The 5-Pillar System for Building a Successful Subscription Business

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Today we’re bringing you one of the most actionable deep dives we’ve ever done, courtesy of John Roman, who joined the Retention Edge podcast last week to share everything he learned from over a decade building BattlBox - a subscription brand that’s survived market shifts, a sale, a buyback, and is now entering its next growth phase.

Subscription businesses look great on paper.

Predictable, recurring revenue and compounding growth.

But like anything, it’s easier in theory than in practice. Most subscription businesses end up failing, for one simple reason: churn. They get good at acquisition, but never build a system that earns long-term retention.

BattlBox isn’t even the ideal business model for subscriptions. It doesn’t sell a “need”, it sells a want.

And yet, it works, not because of lock-in tactics or clever pricing, but because retention is designed into the business itself.

The key takeaway from our conversation with John was simple:

So that’s what we’re sharing.

Below is the 5-pillar system behind BattlBox’s approach - insights you can apply to your own business, regardless of category. Even if you don’t do subscriptions, the principles here can all be adapted to help you drive stronger retention and LTV, whether you’re in fashion, beauty, supplements, F&B, or any other vertical.

Let’s start with the foundation everything else depends on.

Pillar #1: Retention Is the Business (Not a Department)

Most subscription brands treat retention as something you optimize after the business is built.

Launch, acquire customers, then start thinking about solving the churn problem.

That framing is backwards.

In durable subscription businesses, retention is the operating system. It shapes how the product is designed, how customers are onboarded, how value is delivered, and how decisions are made across the company.

This is how BattlBox operates. Retention isn’t owned by one team or one channel. It’s embedded into everything:

• the product experience

• the content strategy

• the community

• the cadence of communication

• even which ideas don’t get shipped

The mental shift to make is this:

That changes the questions you ask.

Instead of:

• “How do we reduce churn this month?”

• “How do we push people to stay longer?”

You start asking:

• “What value does a customer get other than the core product?”

• “Why should someone feel good paying us again next month?”

• “What would make canceling feel like giving something up?”

BattlBox doesn’t rely on friction or dark patterns to keep customers subscribed. In fact, canceling or pausing is intentionally easy. Their retention comes from delivering value that their customers can feel.

Once you internalize this, everything else in the system makes sense.

Pillar #2: Build Value Outside the Box (or Core Product)

If your subscription’s value lives entirely inside the monthly shipment, churn is inevitable.

Even great products get repetitive. Even exciting boxes have off months. And when a customer starts to ask themselves, “Is this worth it this month?”, you’re at risk.

The strongest subscription businesses solve this by doing something most brands never do: They make the subscription valuable even between deliveries.

At BattlBox, the monthly box is still the centerpiece, but it’s not the whole experience. A significant amount of value exists outside the physical product itself, which changes how customers evaluate whether to stay subscribed.

This is the key distinction to understand:

• Product-only subscriptions are judged monthly

• Value ecosystems are judged holistically

When value is layered across multiple touchpoints, one weak moment doesn’t trigger cancellation.

How to Apply This to Your Own Business

Start by asking a simple question:

What problems does my customer have that my core product doesn’t fully solve?

That’s where “outside-the-box” value lives.

Common categories include:

• Access (exclusive shopping, early drops, member-only pricing)

• Education (how to use, how to improve outcomes, how to get more value)

• Community (belonging, shared identity, recognition)

• Experiences (events, challenges, moments customers can’t buy elsewhere)

• Savings (real, tangible economic value, not just points)

BattlBox’s members-only shopping area (BattlVault) is a good example of this thinking. It’s not built to maximize margins. It’s built to ensure that even if a customer feels “meh” about a given box, they’re still getting value from the membership overall.

That’s intentional.

The idea is to make cancellation feel irrational.

For Non-Subscription Businesses

The same principles here apply to businesses that don’t have a recurring subscription or high-frequency products.

Stronger retention can come “outside the box” for you, too. Think about how you can provide value that keeps customers engaged and close to your brand between purchases.

