At a premium DTC food brand, retention performance was declining despite strong product affinity. Churn lacked clear diagnosis, and the business didn’t have a clear view into why customers were leaving or how usage behavior influenced repeat purchase.

I first implemented a segmented cancellation funnel to capture structured insight into churn drivers by tenure and reason. That analysis surfaced a key insight: roughly 30% of cancellations were driven by customers having too much product on hand and lacking occasions in how to use it.

From there, I led a cross-channel retention strategy focused on reinforcing usage and value over time. Email served as the primary execution channel, supported by aligned touchpoints across the ecosystem — including a Recipe Hub featuring high-quality, approachable recipes, QR codes included in shipments to connect offline moments to digital content, and coordinated owned-channel messaging to normalize repeat consumption.

Results

• The new cancellation flow drove a 12% reduction in churn, improving LTV

• Usage-led email campaigns delivered 62–67% open rates

• Recipe-focused messaging achieved conversion rates up to +0.31% among engaged segments

• Campaigns generated $10K in incremental revenue without discounting

• The Recipe Hub drove ~20% of total site engagement in its first month, with bounce rates under 20%

• Paid ads promoting the hub outperformed food & beverage benchmarks (1.4% CTR, 3.06 ROAS)

The takeaway: Retention doesn’t stop at the cancel page — but it often starts there. By treating churn as a source of insight and aligning lifecycle, content, and messaging around usage, this approach reduced attrition and unlocked repeat purchase without eroding brand or margin.