some late-night tinkering and tasting in his kitchen, he created Oats Overnight.

Meet the flavors: Launched online with 3 SKUs, turning first-time buyers into loyal fans

Oats Overnight officially launched in 2016 with a lineup of three flavors—a far cry from the 33 currently on the brand’s site. With a team that included Tate’s own mom, the scrappy young company operated out a small production facility/warehouse/office combo.

Despite their small size, Oats Overnight employed sophisticated, data-driven strategies. Some early efforts at optimizing marketing campaigns, for example, resulted in 2% gains in retention. Not bad! But when taste-enhancing recipe tweaks resulted in retention gains closer to 10%, it became clear that Oats Overnight would be a product-led brand. They put R&D front and center and have kept it there ever since.

A perfect pair: Subscription-first business model powered by Recharge

The company’s early evaluation of their customer cohorts revealed that subscriptions would be critical to their retention and growth: Customers valued low-hassle replenishment, which would translate into reliable revenue for the brand. The search for a subscription platform landed Oats Overnight on Recharge in late 2016.

At first, the brand’s first-time subscription rate (FTSR), or the portion of first-time customers who opt to open a subscription, was just 30%. Searching for ways to boost uptake, ecommerce director Thomas Keller suggested replacing the brand’s product sample offer with a first-order discount for subscribers. It was a daring move, since the samples drove most of the brand’s orders; eliminating them would remove their biggest entry point into customers’ routines. On the other hand, just 20% of sample orders resulted in subscriptions, making their long-term value questionable.

The team decided to play the odds, end their sample program, and launch the first-order discount. Keller’s call paid off—the FTSR jumped to 90%. Oats Overnight was officially and quantifiably a subscription-first brand.

2020–2023: Rising to the occasion

The MV-est of P’s: The pivot from acquisition to retention

2020 presented brands around the world with a slew of new challenges. For Oats Overnight, COVID lockdowns meant that one of their biggest advantages—convenience—nearly evaporated overnight. A nutritious, prep-free breakfast had been an easy sell to commuters with busy mornings, who comprised half of the brand’s customer base. But with most commutes paused indefinitely, and many customers even filling their time with slower meal options, speed was suddenly less compelling.

Tate was used to changing tack in a fluid situation. It was clear that customer acquisition would be more difficult for now, so Oats Overnight pivoted to maximizing relationships with the customers they already had.

Product innovation powered by the people who eat it

Getting customers to continue wanting more from Oats Overnight, it turned out, was simply a question of offering them more. The brand launched the Flavor In Development (FID) program, which would grant customers priority access to upcoming products in exchange for their feedback.

The initiative had all kinds of benefits. For subscribers, it delivered a novel experience and something to look forward to—both of which were in short supply in 2020. But the feedback that FID members provided on experimental flavors was invaluable to Oats Overnight too, helping them guarantee that each new launch would be a hit—a huge win for a brand built on R&D.

After the FID program’s success, the company immediately set out to source even more product intel. They launched a Facebook group to grow their community and collect real-time feedback from customers. The group generated over 2,000 comments each day at its peak, making it a goldmine of customer insights.

Oats Overnight had always let those insights guide its product development. With customers more open and accessible than ever, the company was able to fine-tune its recipes even faster.

Raising the stakes: Securing funding for expansion

Though Oats Overnight eventually emerged from 2020 intact, they still needed ways to safeguard their growth. As they evaluated their options, the online-only brand realized they may need to look a little farther afield. 85% of all oatmeal in the US was sold in stores; that was where the opportunity lay. Oats Overnight would build its future with brick and mortar.

A novel approach to traditional retail

Entering retail stores offered huge potential, but plenty of risk too. Undeterred, the company secured $2 million in seed funding with an airtight entry plan backed top to bottom by customer insights. No consideration was off limits if it would provide a better experience—even the product’s form factor.

For online orders, Oats Overnight packages each serving in a pouch, intended to be poured into the brand’s signature shaker bottle and mixed with milk. A shaker bottle is included for free with each customer’s first order to minimize the packaging required for refill orders.

In stores, however, the brand’s own intel suggested that customers would be more amenable to overnight oats that didn’t require a separate accessory to prepare. So for physical retail inventory, the company opted to ship their product in a new disposable bottle that was ready for mixing—no shaker bottle required.

Sticking to your guns

When Walmart, the first retailer to explore stocking Oats Overnight, balked at the new bottles, Oats Overnight didn’t waver. They knew their intel was solid, so they found a more willing partner in Wegman’s, an East Coast supermarket chain. After customers responded enthusiastically to the Wegman’s launch, Oats Overnight carried their momentum back into subsequent launches at Walmart, who reconsidered the bottles after seeing them succeed, and at Target.

