Dose #201: Stop Obsessing Over Email - The Real Levers for Subscription Retention

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription 💊

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I had a great conversation this week with Josh Tay, VP of Strategy and Fulfillment at Kronos Agency. Josh has spent years in retention, leading email and strategy at Common Thread Co. and No Limit Email before joining Kronos.

And when I asked him how he thinks about email for subscription brands, he said something I wasn't expecting.

"That's actually the wrong question."

He wasn't being contrarian. He was making a real point. And by the end of our conversation, I agreed with him.

Today I'm sharing three things from that conversation that I think will change how you look at subscription growth.

Why This Matters

Most subscription brands treat email as the engine. Flows, campaigns, win-backs, re-engagement. They pour time and resources into the channel and then wonder why the results feel underwhelming.

Josh's argument is that email is downstream of the decisions that actually matter. And if you start with email before you've figured out those upstream decisions, you're optimizing the wrong thing.

1. Offers Are the Lever. Email Is Just the Channel.

Here's how Josh frames subscription strategy. There are three things worth focusing on:

• Getting more people into the subscription program (front-end offer)

• Keeping subscribers on the program (retention)

• Getting existing subscribers to add a second subscription line (upsell)

Each one requires a different offer. And the offer is what drives the outcome. Email, SMS, organic social, Meta chat -- those are just ways to deliver the offer to the right person.

The practical implication: before you touch your flows or campaign calendar, ask what offer you're actually leading with. A compelling offer will outperform a perfectly timed email with a weak one every time.

This also applies to win-backs. The question isn't "what time should we send the re-engagement email?" The question is "what offer is going to make a lapsed subscriber actually want to come back?"

Takeaway: Optimize the offer first. Then figure out the best channel and timing to deliver it.

2. Your Priority Changes Everything About Your Strategy

This is where things get nuanced. Most brands treat subscription growth like one single problem. Josh treats it as three separate problems that require completely different strategies.

If your goal is to grow your subscriber base, you focus on front-end offer conversion. How aggressive does the initial offer need to be to drive take rate? What is your LTV-to-CAC ratio at that offer level? Is the margin still there?

If your goal is reducing the drop-off from order one to order two, you're thinking about onboarding. A starter kit. A free gift with the second order that's featured right on the product page. Emails and SMS that let people know what's coming.

If your goal is getting subscribers to add a second product line, that's a completely different funnel. Different messaging, different offer mechanics, different timing.

Here's the part that stings a little: Josh pointed out that if someone bought your product twice at full price when you were already offering 15% off to subscribe, they probably just don't want a subscription. And that's okay. Forcing them into one isn't a strategy. It's fighting the current.

Subscriptions are a mechanism for repeat purchasing. They are not the destination. If a customer comes back consistently on their own, that's a win. You don't have to put everyone in a box.

Takeaway: Define which of the three problems you're actually solving before you build any strategy around it. The approach looks completely different depending on your answer.

3. LTV Is a Means, Not an End

This one shifted my thinking a little.

We talk about LTV constantly. Growing it, protecting it, using it to justify retention spend. But Josh made a point worth sitting with.

The reason to maximize LTV isn't profit for the sake of profit. It's so you can afford to spend more to acquire a customer. Higher LTV means you can outbid competitors on paid media and win the customer in the first place.

Once you understand that, you start asking better questions. Is improving LTV from order three to order four actually the highest-leverage use of your resources right now? Or are there other things -- catalog penetration, brand collabs, new product drops -- that would move the business further?

This is where silos become dangerous. If your retention team is optimizing for repeat purchase rate and your growth team is optimizing for new subscriber volume, they can both hit their numbers and still leave the brand in a bad spot. Josh's prescription: shared KPIs. One set of metrics that both teams are accountable to. That is the only way these functions actually reinforce each other.

Takeaway: LTV matters because it funds acquisition. Protect it, but don't treat growing it as the default priority. Ask whether it's the highest-leverage problem to solve right now.

One More Thing: Memberships for Non-Consumable Brands

We spent a chunk of the conversation on something I found genuinely interesting. Apparel and fashion brands -- verticals that don't have a natural replenishment cycle -- are finding ways to introduce membership programs that work.

One jewelry brand Josh worked with launched a monthly membership built around exclusivity. Members get access to four new items that are never sold to the general public. Collector's items, limited runs. Members also get early access and a discount code for regular launches that expires in three days.

The hook for non-members? Once a month, the brand shows them what they missed. Just enough to sting.

For an apparel brand, they built a yearly membership priced at 1.5x the average order value. Members get that full amount back in store credits. The brand frontloads LTV, the customer gets full value, and both sides win. Josh described it as a no-brainer offer, and it is.

The playbook works because it creates a reason to come back that isn't just "we sent you an email." It's exclusivity, novelty, and perceived value. That's an offer. Email just carries the message.

Bottom Line

Email is not the starting point. Offers are.

Figure out which of the three subscription problems you're actually trying to solve. Build the right offer for that problem. Then use email, SMS, social, or whatever channel reaches your customer best to deliver it.

The brands that get this right aren't the ones with the best flows. They're the ones who understand their customers well enough to make an offer that's genuinely hard to say no to.

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

 - Matt Holman 🩺

The Subscription Doc