11 Best Strategies & Tactics to Improve eCommerce Subscription Rates (2025)

💬 Subscriptions are a key initiative and area I've spoken to many brands about, and if it's possible for your brand to implement as an offer as part of the business model (needs to make sense for your product offering), it's absolutely something you should be considering.

These are the core reasons why I love eCommerce subscription models:

• It's a predictable revenue model which can be a big growth lever for scaling (and which investors love if you're wanting to raise down the track)
• Depending on other competitors, I personally believe it can be an awesome competitive advantage - which in turns massively helps with LTV
• Naturally, this can help reduce overall CAC (and have more to reinvest into TOF acquisition/growth)
• If it becomes a decent % of your business, you should in turn see less chance of churn, even during down periods (whether seasonal-related or during tough macro conditions)

It's all about LTV and retention - subscriptions are amazing for helping build this... and the benefits are endless.

Recommended strategy and tactical areas to improve and grow subscriptions

Here are some top focus areas (in my opinion and from experience) that you should be considering/assessing (and even audit) on subscriptions.

I share a specific checklist when it comes to optimising subscription landing pages and even product pages. Make sure to really highlight key elements such as USPs, great imagery, good FAQs/descriptions, UGC embeds, reviews, and slick checkout UX experience.

Something I've been seeing a lot of brands who do subscriptions do recently via checking various FB/IG, Google and TikTok Ads.

They are proving to be really effective from what I've seen, and it makes a lot of sense, especially when you really want to sell new/fresh customers who are coming across your brand, and WHY they need to sub to products.

Ensure customers have the ability to tailor subscriptions with how they want to receive products.

This includes frequency options (how often they want to pay/receive products), easily upgrade/downgrade, and have the ability to pause/stop if they wish. Or even, change products.

Test out various offers that make sense based on customer's behaviours - including taking into account average AOVs.

Knowing AOV segments is a good indicator a customer's willing to spend, especially if similar AOV over periods of time. Then you can also consider how to package similar/complementary products for segments who purchase certain products.

There are lots of segment possibilities - just need to ensure the offer makes sense.

Collab with influencers/UGC creators and run tracked personalised offers through their channels.

That network effect and trust that influencers have built up can really help penetrate audiences to seek out what the subscription offer is about.Unboxing videos and tutorial-focused videos work really well from experience.

Then of course, it's one thing to do a one-off post, but the key to this strategy to ensure you distribute the content out via key channels like socials and email automation flows.

Recommend product SKUs based on user segments/behaviours with the site and purchasing history.

Combine offers with FOMO/urgency messaging, and this will certainly help improve chances for good conversions.

What works really well for subscriptions offers is designing subscription promotions around seasonal themes/holidays - especially for Black Friday and Christmas period. Another effective strategy is enhancing the experience with holiday-themed packaging for subscriptions.

Utiltise post-purchase 1-click upsells in the subscription checkout process - particularly with thank you pages.

Just simply highlight automatically complementary products that make sense for the user post-purchase. Additionally, leverage cross-selling techniques across product pages, and if you already have customers on your database, you can send automated emails for "recent product views" to highlight the offer further.

Highlight customer support to your audience as something you really care about - highlight it across your site, socials and email.

I mentioned this earlier in regards to "win-back" campaigns, but it's important to break down segments and deliver new offers based on their behaviour/interaction with your store.

Use a mix of data collection methods, including the likes of pop-ups and asking for 1-click answers, to prompting customers to respond to a personalised email you sent to them.

The main takeaway here is that too many brands rely on "tools" to collect answers and data, which is still very important, but you need to mix with qualitative insights, whether that is through email replies, chat support answers, or via the phone.