Context
Subscription retention is the most important lever for a SaaS business. At GravityKit, the 2023 subscriber cohort was retaining at around 32%, and annual cancellations were running high. I set out to systematically improve retention across every stage of the customer lifecycle.
My role
I owned the full retention strategy: identifying churn drivers, building lifecycle marketing systems, and partnering with product on pricing and packaging to improve customer-product fit.
Actions taken
- Built renewal email cadences and win-back campaigns targeting subscribers at key risk points in their lifecycle.
- Developed onboarding and lifecycle education programs including video courses, livestreams, and beginner guides to improve product adoption.
- Ran cancellation analysis to identify churn patterns, feeding insights back into product development and messaging.
- Created targeted landing pages designed to attract ideal customer profiles more likely to retain long-term.
- Partnered with the CEO on pricing and plan packaging improvements to better match customer needs at acquisition.
Results
- Cohort retention improved by 24%, with each successive cohort outperforming the last.
- Subscription cancellations dropped by 58% in comparable cohort windows.
- Retention gains compounded over the full two-year period, driven by systematic lifecycle improvements rather than one-off fixes.
