“Subscribe for 10% off” is the standard stores copy from Amazon without doing the maths. For some products it is too little for the customer to notice, for others it is money wasted, because the subscription would be chosen anyway. Below is a way to work out your own number.
What the discount actually buys
A subscription discount is not a promotion. It is payment for what the customer gives you in advance: a promise of future purchases without advertising, retargeting or discounts on the repeat order. So the right question is not “how much to give” but “what does a repeat sale cost without a subscription”.
Three components:
- Bringing the customer back. Email, retargeting, push — on average 3 to 8% of the order value per repeat order, if counted honestly with the cost of tools and people.
- The repeat-order discount. A “come back” promo code for 10–15% is the norm in most stores. A subscriber never gets it, because they never leave.
- Lost customers. Some clients simply do not return — they forgot, they bought elsewhere. A subscription keeps them without effort. How that multiplies lifetime value is worked through in the article on customer LTV.
Add the first two and you have the lower bound of what you can give away as a discount and still come out ahead. It is usually 13–20%. That does not mean you should give that much.
How much to actually give
The discount has to be enough for the customer to choose the subscription over a one-off purchase, and no more. Benchmarks by niche:
| Niche | Why the subscription is valuable in itself | Suggested discount |
|---|---|---|
| Coffee, tea | Freshness and rotating origins — but the product is light and easy to buy elsewhere | 10–15% |
| Pet food, water | Heavy, bought by calculation — delivery is already the value | 5% or free delivery |
| Cosmetics, supplements | Runs out unnoticed; the reminder is useful | 10% |
| Flowers, farm boxes | Surprise and seasonality — the customer pays for the format | 0–5%, the value is in the contents |
| Meal prep | A week’s prepayment is already a discount against “per day” | Discount for a longer period, not for subscribing |
The general rule: the heavier, bulkier or more regular the product, the less discount is needed, because delivery does the persuading. The lighter and more available — the more.
From the first delivery or the second
A discount from the first delivery maximises conversion to subscription, but some customers subscribe for the discount and cancel after the first parcel. A discount from the second delivery cuts them out, but lowers conversion at the start.
A working solution is the first delivery at full price with free shipping, the discount from the second. Or the discount from the first, but with a short minimum term, if you are prepared to explain it. What to measure is not conversion to subscription but the share of subscriptions that survive to the third charge — more in the article on subscription churn.
When no discount is needed at all
- The product runs out on a schedule and the customer knows it — pet food, lenses, filters. The subscription is a convenience here; people do not get paid to take it, they choose it.
- The product is heavy — water, large bags of pet food. “We bring it ourselves once a month” persuades better than percentages.
- The subscription is the only way to buy: a seasonal box, a curated set. There is nothing to discount from.
In these cases the discount simply eats margin you would have earned anyway.
What it looks like in numbers
Take coffee: a 450 UAH order, where a repeat purchase without a subscription costs you 6% to bring the customer back and a 10% promo code — 72 UAH on every order that happens, plus the ones that do not. A 12% subscription discount is 54 UAH, and the order is guaranteed. The difference is small per order and huge in the number of orders: over a year a subscriber makes 15–17 purchases, a one-off customer 3–4 on average.
The subscription service’s fee belongs in this calculation too: at Neocarts it is 5% of a successful charge with no monthly fee — 22 UAH on that same order, and only when the charge went through.
The full unit economics of subscriptions versus one-off sales is in a separate article, with examples at different order values.