If your save rate looks great but churn still hurts, you’re fixing the problem too late. Here’s how to actually stop it.

Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

If your subscription program relies on winning people back at the cancellation screen, you're fighting an uphill battle.

The healthiest subscription programs don’t fight churn at the finish line, they prevent it from ever showing up. 

That means treating subscription like an experience, not a setting. It starts before a customer ever clicks “subscribe.”

They make subscription the obvious choice from the first click. They treat the portal like prime real estate. And they track engagement metrics that actually predict retention, not the vanity ones that look good in a dashboard.

Today, we’re flipping the mic to Gina Perrelli and Audrey Giblin from Stay AI, hosts of the Chew on This Retention & Subscription Podcast. They’ve been in the trenches helping brands cut churn in half, and their framework is worth stealing.

🍽 On the Menu:

Let’s get into it.

You can watch the whole conversation with Gina and Audrey here:

If you're prepping for BFCM, you've probably locked in creative and ad budgets. But do you actually know if your setup is competitive?

Most operators don't. They have no idea if 55% checkout conversion is good or if 9% post-purchase take rate is leaving money on the table.

Aftersell just released their 2025 Upsell & Revenue Benchmarks Report with data from 40,000+ brands. It shows you:

All broken down by industry so you can see where you stand with examples from brands like Hexclad, Caraway, and TruHeight showing you exactly what high-performing setups look like.

If you're underperforming, you still have time to fix it before peak season.

👉 Download the full benchmarks report here (it's free)

Need help figuring out what to actually do with this data? Book a strategy call with the Aftersell team to get your setup audited before the holiday rush.

Every subscription program lives or dies by the first purchase. But if the offer isn’t strong enough to make subscribing feel natural, retention never stands a chance.

Think of this as your first line of defense against churn. A great retention program starts with a great acquisition experience.

This is where most brands lose people. They frame subscription as an afterthought, something you might “upgrade” to later, instead of presenting it as the main way to buy.

The brands that succeed make subscribing the clear next step. Their offers hit a balance that pulls people in without wrecking margins.

The benchmark: 25% off + free shipping. 

If you're offering 10-15%, you're getting beat by competitors who understand that getting people in the door matters more than protecting first-order margin. 

Sometimes you'll see 50% discounts, but those often lead to 50% cancel rates after the first order. Test what works for your metrics, but 25% + free shipping is where most winning programs land.

Once the offer’s locked, the next challenge is getting customers to notice it.

When you have a $100 AOV, "save $25" feels bigger than "25% off." At $30 AOV, just say 25%. Don't make people do math.

Keep subscription benefits visible even when customers select one-time. 

A lot of brands collapse the benefits when someone clicks a one-time purchase. Keep them expanded and grayed out. Show them everything they're missing: free shipping, exclusive gifts, early access. 

Once you've nailed the offer and the display, make subscription the default option on your product pages.

Brands worry conversion rates will drop, but in practice conversion either stays flat or improves more than churn increases. Test it on one product if you're nervous.

The takeaway: if subscription isn’t the obvious choice at checkout, no amount of “retention strategy” will save you later.

Once a customer reaches the cancellation screen, you’re already playing defense. That’s why save rates can look impressive while churn continues to rise.

“high” save rate often hides the real problem: customers are still reaching the cancel button too often. 

A 30% save rate doesn’t mean retention is healthy. It means 70% of customers still left. 

The goal isn’t to win more cancels back, it’s to stop them from getting that far.

Focusing only on the cancellation survey mistakes symptoms for causes. The survey can tell you why people say they are leaving, but not why they got there.

The better approach? Track what happens earlier in the experience. The most reliable signal of healthy retention is the ratio of positive to negative portal actions.

Positive actions include "add product," "reactivate," or "swap next order." 

Negative actions include "cancel," "remove product," or "skip repeatedly."

Pull that report each month and look for movement. When positive actions rise, engagement strengthens. If they stagnate, the portal is probably too rigid.

But don't ignore the cancellation survey entirely. It still matters, just not the way you think.

Those cancel reasons aren't problems to solve in the flow, they're clues about what to fix earlier. 

Treat those insights like product feedback, not panic buttons.

Even small changes move the needle. Huron, a men’s health and wellness brand, changed their skip button from "Skip next order" to "Skip this order. I have enough for now." 

That single tweak reframed skipping as normal behavior instead of the first step toward canceling. Retention improved immediately.

That's the pattern: use cancellation data to inform what you build earlier in the experience, not just what discount you offer at the end.

When you fix problems upstream, fewer people reach the cancel screen in the first place. Which means your save rate might actually go down, but that's a good thing if overall retention is going up. A 15% save rate with low overall churn is better than a 30% save rate with high overall churn.

Use cancellation data to make upstream improvements, not to plug holes downstream. The healthiest programs are the ones where customers never feel the need to cancel at all.

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You've got the fundamentals down: the right offer, the right metrics. Now it's time to remove the friction that makes customers want to leave.

Churn doesn’t just come from bad pricing or poor service. It usually comes from a dozen tiny moments that make staying feel harder than leaving: A confusing portal. An email that sounds like a bill. A skip button that makes canceling easier than pausing.

Here are 8 things you can fix today that make managing a subscription feel effortless instead of annoying:

1. Turn on add-ons

Add every product you can into your portal. Even the “who would buy that?” ones. Match your subscription discount on those one-time add-ons to remove friction and increase AOV.

2. Refresh your banner every 30 days

That top banner is free advertising space. Feature a new product, highlight subscriber perks, or just rotate the creative. A fresh look makes the portal feel alive. If you only have 30 minutes this week to optimize something, start here.

3. Enable partial skip

Let customers skip one product in a multi-item sub instead of deleting it. It keeps their routine intact and reduces accidental churn. Partial skip is one of those toggles that takes five minutes to turn on and pays off for months.

4. Fix your upcoming order subject lines

Stop writing “We’re charging your card.” That’s a cancellation invitation. Go with “Your [product] ships in 3 days” or “Next order’s almost here.” Positive framing cuts panic cancels.

5. Check stock before billing

Don’t let out-of-stocks trigger failed orders. If one product’s unavailable, still fulfill the rest. Reliability builds trust faster than any loyalty points.

6. Let people merge or split subscriptions

Customers shouldn’t have to email support to change frequency or combine products. Give them that control, it reduces friction and tickets.

7. Automate winbacks

Set up behavior-based winback flows. Most email platforms can do this in minutes. Don’t guess when to reach out; let data decide.

8. Simplify navigation

If your mom or any non-operator can’t figure out how to skip or change an address, it’s too complicated. Test it with someone outside your team.

Small tweaks compound quickly. 

You’ll see churn drop not because you added a new flow, but because you removed friction that made customers want to leave.