Subscription Prescription | Weekly Doses to Boost Ecommerce Revenue

New tools launch every week, Stripe just entered the Shopify subscription space, and AI-powered analytics are everywhere. So how do you decide what actually deserves a place in your subscription tech stack?

In this episode, I step back to look at the state of the subscription industry and share the four things I evaluate in every subscription tech stack before recommending a single change or, worse, a full replatform.

What we cover:
• Why Stripe's move into Shopify subscriptions signals a bigger play around the purchasing process itself
• The trap of fixating on one small feature and losing sight of your whole program
• Why replatforming is rarely your best first move (and what to fix instead)
• Acquisition and offer strategy: the highest-impact area that barely touches your subscription app
• Cancel flow and customer portal testing: where high-volume brands quietly lose subscribers
• Processing health and why it depends more on your business than your platform
• How third-party dunning and CX involvement improve your processing score and cut chargebacks
• Evaluating integrations with tools like analytics platforms and interactive email

The bigger point: more data and AI recommendations are great, but they only pay off if you have the bandwidth to work on the parts of the program you actually control. Get these four things right and you set yourself up for a stronger Black Friday, Cyber Monday and a healthier program long term.

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Most brands turn on subscriptions and stop there. In this episode, Matthew Holman talks with Arthur Falcone (Tandem Growth, Arlo) about how they took one wellness brand from 10% subscription revenue to north of 40% in about three months.

What we cover:

- Why activating subscriptions is only step one, and how underused features quietly cap your revenue
- Mapping SKUs by cadence, so daily-use products push subscription while topical products get flexible skip options
- How adding a skip and suppress option cut churn and extended time between orders (and why that is a win, not a loss)
- Reducing one-time purchase visibility on products that make no sense to buy once
- Building a milestone rewards ladder, with discounts, full-size upsells, and free merch every few orders
- Creating an elite tier after order eight to extend LTV well past the 12-month mark
- Using onboarding and cancellation flows to manage expectations for products that take 45 days to work
- Why the how, not just the what, is what most founders and platforms miss

Bias is real. Even great consultants default to their hammer and nail. We talk through why building trust first matters, why worrying about why people do not stay beats worrying about why they leave, and how an analysis layer can surface the exact recharge features to fix and estimate the revenue lift.

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The show went quiet for the summer. It's back, and the next few months are already booked.

I spent the break traveling, running the event business, working with clients, and building new tools for the subscription community. In this episode I catch you up on where I've been, what I built, and who's coming on the show next.

What we cover:
- Why I stepped back for the summer and what I was building
- The new tools at thecancelpage.com: an AI chatbot, an offer library, an email library, and a subscription ceiling calculator
- An audit special coming with Flaunt.ai at a reduced cost
- Why the fall lineup is built around retention, acquisition, and knowing your numbers

Guests coming up on the show:
- Arthur Falcone (Arlo AI, Tandem Growth) on using marketing insight to grow subscriptions
- John Blair, a fractional CFO, on LTV to CAC and what that math should be telling you
- Ben Clark on retention lessons from Humann, Ancestral Supplements, and ARMRA
- John Roman of BattlBox on one of my favorite subscription programs

New episodes go out every Tuesday. Next week is the first full one back.

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AI agents are becoming the place your next subscriber starts their search. So how do you get found, and recommended, when a shopper asks ChatGPT instead of Google? What's helpful for subscription brands and retention leaders right now?

In David Bradley's first episode as host, he sits down with three people who live this every day: Al (retention lead at Puro Air and one of our SubRx docs), Hamish Gunasekara (co-founder and CEO of Catalog, formerly Afterpay and Cash App Commerce), and Matt (co-founder of SubRx and longtime host of the show).

Inside this episode:

Why personalization is flipping from your website to the AI
The two storefronts that brands can run, one for humans and one for agents
Why AI is not as impressed by your 10% off as you think
How to structure your subscription product data so agents recommend the right offer
Where AI shopping protocols are heading next

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More at thesubscriptiondoc.com

Matt, David, Al, Hamish