🧠 CHAPTER 4: The Modern Buyer Brain: SUBSCRIPTION FATIGUE & HOW TO BEAT IT

I wanna talk about the two scariest words in subscription commerce, subscription fatigue.

We'll get into exactly what that means, but this is the silent killer of most subscription brands. It sneaks up, usually it's around month six or seven. Taps your customer on the shoulder and it whispers, Hey, do you really need this anymore? And that's all it takes the customer to just think that. Now, the average product only subscription on average lasts six to seven cycles.

Six, seven, as my kids would say. Now, that's the industry benchmark across DTC. It's not because the product's bad. It's not because the customer hates you. It's because the value just feels flat. The product is the product. It arrives, it does its job, but the experience doesn't evolve. And humans get bored fast.

Now let me say something very clearly. Customers don't cancel because your product failed. They cancel because the value stopped growing. And if you don't intentionally design for this, fatigue is built in. Fatigue is guaranteed. And so the formula that no one talks about is this is the simple formula to beat subscription fatigue.

Perceived value should be at least three times the subscription cost. Okay? Not 10%, not equal, not good enough three times. So if your subscription is $49 a month, the customer should feel like they're getting $150 worth of value. They should perceive that emotionally, practically, socially, experientially.

Remember, value is not just the product they get. Now, before you panic and you say, Jay, the math doesn't work. Listen, the three x value does not. Need to come from your product, and this is where almost every brand misunderstands their entire subscription game. Value is not what you ship. Value is how the customer feels about belonging.

It's the value they perceive. Amazon Prime, I often say, is a blueprint for this. If you think about Amazon Prime, no one, no one cancels because the shipping slowed down one week. In fact, even if you don't order anything for a couple weeks, you don't right away think, oh, I should cancel. I don't need my free shipping, because their value has evolved.

You know what, no one says, oh, I'm not just, I'm, I have too many UPS drivers in my life. I'm gonna cancel Prime. Prime isn't a shipping subscription anymore. It's an, it's an ecosystem. Streaming books. Photos, exclusive access, Alexa, prime Day, you name it. Amazon Grocery Gaming now. So Amazon layers in value like a Jenga tower, I like to say.

So even if you don't use half of the benefits, they still count towards your perceived value, right? Benefits are not what a customer uses. I often say, you know, we buy cars with. 300 horsepower, but we never go above 60 miles an hour. Why is that? Because we just perceive it as better, and we might not. We buy computers that have 10 times the computing power we actually need.

We have cameras that have more pixels than we can even see, but we perceive that value. And guess what? Prime members spend five times more than non-prime members. It's not because of the shipping, it's because of identity. They see themself as a prime member. You're not subscribed to Amazon. You're a Prime member.

Do you see the difference there? So the DTC problem is value flat lines and most DTC direct to consumer sub subscription brands. They look like this month one. Exciting. Yay. Got my product. Month two. Still good. Month three. Becoming a little bit familiar. Month four. This is becoming routine. Month five, boring.

Month six fatigue. Month seven. Cancel. Fatigue. Just so you know. Is when a customer has too much, too little, they feel that fatigue. They feel the fatigue of I didn't use that product last month and now it's building up in my shelf. Or, um, subscription fatigue is not just being tired of the product, it's fatigue of the management of it as well.

Because if it's product only. They will always hit that 'cause. There's no evolution. There's no surprises. There's no perks, no belonging, there's no status, there's no ecosystem. It's just the same box every month. Now. You cannot beat subscription fatigue with product alone, even the greatest product in the world, you'll eventually hit it.

The data is clear on this product. Only subscriptions plateau around month six or seven, no matter how good the product is. This is across industry. You need more layers. And so what actually beats fatigue layered value. So lemme give you practical ways you can add perceived value without touching your cost of goods sold.

VIP pricing or or early access VI VIP pricing. One of the easiest ways. If you're a subscribed member, you get access to VIP pricing. We, of course, can help you with this at Bold with our custom pricing app. And of course, our Bold Subscriptions app. They work seamlessly together that if you wanna give your subscribers access to VIP pricing, you can do that.

And now it's not just about the product. Early access to products, another great way you can add in layered value community events. These can be virtual or in person, and these can be. You know, depending what industry in, they can, they can be workouts, they can be q and a sessions, they can be member meetups, founder calls, like just do a zoom call with your members once a quarter.

Um, behind the scenes tours, belonging extends lifespan, period. Like full stop when people feel like they belong. It extends their lifespan. Um, partner perks you know, this is a, I think a highly underutilized value that you can layer in. If you sell, if you have a subscription, what you have is a distribution channel.

Now, if you go to aligned companies and say, pick anything, say, say you have a protein powder subscription, go to gyms, say, Hey, would you like to give 10% off to everyone who has my protein powder subscription? That's a perfect venue for them to get new customers to their gym. Yoga classes, skincare partners, supplement bundles.

Like they might even wanna put sample sizes of their supplements in like the thing is. You have customers, if you go to these partners and say, what's the best thing you can offer me? I'm going to five different gyms. What's the best thing you can offer? They might say 50% off a month. I dunno. But your product offers one value.