This can make a huge difference, particularly for brands that aren’t naturally high-frequency purchases (like fashion).

Pillar #3: Treat Community as a Retention Asset (Not a Vanity Project)

Most brands say they want a community.

What they actually build is a quiet Facebook group or a Slack channel that slowly dies after the first burst of enthusiasm.

That’s not a community. And it doesn’t retain customers.

A real community does one thing exceptionally well:

That’s why community is one of the most powerful (and most misunderstood) retention levers in subscription businesses.

Why Community Works (When It’s Done Right)

Community works because it shifts the customer’s relationship with your brand:

• From buyer to member

• From transaction to identity

• From “Is this worth it?” to “This is part of my routine”

BattlBox leaned into this early, long before “community-led growth” became a buzzword. Their members-only group isn’t just a place to talk. It’s actively moderated, constantly engaged, and treated as a core part of the product experience.

What Actually Makes a Community Retentive

If you’re building community to drive retention, focus on these fundamentals:

1. Be Present as a Brand

Community doesn’t run itself. Team members need to show up consistently, answering questions, sharing context, asking for feedback. Lurking kills momentum.

2. Create Feedback Loops

Let members influence decisions. Share early ideas. Ask for opinions. When customers feel heard, they become invested.

3. Recognize and Reward Participation

Giveaways, callouts, inside access; these reinforce that engagement matters.

4. Build Anticipation, Not Just Activity

Ongoing events, challenges, or moments that stretch over time keep people subscribed because they don’t want to miss what’s coming next.

BattlBox’s approach to teasing major moments months in advance is a good example. The anticipation itself becomes a retention mechanism.

Pillar #4: Use Content to Increase Stickiness (Not Just Traffic)

Most subscription brands treat content purely as an acquisition lever. SEO articles, social posts, etc.

That’s fine. But it misses one of content’s most powerful uses in a subscription business:

Reducing churn by increasing understanding and emotional connection.

BattlBox’s content strategy works because it isn’t designed just to attract new customers. A large portion of it exists after someone subscribes.

The Two Types of Content That Drive Retention

If your goal is retention, content should fall into one of two buckets.

1. Educational Content

This helps customers understand:

• what they received

• how to use it

• why it matters

The more a customer understands your product, the more value they perceive, and the less likely they are to churn due to confusion or underuse.

BattlBox creates long-form videos walking through every product in each box. That’s not flashy marketing. It’s churn prevention.

2. Humanizing Content

This builds connection with the brand itself:

• behind-the-scenes moments

• team personalities

• how decisions are made

For “want-based” subscriptions, this matters more than most brands realize. People stay subscribed longer when they feel connected to who they’re buying from, not just what they’re buying.

How to Apply This Without a Media Team

You don’t need Netflix-level production.

Start with:

• clear explanations of your product

• consistent post-purchase education

• simple behind-the-scenes moments

The goal is clarity and familiarity, not polish.

If your content only exists to convince someone to buy, you’re missing half its value.

Retention content doesn’t ask for anything. It reinforces why staying makes sense.

Pillar #5: Fix Churn with Lifecycle Data (Not Guesswork)

Most subscription brands talk about churn like it’s random.

“It’s just the category.”

“People cancel when budgets tighten.”

“That’s just the nature of subscriptions.”

In reality, churn usually clusters around specific moments in the customer lifecycle.

If you can find those moments, you can fix them.

BattlBox did this by cohorting subscribers and tracking when people were most likely to cancel, not just how many canceled overall. What they found was telling: churn wasn’t evenly distributed. There were clear drop-off points where customers paused to reassess the subscription.

That insight changed how they approached retention.

Instead of reacting after someone tried to cancel, they stepped in before the decision point - acknowledging the renewal, reinforcing value, and occasionally removing friction with proactive credits.

The result? Those churn spikes flattened out.

How to Apply This to Your Business

You don’t need sophisticated tooling to start. You need the right questions.

Look at your subscriber cohorts and ask:

• When do most cancellations happen?