Tate says the saga held a lesson for any brand: If you’re confident in your product and have the research to back it up, you don’t need to cave to outside pressure.

Data bites: Launching the Flavor Command Center

Going omnichannel does more than expose a brand to more customers and revenue streams. One of the biggest benefits of the model is that insights from each channel can improve the other; shared learning makes each channel stronger than it would have been on its own.

In 2021, Oats Overnight tapped into that potential by centralizing their product R&D in the new Flavor Command Center. By then, the brand had added dozens of flavor options and was constantly experimenting with new ones. The Command Center’s role was to find the frontrunners that had the most potential to resonate with customers and drive LTV.

Insights generated at the Command Center were funneled back into both of Oats Overnight’s retail channels, delivering a steady flow of data that helped both improve continuously.

2023–present: Full speed ahead

If 2020 had been a speed bump for Oats Overnight, the following years were more like a launchpad. In 2021 alone, the same year they expanded into physical retail, the company quadrupled its subscriber base from 10,000 to 42,000. Sales similarly shot up 150% year-over-year to reach $25 million.

With the uncertainty behind them, the company began laying the groundwork for further expansion.

A recipe for growth: Scaling retail partnerships, manufacturing & DTC

In 2021, Oats Overnight had catapulted into multichannel success with just $2 million in seed funding. The sum was modest but crucial; Tate says the timely cash infusion saved the company.

By 2023, the company was breathing more easily. With their near-term survival secure, they shifted their sights to a more ambitious plan to scale production and sales across the board, with the budget to match: $20 million in Series A funding.

At the time, the company’s operations were distributed across four different facilities throughout Phoenix, which left lots of room for inefficiency: Product had to be transported between multiple locations, and coordination between functions could be difficult when they weren’t in the same place. So this time, Oats Overnight would use their extra resources to transform into a manufacturing and logistics powerhouse. 

Building a more efficient oat

The brand consolidated their separate Phoenix facilities into a single, sprawling 86,000-square-foot one. The new location combined functions like manufacturing, supply chain, fulfillment, and R&D into a single location big enough to meet needs for both the DTC and retail channels.

Centralizing these functions made it easier to coordinate between them, enabling faster feedback and more agile initiatives. Limited product runs, for example, were easy to launch with all teams under a single roof, whereas coordinating between external logistics and manufacturing partners would have complicated them significantly.

Built to deliver: State-of-the-art facilities ramp up production & innovation

Oats Overnight was on an optimization tear. Their next move would be to complement the new Arizona facility with a smaller one in Ohio. The idea had surfaced years earlier, but was shelved as the company focused on its main facility. Now, with the Arizona location complete and half the company’s customers located in the eastern part of the country, the time was right.

The 62,000-square-foot facility location opened in 2023. It immediately made shipping both faster and cheaper for customers in the eastern U.S., slashing a full day off of shipping times. The savings from shipping and process automation powered beefed-up marketing efforts for the brand—the new facility even doubled as a studio for behind-the-scenes video content. Oats Overnight had pulled the rare double feat of delivering a better customer experience while saving on costs.

Churn? What churn? Optimizing the subscription model

While they tamed their production and logistics, Oats Overnight remained a product-led company. The next item on their long checklist of areas to optimize: subscriptions.

With their menu approaching 60 flavors, customers often reported that they were resorting to tools like notebooks and spreadsheets just to track their favorite varieties. So the Oats Overnight team used Recharge’s SDK to build their “likes/notes” feature, which tracked each customer’s personal rating and impressions of each flavor. Their feedback would even make its way to the Flavor Command Center for further flavor refinement.

And with separate updates to their customer portal that customized and personalized it even further, Oats Overnight reinvented their subscription program into a retention machine. The results: 152% more recurring orders, 41% longer-lasting subscriptions, 13% higher AOV, and 29% less churn.

We’re obsessed: Future plans and innovations

Oats Overnight is almost as much a movement as a brand. 90% of their DTC sales come from their dedicated contingent of subscribers, who now number over 300,000. On the brick-and-mortar side, the growing list of stores sporting Oats Overnight products now includes wholesale giant Costco.

They’re not slowing down now, of course. They recently secured a $35 million round of Series B funding that they’ll use to keep optimizing their products and experiences. On the docket: AI-powered customer flavor profiles, mapping how receptive customers can be to different flavor components. They’re even making their first foray outside of oats with an instant protein coffee, expected to make a full launch later in 2025.

These initiatives are a concerted effort to build what Tate calls a “next-gen CPG company, powered by data and community.” Oats Overnight has leaned on both to guide its growth from a homegrown experiment into one of the DTC industry’s defining brands. Now, with new insights and ideas flowing in faster than ever, it’s not hard to imagine them redefining breakfast yet again.

The post From insights to action: How Oats Overnight puts data & customers at the center appeared first on Recharge.

