Customer retention intelligence

Know exactly why customers don't come back — and which ones go next.

Most consumer brands can tell you their repeat rate. Very few can tell you why customers stop reordering, which ones are about to go, or what to change first. That's the work. Your order history, your cancellation reasons, your reviews and survey responses — turned into a prioritised plan your team can act on this quarter.

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Subscriber retention by cohort month
Illustrative · DTC benchmark
100% 75% 50% 25% 0% M0 M2 M4 M6 M8 M10 M12
Current cohort After retention work
7.4%
Monthly churn, DTC subscription average
12–30%
First-month churn across verticals
60–75%
Churn that is voluntary — and addressable
Why this pays for itself

A single point of churn is worth more than the engagement costs.

Take a brand doing £5M a year losing 8% of its customer base every month. That's roughly £400,000 of revenue walking out the door annually, and with acquisition costs up 222% in eight years, replacing it gets more expensive every quarter.

8%
Monthly churn on a £5M subscription base
£400k
Annual revenue lost to cancellations
£50k
Value of a single percentage point recovered
222%
Rise in DTC acquisition cost over eight years
Benchmarks: DTC subscription churn 6.5–8.5% monthly · health & wellness 8–12% · food & drink 12–18%
Start here

One question. Five days. Under £600.

Most brands aren't ready to commission a full diagnostic from someone they've just met. So pick the single question that's bothering you most and I'll answer that one first. Narrow scope, fixed price, one CSV export from you.

Partial credit Half the fee comes off a diagnostic if you go ahead within 14 days.
Micro · A

First-Order Drop-Off Teardown

Across DTC, 12–30% of customers are gone after the first cycle. Almost nobody has that split by acquisition channel. You'll find out which channels are buying you customers who never come back.

  • You sendOne CSV: first order date, last order date, channel
  • You getCohort curve (based on the history provided), first-cycle drop-off by channel, three worst segments named, one-page written findings. Async follow-up by email — calls start at diagnostic level.
£495
5 working days
Micro · B

Cancellation Reason Readout

You collect cancellation reasons. Nobody has read all of them. I categorise a sample and quantify what's actually driving people out — and which reasons are growing.

  • You sendCancellation reason exports, last 12 months
  • You getTheme categorisation on up to 500 responses, volume and trend per theme, one-page written findings. Async follow-up by email — calls start at diagnostic level. Larger volumes scoped separately.
£495
5 working days
Micro · C

Subscriber Value Map

Not every churned customer is worth chasing. Some cohorts cost more to reacquire than they'll ever return. This tells you which subscribers to defend and which to let go.

  • You sendOrder history export with customer IDs
  • You getValue and tenure segmentation, LTV by cohort, defend/ignore ranking at segment level, one-page written findings. Async follow-up by email — calls start at diagnostic level.
£595
5 working days
Services

The full engagements. Most brands start with a diagnostic and stay for the retainer.

When one question isn't enough. These are the full pieces of work — the complete picture, the systems that keep it running, and the monthly intelligence that replaces an in-house hire.

01

Churn & Retention Diagnostic

You send me your order history and cancellation records. I come back with the honest picture: who stops reordering, when in the lifecycle, from which segments, and why. Repeat rate, time to second order, one-and-done customers, retention by acquisition channel. Not a dashboard — a written answer to the question your board keeps asking, ranked by what to fix first.

Cohort analysis Repeat rate Time to 2nd order Churn drivers Ranked actions
02

Voice of Customer Analysis

Cancellation reasons, support tickets, reviews, NPS verbatims and survey open-text — thousands of rows nobody has time to read. I categorise the lot, quantify the themes, and tell you what customers are actually saying versus what you assume they're saying. Usually the gap is the whole story.

Theme coding Sentiment NPS / CSAT drivers Verbatim evidence
03

Automated Insight System

The reason most insight work dies is that somebody has to redo it manually every month. I configure a repeatable pipeline inside your existing stack — monday.com, Sheets or Looker, whichever you already run — so data comes in, gets categorised, and a report goes out without you rebuilding it from scratch each time. Handed over with playbooks so your team owns it.

monday.com Zapier Google Sheets AI categorisation Auto-reporting
04

Retention Intelligence Retainer

Your insight function, without the £65k hire. Every month: refreshed cohort analysis, new feedback categorised, churn drivers tracked against last month, and a call where we decide what to do about it. Most brands land here after a diagnostic and stay.

