Crafting loyalty that delivers
Background
At Recharge, we’re always exploring ways to help merchants succeed. Preventing their most valuable customers - subscribers from churning is a constant challenge.
So we asked: How might we give merchants the tools to retain subscribers till their next order?
Opportunity and goal
Recharge lacked a native solution to help merchants reward subscribers and convert one-time buyers, leading to churn and missed LTV growth. To address this, we set out to launch Recharge Loyalty: an offering designed to support subscriber retention and drive new conversions.
Our goal: Reach 12% merchant adoption post-launch.
Challenges with existing tools
Insights discovered from 50+ merchant interactions via events, check-ins, and sales calls
Existing tools didn’t offer enough customization:
Merchants had limited flexibility in configuring reward incentives, creating an inability to tailor experiences for different customer needs
Lack of emphasis on acquiring new, and retaining current subscribers:
No targeted incentives to convert one-time buyers into subscribers.
Few offerings to engage or retain active subscribers.
My approach
Grounded in merchant feedback and business goals:
I designed a highly customizable experience that enables merchants to reward existing subscribers and convert one-time buyers, supporting retention and increasing LTV.
My focus was on reducing friction, surfacing clear value, and making Loyalty easy to adopt for new and existing merchants (who are not on Loyalty).
What I delivered
Driving engagement through instant rewards
I designed a new credit account page that gives merchants a clear financial overview of issued credits. Each credit assignment is logged with key details, such as type (Manual, Referral, Reward, or Gift), expiration date, and remaining balance.
To boost engagement and prevent credit hoarding, I designed an interaction that allows customers to automatically applies credits to their next order, making the reward feel instant and valuable, rather than allowing them to pile up and lose impact over time.
Experiences specifically designed to increase loyalty
Continued engagement around a customer's subscription, increases the likelihood of them staying subscribed through to their next order. To facilitate this engagement, I designed experience that merchants can set up to highlight the benefits of staying subscribed. These included showcasing upcoming rewards, availing free gifts, or new discounts.
The experiences are set up using flows, and can be customized to trigger at any time of a subscribers journey.
Reduce churn with unused rewards
I addressed the challenge of reducing subscription cancellations by leveraging unused rewards and crafted an experience that encourages customers to redeem rewards when considering cancellation. This experience increased subscription retention and turned potential churn into rewards engagement.
In one use case, this feature prevented over 150+ customers from churning by incentivizing them to apply credits and retain their subscriptions, in a span of 3 months.
A holistic rewards experience
One-size-fits-all rewards experience don’t hit the mark. To fix this, I designed templates that lets merchants pick whatever experience work best for their customers.
Merchants can create create tiered rewards, milestone-based rewards, rewards on one-time purchase, among others, supporting nearly any loyalty strategy.
Over 1+ million customers rewarded!
Where we’re at currently
Recharge’s Loyalty is available through Retain, an add-on for merchants on Standard and Pro tiers.
Our current adoption rate is sits at 35%, and 47.55% of subscribers stay after their third subscription order, a new high!
The typical retention rate in e-commerce is around 31% [Source: Shopify's annual commerce reports, Gorgias report].
Our ongoing goal: Increase adoption to 50%.
Let's collaborate
Got something cooking? Whether it’s just a sketch or fully scoped, I’m happy to help.
Shoot me a note: zaidalirasool@gmail.com
Zaidali Rasool, Rhizhome (C) 2025