• What has the customer experienced right before that moment?

• What uncertainty might they be feeling at that point?

Then design preemptive value - which works better (and costs less) than win-back discounts.

Examples:

• reassurance before renewal

• acknowledgment of loyalty

• reminders of value already delivered

• small, proactive gestures that signal “we’re paying attention”

This is the difference between fighting churn and preventing the churn decision from forming in the first place.

Retention improves fastest when you stop guessing and start designing around real customer behavior.

Bringing It All Together: The Subscription Retention Flywheel

The most important lesson from this system is simple:

Retention doesn’t come from one lever. It comes from alignment.

Strong subscription businesses:

• design retention into the product

• build value beyond the core offering

• use community to create social gravity

• use content to increase clarity and connection

• use lifecycle data to intervene early

None of this is “easy.” It’s slower than launching a loyalty program or adding another email flow.

But it compounds.

And over time, it turns a fragile subscription into a durable one.

A Final Thought

If you’re running a subscription business, ask yourself:

If the answer is no, that’s not an acquisition problem, it’s a retention design problem.

That’s where the real work, and the real leverage, lives.

Watch Retention Edge #22 with John Roman

If you want to hear John talk about all of this first-hand, plus more about his journey building BattlBox into a $20M business, check out his appearance on the Retention Edge pod.

There’s a lot here - we cut it down to just the insights and there’s still nearly 45 minutes of gold.

Launch a high-performance mobile app in 2026

If you’re done with relying on algorithms, Gmail filters and constant ad spend to show up in front of your customers, it’s time to launch a mobile app.

An app is a direct connection to your best customer. And finally lets you own the relationship (no middlemen controlling your reach; no more being forgotten).

MobiLoud turns your existing site into an app, with no rebuilding, nearly no work to maintain, and full feature parity with your website.

Click here to get a free preview of your app

Quick Hits

Uber + Shopify

Uber’s bringing same-day delivery to Shopify.

Currently being rolled out to Shopify Plus users in several markets, brands will be able to tap into Uber Direct to provide same-day, one-hour delivery.

I predict it won’t be long before we have autonomous vehicles doing the same thing.

Read more →

Is the Risk of AI UGC Really Worth It?

2025 was the year brands figured out you could use AI to spin up thousands of AI UGC ad variations in just a matter of hours.

2026 might be the year that brands realize the risk in this; and a few publicized fines might cause a major rethink in how we use AI to automate things that are supposed to show authenticity.

Read more →

ChatGPT Referrals to Retail Apps up 28%

Data shows year-on-year growth in ChatGPT referral traffic over BFCM.

Overall referrals were up 28%, while Amazon’s share of ChatGPT were up from 40.5% in 2024, and Walmart’s share of overall ChatGPT retail referrals increased from 2.7% last year to now 14.9%.

Looks interesting on the surface - but remember, as a referral channel, it’s still very new, so a 28% increase realistically is not that much.

Still, it’s worth tracking this growth over 2026.

Read more →

The Revenue Impact of Mobile Apps (2025 BFCM Study)

If you haven’t seen it already, check out our study of 100+ mobile apps over BFCM this year.

It gives a fascinating insight into how mobile apps move the needle for different brands, as well as how brands were (or were not) utilizing apps & push notifications during this year’s event.

Read more →

Shopify AI Features: Winter '26 Edition

Shopify is going all-in on AI; probably a sign that you should be too.

Their Winter '26 Edition announcement was packed full of new AI features coming to the platform; with an AI assistant built into Shopify.

Read more →

How Do LLMs Understand Ecommerce?

This analysis of 10,000 LLM responses over BFCM is a must-read for anyone focused on AI search optimization for ecommerce.

It shows where AI is getting its information, who’s getting mentioned the most, and what you can do to show up more.

Read more →

That’s all for now.

Until next time, hope you have a great holiday season, followed by a powerful 2026.

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team

PS: want to boost retention, revenue and profitability, by launching your own mobile app? If so, go to our website to get a preview of your app for free, or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn to talk about it.