Dose #209: Subscription Revenue Growth From 10% to 40% in 3 Months

In this week’s dose, we’re diving into the fundamentals of what makes a good subscription program. Match the offer to consumption, build a ladder of rewards, and finally - product education. This is a solid and profound dose of subscription knowledge.

This week’s dose is also a podcast interview with Arthur Falcone, the founder of Tandem Growth and Arlo. Tune in on your favorite platform:

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription 💊

I had Arthur Falcone on the show this week. He runs Tandem Growth and built a marketing analytics tool called Arlo, and we got into a case study I think a lot of you need to hear.

His team took a women's wellness brand from 10% subscription revenue to north of 40% in about three months. Same products. Same customers. No acquisition miracle. They just started using the subscription program they already had.

That number stuck with me, because the setup is so common. Most brands switch subscriptions on and then walk away. Arthur put it perfectly: the average brand runs 20 apps and uses each one at 5 to 10% of what it can do. Recharge, Skio, whatever you are on, it is basically a blank canvas. The platform can tell you what other merchants do, but it cannot tell you what will work for your brand. The gap is never time or tools. It is the how.

So here are the three moves that drove most of that lift.

1. Match the offer to the SKU, not the catalog

Not every product should be sold the same way, and treating them the same is where brands leave money on the table.

Arthur split the catalog into two buckets. Some SKUs are true subscription products. You take one a day, you run out in 30 days, and there is no real reason to buy a single box. For those, his team reduced the visibility of the one-time option and pushed the subscription forward. Think about it: you are not "trying" a daily supplement for 30 days. You subscribe, and if it does not work, you cancel. A one-time button just adds friction to the path you actually want people on.

Other SKUs are occasional. You reach for them when you have an issue, maybe once a month, maybe once every six months. The number one reason people cancelled these was simple: they had too much product. So instead of losing them, the team let subscribers suppress the next order or stretch the interval. Churn on that product dropped substantially. Yes, the average delivery window went from roughly every 1.5 months to every 3 months, but a happy subscriber who orders less often beats a frustrated one who cancels.

We ran a study a few years back that backs this up. Subscribers who can easily manage and change their subscription are often twice as valuable as those who cannot, even when they buy less frequently, because they stick around.

Takeaway: Sort your SKUs into "should always be a subscription" and "should be flexible." Hide the one-time option on the first group. Give skip, delay, and interval control on the second.

2. Build a ladder that rewards staying, not just signing up

Most brands pour incentives into the first order and then go quiet. Arthur's team did the opposite. They built a milestone rewards ladder that pays off the longer you stay.

Every two orders, the subscriber earns something. Sometimes it is a discount on the next order. Sometimes it is a full-size product, which doubles as an upsell because it can land in their next subscription. Sometimes it is branded merch, which as Arthur said is basically free marketing. A hat with your logo costs you very little and turns a customer into a walking billboard.

Then, crucially, they built what he called a "god mode" tier at the end. After order eight, subscribers get 15% off every order. It makes people feel like they graduated into something. They earned elite status, and now they do not want to give it up.

This is the mindset shift I keep coming back to. In a past episode I said it this way: stop worrying about why people leave and start worrying about why they don't stay. The rewards ladder is that idea made real. You are not plugging a leak. You are giving your best customers a reason to keep climbing.

Takeaway: Map a reward to every second order, escalate the value as it goes, and cap it with a loyalty tier that feels like an achievement. Cheap swag and a "you made it" moment go a long way.

3. Educate through the window where the product proves itself

Here is the one that quietly moves churn more than any discount.

A lot of wellness products take weeks to work. Hormonal supplements, anything you need to be on for 30, 60, or 90 days before you feel the difference. If you leave a new subscriber alone during that window, doubt fills the silence. And the product is not cheap, so the doubt gets loud.

Arthur's team built an ongoing SMS and email cadence that manages expectations directly. This is what you should feel in week one. This is week two. This is week three. The cancellation flow reflects it too. If someone tries to cancel right after their first 30 days, the message meets them where they are: you are only two weeks in, here is what is coming, give it a little longer.

I have seen this work firsthand. Years ago we sat down with a women's supplement brand here in Utah. The whole team kept circling the same issue, and it came down to one thing: their customers did not know how long the product took to be effective. We fixed the messaging around that single point, and they went from double-digit churn to single-digit churn.

You will hear founders in WhatsApp groups say do not email your subscribers, do not send billing reminders, leave them alone. For plenty of products, that is fine. But when you are asking someone to wait 45 days to feel the benefit, silence is how you lose them. You have to hold their hand through it. The bonus: an educated customer is a better customer. They stay longer, and they talk about you.

Takeaway: For any product with a slow payoff, build a week-by-week expectation cadence over SMS and email, and rewrite your cancellation flow to reflect where the subscriber actually is in that timeline.

Bottom line: That jump from 10% to 40% subscription revenue did not come from a new platform or a bigger ad budget. It came from actually using the features already sitting in the account. Match your offers to how each product is really consumed. Reward people for staying, not just for starting. And never let a slow-result product go quiet during the window where the customer decides whether to believe in it. Most of your subscription upside is already paid for. You just have to go turn it on.

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

- Matt Holman 🩺