Customers sometimes cancel and then resubscribe to take advantage of sign-up discounts.

This guide outlines strategies to help you prevent this behavior and encourage long-term retention.

Before you start

This article focuses on managing discount codes to prevent cancellations and reorders. The Subscribe & Save discount, which is set in the product rule, cannot address this issue. 

If you’re looking for information on how Subscribe & Save works with discounts, see How do discount codes work with subscribe and save products?.

Method 1 - Set sign-up discount restrictions

Setting a sign-up discount code restriction is the easiest way to ensure a discount code is used only once per customer and reduce cancellations related to misuse. You can edit your discount code to add one of the following:

• Limit to one subscription per customer: Restricts the discount to one use per customer email.
• Limit to first-time subscribers only: Allows the discount only for new customers.

Method 2: Using discounts with product subscription plans

If you are using Product Subscription Plans, you can set sign-up discount restrictions so they apply only once per user and expire after a set number of charges.

Alternatively, you can use milestones, in combination with Dynamic pricing, to offer a discounted price during checkout that applies to the set number of orders you want. Then, use Workflows by Recharge to change the price to its normal recurring price automatically after. See more in this Video walkthrough. 

For example, you can apply a 20% discount for the first 3 orders and then 15% after. 

Although this method does not directly prevent discount misuse, it can reduce cancellation when paired with a reward strategy, like milestones. See Method 3 - Rewards: Using milestone discounts.

Method 3 - Rewards: Using milestone discounts

If you’re using Recharge Rewards, you can use the streak count feature to offer increasing discounts as customers reach milestones. This approach allows you to provide standard sign-up discounts that expire while rewarding and encouraging customers with even greater discounts and rewards for their long-term loyalty.