A lot of brands set their first-order Subscribe & Save coupon at 20% or higher.
By Liranhirschkorn · March 12, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
A lot of brands set their first-order Subscribe & Save coupon at 20% or higher.
They think a bigger discount means more subscribers.
Our Director of Advertising, Mansour Norouzi, just ran a deep analysis on S&S promotion data across multiple brands using the custom AI tool he built.
What he found: not all promotions create the same quality subscriber. Some deal types build loyal customers. Others attract one-time buyers who churn after order one.
That got me thinking about something I've been seeing across clients: Brands offering a high 25%+ first-order S&S coupons are creating this exact problem.
Here's why:
Customer sees your product at 20%+ off for their first subscription order.
They buy. They love it.
Second order hits. Now it's full price minus the standard S&S discount.
That's a price jump they weren't expecting.
It feels like a bait-and-switch. So they cancel.
You didn't acquire a subscriber. You subsidized a one-time buyer.
But with a 10% first-order coupon? The price gap to order two is small enough that customers barely notice.
They stay.
The math is counterintuitive:
→ 20% first-order coupon = more subscribers on paper, higher churn in reality
→ 10% first-order coupon = fewer sign-ups, but the ones you get actually stick
Some brands look at subscriber count in Seller Central and think they're winning.
But subscriber count without churn rate is a vanity metric.
The question isn't "how many subscribers did we add?"
It's "how many are still here by order 2-3?"
If you're running S&S first-order coupons above 20%, run the retention math before your next quarter.
The cheapest subscriber to keep is the one you didn't overpay to acquire.