Dose #180: Acquisition versus Retention - See What You're Missing

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription 💊

This week we’re diving into missing connections in your subscription program. First, we talk about the link between acquisition and retention, then onboarding emails, and finally testing for incrementality.

This week’s dose is also an interview with Eric Rausch, the founder of New Standard Co. Eric runs a data-driven retention agency that looks at the entire purchase experience to build up lifetime revenue. Listen in on your favorite platform:

The Missing Link Between Acquisition and Retention

When I talk with subscription operators, there’s always this invisible wall between the people who bring customers in and the people who try to keep them. The acquisition team focuses on growth, the retention team focuses on churn, and both often forget they’re solving the same problem. That separation is where so much opportunity is lost.

This week’s dose is all about building bridges across gaps — and how the best subscription brands are building complete, connected experiences for their customers.

1. Retention starts with how you acquire

You can’t fix retention if acquisition sets the wrong expectations. Every rebill rate and churn number tells a story about the promises made at the point of sale. When customers buy into claims that don’t align with what the product actually delivers, retention efforts become damage control instead of growth.

If acquisition and retention teams shared data more freely — things like cancel reasons, testimonial trends, or R&D insights — brands could adjust their ad copy, landing pages, and onboarding content to set better expectations. I’ve seen this transform rebuild rates just by aligning how customers start with what they later experience.

Let’s talk through two critical examples of this. First, classic steep discount and sale offers result in higher than average churn. Those buyers are bargain-hunting and aren’t long-time subscribers. Those offers can work, but retention’s main job in this instance is sifting through the bad to find great customers with strong offers. However, you can’t do a lot in this instance.

The second example is finding offers that result in stronger subscribers, like certain products, bundles, bulk options, or gift with purchase. When retention starts seeing stronger numbers, it’s critical to show this to acquisition so they can keep experimenting to get those offers just right.

2. Keep onboarding simple and specific

Most brands overcomplicate onboarding. They chase personalization for its own sake and end up confusing customers. The reality is that clarity beats complexity.

When a new subscriber joins, they shouldn’t have to guess what success looks like. Simple messages like “Take this daily for the first seven days, here’s what you should feel,” are far more effective than long, abstract education.

One of my favorite examples comes from AG1. They designed a “scale the conversation” visual that explained their product at three levels: high school, college, and PhD. Every customer could understand what was happening to their body in the way that made sense to them. That clarity builds confidence, and confident customers stick around.

Onboarding emails should be doubling down on promises made in acquisition funnels so subscribers have a complete experience. Furthermore, addressing common churn reasons, complaints, or reminding customers of perks/benefits are critical too.

3. Test for incrementality, not vanity

Too many brands think testing means trying new subject lines. That’s surface-level optimization. The real work is understanding incrementality — whether what you’re doing is actually improving lifetime value.

For example, if you’re running rebill emails, test whether a new message reduces churn or increases rebill rates compared to your baseline. The same goes for testing gift-with-purchase offers or loyalty rewards. Don’t assume something “feels” right; prove that it moves retention in a measurable way.

Continuing on this trend of bridging acquisition and retention, when you find campaigns that work better than expected, those are emails that can be pulled into other flows, like onboarding, rebills, or winbacks as well!

The bottom line:
Acquisition and retention aren’t separate disciplines. They’re both driving to the same goal: revenue. The brands that win are the ones that align their promises, educate their customers simply, and measure what actually matters.

Until next Tuesday, that’s your Subscription Prescription. 💊

 - Matt Holman 🩺

The Subscription Doc