The ecosystem can offer 10, and it doesn't cost you a single penny. In fact, a lot of our subscription brands, the ecosystem. Pays to put their products in their boxes. So like let's say you have a phishing tackle subscription, phishing lure companies pay to put. They'll say, can I put my fishing lure as a sample in your box so that all your customers see it?

So not only do they want to give offers, they'll actually pay for it. Some other ideas, content coaching experiences like adding in recipes like that protein powder. Put in some recipes of things you can make with the protein powder, like be creative if it's a health product, like put in some workouts, put in, some, include some coaching sessions.

Include some challenges with your members that they can all do together. Some guides on how to do things, how to use products, how to build stuff, courses, private groups. I mean, you gotta be creative here, but there's so much you can do this content list, like it almost costs nothing, but it adds massive, massive perceived value, surprise and delight.

Build this into your membership like a free shaker, a handwritten note, a bonus sample, a thank you on your third month surprise. Is retention rocket fuel like it is. There is nothing better. You'll see people posting about it on social media. There's nothing better than surprising your customer. So now why this works is value layers.

They do create emotional connection, and when you add layers, something powerful happens. The subscription stops becoming that transaction and it starts becoming a lifestyle. Customers don't think, do I need this product right now? Am I using it? They think. I don't wanna lose all these benefits I get from being a member.

The focus is off of the product. This is often what I call a sunk cost psychology, uh, uh, the sunk cost fallacy. And it's, it's identity psychology status psychology. It's all working together in your favor. And so the takeaway here is. Subscription Fatigue is not a mystery. It blows my mind when, I mean, I brands like say like, yeah, we just can't get past an average of six, six months on our subscription.

Like it's predictable. I can almost tell you if I go to a subscription brand and I say, what do your customers get? And they say, well, they get my product every month and they get a 10% discount, subscribe and save. I can tell you you're going to be in the subscription death curve. Within a year, maybe two.

Guaranteed. Guaranteed. It's predictable, but it's also preventable and it's beatable. But only if you stop thinking like a product company and start thinking like a membership. A membership ecosystem. If your only value is the product, you'll hit that six to seven month wall every single time. But if you layer value, pricing, perks, early access, community content, partnerships, experiences, you'll extend that lifespan by years, not months.

Don't build a subscription, build an ecosystem. Okay, so now here's my challenge. At the end of each of these chapters, I'm giving a challenge with kind of five pieces of advice to actually do it. I think you can guess what my challenge is with this one, but it is add three times the value without adding three times the cost.

It can be done, trust me. So here's your five steps to do it. First of all, audit your subscription for what I call flat value, so you know high. Think about every product of your subscription. That doesn't change after month one. That's where your subscription fatigue is hiding. Number two. Define what your three x perceived value can be.

And I, I call it your value stack. Write down how your subscription can deliver three times value the product because we're not just the original product they got, but maybe that product they get more of it or it scales in some way. Access perks, sta community experiences, you know, everything we talked about define what it could be if you can't hit.

Three x on paper, your customers won't feel it and they'll, they'll, they will hit that subscription fatigue. And if you don't have these benefits to offer, reach out to partners. What can you include in it? What things can you leverage from partners that might want to add value to it? Number three, add one non-product value layer this month.

So start with one. I think the easiest one is VIP pricing. This to me is. One of the best ways to make customers, subscribers feel like true members when they get different pricing than everyone else. This is so easy to do with our custom pricing app. I would be happy to let anyone try it for three months for free and to see if it works, 'cause I promise you it will.

But that is one. Early access. Another really easy thing to do to give your vi give your customers early access when you launch a new product. Product Perks, maybe if you wanna try an event content drops. Maybe you're doing some exclusive videos or how to video something, do that for your members only, but try to find one non-product.

Value layer that you can add in this month. Number four, build in a surprise moment into month three. This seems to be the most important time. It's when subscriptions are starting to go sideways or be getting stronger. So month three is actually where the fatigue really starts to begin and fight it with something unexpected.

Give them a bonus product, give them something special. And if you're thinking about the cost of that. You're really acquiring them. Like it, it, it's acquisition. You're acquiring them for another 12 months, but month three. So don't think of it as like, well, I'm, I already paid to acquire them. This is actually where the subscription fatigue begins and where the acquisition starts.

Number five, study Amazon Prime for 10 minutes. Seriously. I don't care if you like Amazon or not. I know some people have their beef, whatever, but study Amazon Prime. Like list every perk that you get, and then ask yourself like, which of these perks could your brand recreate at your scale? I'm sure you can find some, I guarantee you can.

I guarantee it, go and chat GBT and ask it to list every perk that you get from being a Prime member. Put in your URL and say, what are some potential perks that I could offer similar to these? Because there is. The Amazon effect, which is when people get something with Amazon, they do expect it other places.

That is very, this is like as soon as Amazon started two day shipping. If your store didn't offer two day shipping, it felt weird. So ask chat GPT to help you with this, but I guarantee you there's, there's some of their perks that you could implement as well, because at the end of the day. Your subscriptions don't die from bad product.

They die from flat value, and you beat subscription fatigue by building an ecosystem that your customers never want to leave. So that's it for this one. This is chapter four. We're going on to chapter five on the next episode, so we'll see you there.