Subscriber Retention & AI Insights Blog

Martin Johnsen shares insights from 100+ retention experiments at INMA’s Subscriber Retention Master Class, hosted by Greg Piechota.

June 23, 2025

Post webinar blog: INMA subscriber retention master class with Martin Johnsen

Subscriber retention is not about luck, instinct, or a few well-timed emails. It comes from building a scalable system of continuous experimentation across the subscriber lifecycle. That’s the core lesson from our CEO, Martin Jonsson, who took the virtual stage at INMA’s latest Subscriber Retention Master Class, hosted by Greg Piechota, to unpack what his team learned from running over 100 experiments with publishers around the world.

Nikolai Skelbo

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How To Identify And Fix LTV Leaks Using Lifecycle Automation

Lifetime value is one of the most important indicators of subscription health, yet it is rarely managed directly. Many teams focus on acquisition efficiency, campaign performance, or short-term engagement metrics, while LTV is treated as an outcome rather than an operational goal. In reality, LTV is shaped by how consistently a business identifies friction, reinforces value, and intervenes at the right moments across the subscriber lifecycle. When those moments are missed, value erodes through delayed activation, declining engagement, poorly timed pricing decisions, and ineffective save attempts.

Subscription companies orchestrating CRM, CDP, analytics, and messaging tools to power scalable, measurable retention automation.

Building retention automation that works across CRM, CDP, and messaging tools

Subscription companies reach a turning point when manual lifecycle management can no longer sustain growth. Signals live in multiple systems. Journeys fire from disconnected tools. Audiences are rebuilt repeatedly because no single source owns identity, engagement, and monetization. Retention automation only scales when the tools behind it can work together without friction.

Illustration of a retention automation roadmap showing predictive audiences, experiments, and automated lifecycle journeys.

Retention automation roadmap for subscription companies

Subscription companies are increasingly treating retention automation as the backbone of sustainable growth. Retention is the force that determines whether revenue compounds or plateaus.

data foundations you need for automating lifecycle marketing

The data foundations you need before you automate lifecycle marketing

Most teams want to automate lifecycle marketing as quickly as possible. Journeys, triggered campaigns, predictive audiences, and retention flows all look powerful on a diagram. In practice, the quality of those journeys depends entirely on the data underneath them.

Customer retention strategies that strengthen long-term revenue

Retention is the most stable source of growth for any subscription business. Acquisition may drive spikes in signups, but retention determines how much revenue remains, compounds, and becomes predictable. What separates high-performing SaaS companies is their ability to shape user behavior over time with deliberate, measurable strategies.

Automated journey converting trial users into subscribers

Improving free trial conversion in subscription businesses with simple retention experiments

Free trials bring subscribers through the door, but too often, they walk right back out. Consumer subscription companies spend heavily on acquisition, yet trial-to-paid conversion and early retention remain among the most under-optimized stages of the lifecycle.The good news is that most improvements come from tightening existing systems without rebuilding anything. Our data from conducting hundreds of customer experiments shows that small, targeted lifecycle updates compound into measurable retention lift. Based on our experience, we have created a list of seven tried and tested ways to improve free trial conversion in subscription businesses.

Visualization of predictive models connecting experimentation, automation, and retention metrics in a subscription lifecycle by Subsets.

Predictive models for closing feedback loop in retention experimentation

Retention experimentation has evolved from reactive measurement to predictive optimization. Today, businesses are no longer satisfied with knowing what worked. Commercial teams now need to understand why, for whom, and what to do next for building successful retention engines.

Illustration of lifecycle marketing software connecting acquisition, engagement, and retention stages to improve subscriber lifetime value.

How lifecycle marketing software powers retention and revenue growth

Lifecycle marketing software is the system used to move customers from first contact to long-term loyal subscribers. Rather than treating acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, and reactivation as separate campaigns, this software allows all stages of the journey to be managed automatically, intelligently, and at scale.

