SUBSCRIPTION CASE STUDIES
SUBSCRIPTION CASE STUDIES

Subscription Results From Real DTC Brands

Real numbers from subscription brands we have worked with: take rate, retention at order 3, saved cancellations and reactivated subscribers. Your brand could be next.
SunMed subscription lifecycle emails designed by RetainUP
CASE STUDY
SunMed logo
CBD SUPPLEMENTS
61% → 73% 90-Day Repeat Purchase Rate

SunMed is a fast-scaling CBD subscription brand with 300+ stores. The subscription program needed retention to compound as the subscriber base grew past 2,000.

We rebuilt the subscriber journey as a connected habit-formation system.

SunMed monthly cohort table showing month 3 retention before and after working with RetainUP
Triple Whale Cohort
73%

90-Day RPR

37.2%

cancel save rate

25%

subscriber growth

Boka lifecycle emails designed by RetainUP
Boka logo
Oral HEALTHCARE
CASE STUDY
41% → 63% 90-Day Repeat Purchase Rate

Boka is a fast-scaling oral healthcare subscription brand.
Month 3 subscription retention sat below 50%.

We rebuilt the lifecycle as a connected habit-formation system. Same brand, same products, better retention.

Boka monthly cohort table showing month 3 retention before and after working with RetainUP
Triple Whale Cohort
63%

90-Day RPR

42%

higher 6-month LTV

10.4%

higher AOV

Worked For 30+ Subscription Brands Like You

Subscription brands RetainUP has worked with, grouped by beauty and personal care, health and wellness, and food and beverages
FreshCap subscription emails designed by RetainUP
FreshCap logo
Mushroom Supplements
CASE STUDY

69% → 79%

Returning Customer Rate
Bioderma logo
Global Skincare
CASE STUDY

31% → 47%

Repeat Purchase Rate in the Middle East
Bioderma launch and subscription emails designed by RetainUP
ZitSticka emails designed by RetainUP
ZitSticka logo
DTC SKINCARE
CASE STUDY

44% → 58%

90-day Repeat Purchase Rate
Client retention dashboards: 58% returning customers, $1.6M returning customer revenue and lifetime value up from $81 to $128

How a $5M subscription brand's near-collapse rewired our entire agency

“We’re losing 22% of subscribers every month.
We pay to acquire them.
They cancel before we break even.
We’re going broke.”

CEO of a subscription CPG brand who hired us to work on retention.

From the outside, everything looks right.
Klaviyo running. Recharge billing. Paid ads are working.

Churn was brutal.
They lost 50-60% of subscribers by month 3.
A $5M brand losing $400K a quarter to invisible churn.

They had tried everything.
Email agency. Loyalty app. Better creative. Stacked discounts.

Then we started calling their customers.

It turned out the customers weren’t consuming the supplements.
Most fell off the wagon. Without consumption, no results.
Without results, no reason to subscribe.

We had to create the habit.

I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. The key takeaway:

“Habits Are Built Through Cues, Cravings, Responses, and Rewards”

So we built a system around it.
Cues through onboarding emails.
Cravings through anticipation messaging.
Responses through the cancel flow.
Rewards through surprise and delight.

This became Subscription LTV Maximizer™.
30+ touchpoints across email, SMS, and the subscription platform.
The full subscriber journey. One connected system.

We’ve since shipped this for Boka. SunMed. FreshCap. 30+ others.

Monthly churn dropped from 22% to 9% in 30 days.
The brand hit its first $1M subscription month soon after.

That’s when we saw the pattern.
Every $1-10M subscription brand was running into the same wall.

Email agencies showing them Klaviyo dashboards while their cohorts bled out.
Subscription platforms have been running default settings since launch.
Three different teams. Nobody owns the subscriber journey.

If your brand is on that wall, you’re not alone.
You’ve built the brand. You’ve nailed the product.
The subscription metrics tell you something is leaking. You can’t name it.
You’ve tried email agencies. You’ve tried platform tweaks.
None of it moved the cohort curve.

That’s the gap Subscription LTV Maximizer™ closes.

Three phases: Activate, Retain, Scale.
Each one a 10-day sprint. Live in your stack by day 30.

Most agencies treat subscription as a billing setting.
We treat it as a habit-formation system.

Retention you can see in the cohorts

Words From Subscription Founders

Kristen Osborn, CMO of SunMed

Kristen Osborn

CMO, SunMed (CBD Supplements)

Our biggest focus was consistency, and I love that RetainUP built on that. Their work is so much better than what we did, I mean, I can’t even compare.

Juan Palacio of BloomsyBox

Juan Palacio

CEO, BloomsyBox (Flower & Gifting)

Unlike other email agencies we have worked with, they have a deep understanding of the subscription journey.

John Lawlor, founder of MyCoSoul

John Lawlor

Founder, MyCoSoul (Mushroom Coffee)

I had them do our subscription lifecycle. In a month, they generated higher subscription revenue than our past performance.

Hitesh Dhingra, CEO of The Man Company

Hitesh Dhingra

CEO, The Man Company (Skincare)

They take subscriber retention seriously. The repeat purchase journeys are exactly what we needed.

Matthew Redmond, CEO of Le Peach

Matthew Redmond

CEO, Le Peach (Health & Fitness)

40% of store revenue comes from RetainUP’s automations. Best investment we’ve made.

Brian Godwin, founder of If It Barks

Brian Godwin

Founder, If It Barks (Pet Accessories)

They understood our customers and built the right lifecycle automations. $40-60K extra every month.

Subscription LTV Scorecard report: cover scoring a brand 59 out of 100, a radar chart of the eight dimensions and a score bar for each
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