Monthly reporting Trend tracking Ad-hoc analysis Insight call
How it works

Four steps. No discovery phase that bills for six weeks.

STEP 01

Churn review

A free 30-minute call. You tell me what you can already see and what you can't. I tell you honestly whether there's a real question here worth paying to answer.

STEP 02

Data handover

A CSV export, read-only access, or a shared folder. Usually under an hour of your team's time. NDA signed before anything moves.

STEP 03

The work

Analysis, categorisation, cohort modelling. One mid-point check so the findings aren't a surprise and the questions stay the ones you care about.

STEP 04

Findings & decisions

Written deck, ranked recommendations, and a call where we agree what changes first. You get the working files, not just the summary.

Who it's for

Supplements, pet and food brands. £2M to £10M.

High-frequency reorder categories, where a customer is meant to come back every 30 to 60 days and the whole model breaks if they don't. Big enough to have real data. Small enough that nobody in-house is already answering these questions.

Good fit
  • Supplements and wellness — the sharpest reorder cycle in DTC
  • Pet food and pet supplies — highest LTV, richest data
  • Coffee, food and drink subscriptions — highest churn in the category
  • Roughly £2M to £10M revenue, 20 to 50 staff
  • At least 12 months of customer data — subscription or repeat purchase
  • Someone owns retention but nobody owns the analysis
  • You've asked "why don't they come back?" and got opinions, not evidence
Not a fit
  • Under ~£1M revenue or ~2,000 customers — not enough data to say anything true
  • You already have an in-house insight or data analyst
  • Considered purchases bought once every 12 to 18 months
  • You want a dashboard built, not a question answered
  • You want someone to confirm a decision that's already made
  • Enterprise procurement cycles — I'm one person, not a panel firm
Questions

What brands ask before starting.

What data do you actually need?
For a diagnostic: subscriber-level records with signup date, cancellation date where applicable, plan or product, and order history. If you have cancellation reasons, survey responses or support tickets, those go into the voice-of-customer work. A Shopify, Recharge, Stripe or Chargebee export usually covers it. If you're not sure what you have, that's what the churn review call is for.
How is this different from the analytics we already have?
Your analytics tell you the rate. They rarely tell you the cause, and they almost never rank what to do about it. A dashboard showing 8% churn and a report explaining that 40% of it happens in month one among a specific acquisition channel, driven by a specific expectation gap, are different objects. The second one changes decisions.
Do we have to take the retainer?
No, and plenty of brands run one diagnostic and act on it. That said, retention isn't a problem you solve once — cohorts shift, acquisition channels change, and the drivers move with them. The retainer exists because most brands who do a diagnostic want the same questions answered next quarter, and it costs a fraction of hiring for it.
How do you handle our customer data?
NDA signed before any data moves. Pseudonymised or aggregated wherever the analysis allows — I rarely need names or contact details, only behaviour. Data held in a dedicated encrypted workspace, deleted on request or at the end of the engagement. UK GDPR applies and I work as a data processor under your instruction.
What are the payment terms?
50% on scope sign-off, 50% on delivery — non-refundable once work begins, since the analysis time is committed regardless of what the data turns out to show. The risk sits before payment, not after: the free churn review and a written scope agreement upfront are what confirm your data can answer the question, so we're not finding that out midway through paid work.
Can you implement the changes too?
Partly. I build the systems that keep the insight running — automated categorisation, dashboards, monthly reporting — and I'll spec the changes clearly enough for your team or agency to execute. I don't run your email flows or rewrite your onboarding. Knowing the boundary is part of the service.

Start with the free churn review. No deck, no pitch.

Thirty minutes. You show me what you can see, I'll tell you what your data could answer and whether it's worth paying to find out. If it isn't, I'll say so.

✓ Got it. I'll reply within 24 hours to book a time.
Something went wrong — email hello@aloft.digital instead.
Reply within 24 hours · NDA available before any data is shared