The complete guide to lifecycle marketing automation for subscription businesses

Lifecycle marketing automation is the process of transforming every stage of the customer journey into a measurable and adaptive system. Instead of managing disconnected campaigns, automation ensures that messages, offers, and experiments evolve with customer behavior, from acquisition to renewal and reactivation.

Measuring the impact of upsell experiments in subscription businesses.

How to measure the impact of upsell experiments

Most marketers default to click-through rates or open rates when evaluating upsell campaigns. These metrics signal engagement, but they don’t prove value.

Boost subscriber retention with lifecycle mapping, personalized messaging, structured experiments, and automated journeys that drive growth

How to improve the retention rate for subscribers

The most common misconception about consumer subscription is that it is easier to retain a subscriber than to acquire a new one. Businesses can utilize retention as a lever for sustainable growth. With retention, you can lower acquisition pressure, stabilize recurring revenue, and increase the lifetime value of your subscribers.

AI-powered email marketing boosting subscriber retention, showing lifecycle stages from awareness to reactivation with automated journeys.

AI-driven email marketing for customer retention

Email is one of the most direct and measurable ways to build lasting subscriber relationships. This channel reaches people where they are, and gives them space to take action while providing clear insight into what drives engagement. In 2025, hyperpersonalization and automation are a must-have combination for subscription-based businesses because they allow every send, subject line, and offer to reflect real subscriber behavior.

Scaling results turn single lifecycle experiments into compounding revenue gains. When outcomes are promoted into always-on journeys, they result in consistency, efficiency, and speed for businesses.

Turning experiment wins into automated lifecycle journeys

Lifecycle experimentation produces insights, but the biggest impact comes when those insights power automated journeys. These journeys ensure that every stage of the subscriber lifecycle, pre-life, early life, in-life, late life, and after life, benefits from proven learnings.

Leading teams in 2025 drive retention through structured lifecycle experimentation, AI-powered testing, and KPI-aligned decision-making.

State of lifecycle experimentation in 2025

In 2025, AI has become a baseline feature across MarTech platforms. Subject lines update in real time, customer journeys respond to behavioral inputs, and predictive models support decision-making at every stage. But while automation has scaled, the most consistent retention gains come from teams that build experimentation into the structure of their lifecycle strategy.

4 stages of attribution maturity discussed starting from manual reporting and ending with predictive models leading to better decision quality and high retention.

Attribution maturity as a catalyst for growth strategy

Attribution is the foundation of modern marketing decision-making. The more accurately you can connect activity across the funnel, the more confidently you can allocate budget, optimize campaigns, and accelerate revenue.However, attribution capabilities don’t mature overnight, and most organizations move through stages starting with reactive reporting and advancing toward predictive intelligence that closes the loop between engagement and business outcomes.

testing maturity drives sustainable subscriber retention through structured experimentation and constant optimization

How testing and constant optimization drive long-term subscriber retention

Retention performance improves when testing is systematic, scalable, and built into the day-to-day work of retention teams. While most teams begin with tactical experiments in reaction to poor performance, greater impact comes from evolving toward a continuous cycle of audience segmentation, structured experimentation, and automation. This maturity unlocks compounding returns in engagement in the form of lifetime value, pageviews, and subscriber longevity, etc.

Measuring subscriber performance beyond open rate & CTR using retention lift rate, LTV, and real engagement.

Measuring subscriber performance beyond open rate and CTR

Open rates and click-through rates (CTR) have long been the default metrics for measuring the success of subscriber performance. While they provide a quick pulse check on campaign delivery, they do not reveal whether subscribers are being retained, engaging with content, forming habits, or increasing in value over time.

Evolving segmentation from static lists to intelligent retention engines

Segmentation is often the starting point for retention and its importance only grows as strategies become more sophisticated. As subscriber behavior fragments and expectations rise, segmentation must evolve to keep pace. Modern retention depends not just on message quality, but on timing, relevance, and audience insight. With data streaming in from systems like billing, engagement, subscriptions, and support, the challenge is turning complexity into action. This post outlines four levels of segmentation maturity, showing how subscription media companies can move from static cohorts to real-time, behavior-led personalization with Subsets.

