Your Subscription Product Has Customers, Now What?

Here’s how to make automation work for you, not against you

Joe Procopio
7 min readMay 20, 2021

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When my startup signed its first subscription customer, it was a good day. When my startup signed its 100th subscriber, it was a better day.

But then I started thinking: Now what?

Turns out, if your product is valuable and your pricing is fair, it’s not that difficult to land a subscription customer. However, it’s much more difficult to keep a subscription customer. And it’s next to impossible to do both at the same time.

My problem was not uncommon for a subscription product startup. The time it took to keep my existing customers satisfied was quickly outgrowing the resources I had available to me as those customer numbers increased.

Fortunately, this is not my first subscription rodeo, so I’m well versed in automation as a release valve in the subscription pricing model.

After launching subscription products and services over and over again, both successfully and less-than-successfully, I’ve discovered there’s a certain system of automation best practices to maintain a balance between landing new subscription customers and keeping existing subscription customers.

Why subscription pricing is a…

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Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Building TeachingStartup.com. Write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com