At fatty15, a science-backed C15:0 supplement designed to support healthy aging, Dennis has helped achieve standout retention metrics, including 95% month-over-month retention and 55% retention at one year. Their approach transforms customer data into insights, and insights into action.

Here’s how you can apply fatty15’s retention playbook to build a strategy that keeps customers around for the long haul.

1. Retention is not one-size-fits-all

A strong retention strategy isn’t just about holding on to customers—it’s about understanding why they stay, how they engage, and what drives their loyalty over time. Fatty15 uses cohort analysis to break down customer behavior by subscription type, acquisition channel, and timing. By identifying patterns unique to each cohort, fatty15 tailors messaging, offers, and engagement strategies that speak directly to different groups.

For brands, this means digging into customer data to see which acquisition paths deliver the stickiest customers, which product packages foster long-term engagement, and where customers are most likely to fall off. Retention becomes far more powerful (and scalable) when it’s tailored to the unique paths of each customer journey.

2. Focus on early-stage retention as much as long-term loyalty

Many brands think loyalty happens months down the line. Fatty15 knows it starts in the first few days. That’s why they tailor onboarding to match the customer’s subscription type and build early momentum.

Whether a customer signs up for a 30-day or 90-day subscription, the brand adjusts its onboarding and nurture flow to match the customer’s commitment level and expectations. Early communications focus on reinforcing the value of the product, setting milestones to look forward to, and creating momentum toward the first refill decision.

This focus on early-stage retention recognizes that loyalty is built from the very first interaction, not after several months. Brands that prioritize onboarding and habit formation early are more likely to earn customers who stick around for the long haul.

3. Watch your retention curves like a hawk

A retention curve tells the story of how your customers experience your product over time. Fatty15 monitors retention curves across different cohorts and subscription types to understand exactly when customers are likely to disengage. Every dip is a signal—an opportunity to step in, whether through proactive communication, special offers, or educational content.

By closely tracking engagement trends, fatty15 can identify whether retention efforts are improving, holding steady, or slipping. For other brands, this kind of regular analysis turns retention from a reactive challenge into a proactive practice, helping teams spot patterns and pivot strategies before churn becomes a trend.

4. Move customers from passive to engaged

Not all retention is equal. Some customers remain subscribed because they’re truly invested; others simply haven’t gotten around to canceling. Fatty15 focuses on moving customers from passive retention to active engagement—because engaged customers are more likely to renew, refer, and advocate.

They measure engagement through behaviors like content interaction, portal logins, referral participation, and product reviews. Customers who exhibit these signals are nurtured into brand advocates, while those showing signs of passivity are targeted with re-engagement campaigns to pull them back into the fold. Subscription is just the start—the goal is genuine connection. Fatty15 looks beyond it, asking: How involved are our customers in the brand experience?

5. Use predictive signals to spot churn before it happens

Churn rarely comes out of nowhere. Fatty15 watches for early warning signs like skipped refills, declining portal logins, or a drop in email engagement. These behavioral cues serve as red flags that a customer may be preparing to leave. When these red flags appear, the team intervenes with reminders, personalized offers, or direct outreach to keep relationships on track..

This predictive approach shifts retention from firefighting to foresight. By identifying subtle signals of disengagement, brands can step in at the right moment and preserve customer relationships that might otherwise slip away unnoticed.

6. Make your customer portal a retention engine

For fatty15, the customer portal isn’t just functional, it’s a strategic tool for engagement. The portal shows customers where they are in their lifecycle, highlights the benefits they’re likely experiencing now, and sets expectations for what they can look forward to with continued use of the product.

Customization plays a key role here. The portal adapts to different customer behaviors, offering personalized recommendations, self-service options, and subscription flexibility. It becomes a proactive touchpoint rather than a static account page, empowering customers to manage their subscription with confidence while reinforcing their value in the program.

7. Design retention as an ongoing, evolving strategy

The most powerful insight from fatty15’s approach? Retention is never finished. Dennis and his team regularly test, measure, and refine their tactics based on new data and changing customer needs.

For brands, this means committing to continuous learning and iteration. Long-term retention success comes from building systems that evolve with your customers, not systems that stay still as your customers move on.

Retention is a science you can learn

Fatty15’s approach shows what’s possible when brands go beyond simply keeping customers and start deeply understanding and supporting them. Fatty15 proves that loyalty isn’t luck—it’s the result of smart systems, tailored experiences, and timely actions.

By tracking retention curves, segmenting customers, personalizing experiences, and acting on predictive signals, brands can build a strategy that not only retains but strengthens customer relationships over time.

The result? Customers who stay, engage, advocate, and become the foundation of long-term growth.

The post The science of staying power: 7 ways data can help you retain customers for the long haul appeared first on Recharge.