Subscription Prescription | Weekly Doses to Boost Ecommerce Revenue

Most subscription brands are losing revenue to failed payments - not because customers don't want to pay, but because they're being sent to the wrong place to fix it. In this episode, I break down how payment processing actually works, what your processor health score means, and how to build a dunning strategy that actually recovers payments.

What we cover:
How tokenization and payment processing work in subscription commerce
Why your processor health score matters (and what hurts it)
The math on why a 1% improvement in processing success is massive at scale
In-app vs. third-party tools for payment recovery (Fly Code, Redux, Butter Payments)
Why segmenting by payment method — credit card, Shop Pay, PayPal — is the key to better dunning
How to stop sending PayPal subscribers to the wrong update link
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Amazon has real advantages - trust, convenience, price, and discoverability. But that doesn't mean your Shopify store can't win. In this episode, I break down exactly why Amazon pulls subscribers away from DTC brands and what you can do to fight back. What we cover:
The 4 reasons customers choose Amazon over your site
Why discounting alone won't beat them
How to build an offer that's impossible to replicate on Amazon
Tools that bring Amazon-level delivery transparency to your subscription experience
Why SMS is one of your most powerful retention tools
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AI is changing how people discover products online. And if your subscription offer isn't structured correctly, AI agents will skip right past it.

In this episode, I sit down with my business partner David Bradley (and the founder of QPilot, Autoship Cloud, and Nextime) to break down how agentic commerce actually works, why subscription products need to be optimized differently than one-time purchases, and what brands can do right now to make sure AI recommends their subscription offer.

What we cover:
Why Google's new subscription data property is a major signal for the future of commerce
How AI agents shop on behalf of consumers (and what that means for your product pages)
The role of explainer pages, structured data, and catalog organization in AI discoverability
Why positive AND negative context both matter for getting found
What Chewy and PetSmart are doing right that most brands aren't
Simple steps any brand can take today to prep their subscription for AI search
Guest: David Bradley LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebrad/
Website: https://autoship.cloud

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Most subscription brands invest heavily in getting the first order. Then they go silent. That gap between purchase and second shipment is where you lose subscribers, and most brands don't even realize it's happening. In this episode, I break down why post-purchase communication is the most overlooked lever in subscription retention and what to do about it.

What we cover:
• Why the window between order 1 and order 2 is the highest-risk moment for churn
• The communication mistakes most brands make after checkout
• How to build a post-purchase flow that actually drives retention
• What top-performing subscription brands do differently in the first 30 days
• Why onboarding is a retention strategy, not just a customer experience nice-to-have

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SpaceGoods does 80% of their business on subscription and their #1 churn reason is cost. So they tested making the subscription 25% cheaper. It didn't move the needle at all.

In this episode, I sit down with Bea Le Coultre, Retention & CRM Manager at SpaceGoods, to talk about what actually drives subscription retention. We cover how they coach customers through their first two weeks, why matching the right product to the right buyer matters more than discounts, and the surprising experiment that boosted retention by 20%+ without changing the price.

What we cover:
• Why 80% of SpaceGoods revenue comes from subscriptions (and how they built that)
• How ads overpromising on benefits creates downstream churn
• The "starter kit" strategy for converting first-time buyers into subscribers
• Why the first two weeks are make-or-break for retention
• How product usage coaching (time of day, preparation method) impacts reorder rates
• Using post-purchase surveys to segment by pain point
• Billing reminder testing with Zamo and Klaviyo
• The price reduction experiment that proved discounts don't fix churn
• How asking subscribers to set a 90-day goal boosted retention 20%+

Guest: Beatrice Le Coultre
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatricelecoultre/
Website: https://spacegoods.com

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