What a subscription retention agency does
It looks after everything that happens after someone subscribes, inside your email platform and inside your subscription app. For our brands that is Klaviyo for email and SMS, and Loop for the subscription itself.
Here is how the work splits, and what we watch for each part:
| Job | Where it is built | What we measure |
|---|---|---|
| Cancel flow: benefits page, cancel reasons, an offer per reason | Loop customer portal | Saves per reason, per offer |
| Failed payment recovery: retries, card-update messages | Loop recovery strategies, plus Klaviyo SMS and email | Recovery rate by failure type, revenue recovered |
| Winback after a cancel | Loop instant winback offer, plus a Klaviyo flow | Restarted subscriptions |
| Turning one-time buyers into subscribers | Klaviyo post-purchase and reorder flows | Share of first-time buyers who subscribe |
| Upcoming order and portal emails | Loop notifications, restyled to your brand | Skips and frequency changes vs cancels |
| Add-ons at renewal | Loop upsell profiles and volume discounts | Add-on revenue per renewal |
The campaigns and the welcome and abandonment flows still matter, and we run those too. The subscription work sits on top.
Why subscription churn needs the app and Klaviyo run together
Most subscribers are lost at 2 points email cannot fix on its own: the cancel screen in the portal, and the card that fails at renewal. Both live in the subscription app, so whoever runs your retention needs access to it.
The vendor numbers show where the losses sit. Eightx, a subscription agency, reports that 60-70% of subscribers are lost between order 1 and order 3, and that failed payments cause 30-40% of subscription churn. Treat those as directional, since they come from one firm's client data.
If your Klaviyo agency has no login to Loop, the cancel flow usually stays on its default settings, the payment retries run with default timing, and nobody connects the 2. When we searched for subscription agencies in October 2026, the ones we found mostly sold Recharge setup and development. We run the retention side every month, in both tools.
Across the subscription brands we run on Loop, the #1 cancel reason is "I have enough or too much product", at about 23% of cancel attempts in the last 90 days. That reason is answered with a skip, a slower frequency or a pause, which are all set up inside the subscription app, so an email-only setup cannot change it.
The order we work in on a new subscription account
We fix the leaks closest to revenue first, then build the flows that grow subscriber lifetime. On most accounts the order looks like this:
- Failed payments. These subscribers did not choose to leave. We split the retry ladder by failure reason, add a one-click card-update link to SMS and email, and end on a pause so the subscription can restart.
- The cancel flow. We rewrite the cancel reasons in the words your customers use, then give each reason one fitting option: skip, swap, pause, a change of frequency or a single discount.
- Orders 1 to 3. Subscriber welcome emails, a clear reminder before the first renewal, and how-to-use content so the product gets used before the second charge.
- Winback. An instant offer on the cancel screen, and a short Klaviyo flow after it.
- Subscribe offers. Post-purchase and reorder flows that move one-time buyers onto a subscription, with subscribers kept out of the reorder reminders.
Before any of this we check that Loop events are really arriving in Klaviyo. An integration can stay connected in Klaviyo long after a brand stopped selling subscriptions, so we go by live event volume.
Subscription niches we work in
Most of our subscription brands sell something that runs out: pet products, supplements and women's health, skincare and oral care. Each has a different buying cycle, which changes how the cancel flow and the reorder timing should work.
- Pet. Pet food and supplements have one of the biggest gaps between subscribers and one-time buyers. Eightx puts the gap in order count at about 4.6x for pet food. A cancel reason like "my pet doesn't use it" needs a swap or a how-to, and a discount will not fix it.
- Supplements and women's health. Recharge's Subscription Trend Report 2026 names health and wellness as the largest subscription category, at about 11.2M active subscribers, with supplements about half of it. Eightx puts typical supplement churn at 5-8% a month.
- Skincare. Subscribers often cancel because they have too much product, so skip and a slower cadence save more than a discount does.
We are building separate pages for each of these niches with examples from our own accounts.
Which subscription apps we work with
Most of our subscription brands run on Loop, and we are an official Loop partner. 6 brands currently run their subscriptions on Loop with us.
If you are on Recharge, Skio or Appstle, we can run the Klaviyo side and help you decide whether moving to Loop is worth it. If you are on Skio and weighing your options after the Recharge deal, read our Skio to Loop guide.
EK proof
These are results from subscription brands we run today, measured as Klaviyo's share of total store revenue, so you can compare them with your own store:
- Kaori (women's health, subscription): Klaviyo went from 3.3% to 19% of store revenue. Flow revenue grew 17.7x, from $31,358 to $554,913. Email revenue grew 9.5x.
- Penrose Skin (skincare, subscription): Klaviyo's share of store revenue went from 15.2% to 23.2%. Flow revenue grew 10.5x and email revenue 5.2x.
- KittySpout (pet, subscription): 46% of store revenue comes from Klaviyo.
Across our Loop brands in the last 90 days there were 20,000+ cancel-flow events and at least 50,000 failed billing attempts. About 1 in 5 people who started canceling gave no reason at all.
We have worked with 140+ brands, mostly DTC brands doing $3M to $50M a year in the US and UK.
Who this is a fit for
We are a fit if subscriptions are a real part of your revenue, you are on Shopify, and you are doing roughly $3M to $50M a year. Below that, Loop's default settings and a solid Klaviyo welcome flow will take you a long way, and our pricing page explains what the jump to an agency costs.