Scaling subscriber retention with automation and triggers

A well-timed nudge can transform passive users into loyal ones, but as products evolve and audiences fragment, the logic behind automation must do more than react. It needs to be proactive.

How to design smarter retention journeys with audiences and experiments

Sustainable retention comes from understanding who your subscribers are, how they behave, and which interventions can shift their decisions at the right time. Audiences and structured experiments are the building blocks that turn this understanding into smarter, adaptive retention journeys.

Predictive analytics for customer retention

Most retention strategies rely on hindsight, looking at why customers left and attempting to patch holes after the fact. Predictive analytics flips that script. It lets teams act before churn happens by identifying risk early and triggering interventions while there is still time to change the outcome.

Turning churn metrics data into a retention strategy

Subscriber churn is not a mystery. It leaves a trail of declining engagement, off-cycle cancellations, and behavioral signals that start to emerge weeks before a subscription ends. The challenge that companies face is knowing how to use this data effectively and on time.

Role of channel sophistication in scaling subscriber retention

Subscription teams often invest significant effort into refining onboarding flows, upgrade nudges, and reactivation campaigns. While messaging plays a role, long-term impact is shaped by when and how those messages are delivered and whether they reach the right users at the right time.

Learn how to find retention blind spots in your subscriber's lifecycle.

Retention blind spots in the subscriber lifecycle you should avoid

Subscription media companies often fall short on retention because their strategies overlook the full subscriber lifecycle. They start strong during the onboarding phase, but after the first few weeks, journeys taper off, usually with one or two win-back campaigns, and then silence. This linear approach does not reflect how subscribers actually behave.

Assessing subscription retention marketing maturity

Retention is the lifeline for any subscription business. Yet, for all the dashboards and reports, most teams are flying blind when it comes to actual retention strategy.

Subsets is now managing over 20 million subscriptions

Subsets now supports over 20 million active subscriptions across our customers. This number reflects what we have consistently seen, i.e., when commercial teams can run experiments, segment subscribers by behavior, and automate what works, retention shifts from being a reporting metric to becoming an operating system.

Learn how the cyclone funnel is replacing subscriber journeys with early conversion, experiments & automated retention in publishing & streaming industries.

The cyclone funnel: Reality of subscriber journeys

For years, the traditional funnel that ruled the publishing and streaming industries' playbook has been attract, engage, convert, and finally retain. This linear model assumes that audiences move predictably through stages, culminating in long-term loyalty. However, this approach no longer aligns with actual subscriber behavior.

How to bring dormant subscribers back to life

Dormancy is rarely treated with the same discipline as acquisition or engagement. It sits in an ambiguous zone where the subscribers have not canceled, are not inactive in billing systems, but are no longer interacting with the product in any meaningful way. In many teams, this cohort is acknowledged but deprioritized. They remain visible in dashboards and forecasts, but their behavior tells a different story, and over time, they compound.

Why churn predictions do not retain subscribers

Operational delays are a recurring theme across many subscription growth teams. Churn data is accurate and timely, but the process for acting on it is not built for speed. Internal workflows require approvals, resource allocation, and coordination across multiple functions. The result is that most subscriber interventions are reactive at best.

Subsets joins FT Strategies and Google News Initiative to shape the future of AI in publishing

We are proud to share that Subsets has joined the AI Launchpad programme, developed by FT Strategies in partnership with the Google News Initiative.

Subsets raises $1.65M to automate retention for subscription media using explainable AI

Today, we are proud to share that Subsets has raised $1.65 million in pre-seed funding, led by Upfin and Y Combinator, with support from a group of institutional and angel investors.

Blog: Strategies and workflows to increase engagement and retention