Subscriptions
A subscription is the most valuable customer relationship a DTC brand can build, and the easiest to lose quietly. BMO Media launches and, more often, rescues subscription programs: cutting churn, recovering failed payments and keeping subscribers engaged past the fragile first 90 days. Subscription retention isn't one problem, it's a dozen small ones: a weak onboarding, a rigid cadence, a card that expired, each shaving points off your recurring revenue. We fix them in order of payback.
What we do
Subscription retention that starts by splitting your churn
We start by splitting your churn. Involuntary churn, failed payments, expired cards, is often a startling share of the total and the cheapest to recover: these customers never chose to leave. Voluntary churn is a lifecycle problem, decided mostly in the first shipments, and we attack it where it happens: onboarding, cadence control and a save-first cancellation flow. The full breakdown is in why subscribers really cancel.
Involuntary churn is the fastest money in the building. Expired cards, insufficient funds and silent payment failures cancel customers who never decided to leave, and recovering them costs no acquisition spend at all: pre-dunning warnings before the charge, a retry schedule tuned to your billing day, account updater switched on, and a card-update flow that works on a phone in ten seconds.
Voluntary churn is a lifecycle problem and it is mostly decided in the first three shipments. We rebuild onboarding so the second and third orders arrive with context rather than surprise, give subscribers real cadence control, pause, skip, swap, delay, so the answer to too much product is not cancellation, and put a save-first flow in front of the cancel button. Making cancellation hard is not retention; it is chargebacks and one-star reviews on a delay.
What's included
What's included in our subscription retention service
Churn diagnosis: voluntary vs involuntary split, by cohort and subscription month.
Dunning management: failed-payment recovery, pre-dunning warnings and account-updater setup.
Subscriber onboarding flows for the first three orders, where retention is decided.
Cadence control: pause, skip and swap options that intercept cancellations.
A save-first cancellation flow that offers an alternative before it processes a cancel.
Subscribe-and-save conversion for one-time buyers, timed post-delivery.
Platform integration: Recharge, Skio, Loop and similar.
Reporting on churn curves, the voluntary/involuntary split and subscriber LTV.
Payment recovery infrastructure: pre-dunning, retry logic, account updater and mobile card-update flows.
Cohort reporting so each new subscriber group can be compared against the one before it.
Who it's for
Which DTC brands we build and rescue subscriptions for
Brands on Recharge, Skio, Loop or native Shopify subscriptions, whether you're launching a program or rescuing one where churn is quietly outrunning acquisition.
We work in two situations: launching a program where one-time buyers clearly want replenishment, and rescuing one where churn is quietly outrunning acquisition. If your subscriber count is flat while sign-ups look healthy, the leak is retention rather than demand, and that is the fastest place to find real recurring revenue.
How we measure it
How we measure subscription retention performance
Churn by subscription month, the voluntary/involuntary split, save-flow acceptance rate and subscriber LTV vs one-time LTV. When those curves bend, the whole P&L feels it.
We report churn by subscription month rather than a single blended rate, the voluntary versus involuntary split, dunning recovery rate, save-flow acceptance, and subscriber LTV against one-time LTV. Cohort curves are tracked over time, because the honest question is not what churn was last month but whether each new cohort retains better than the last one did.
Frequently asked questions
