SCOPE
Content Strategy · Customer Research · Retention
ROLE
Content writer and manager, all formats
Keeping high-retention at a subscription platform through research-led content strategy.
My job wasn't to grow it. It was to make sure it didn't shrink, and to actually understand why people were staying.
-38%
Cancellation MMR
after research and platform redesign
3 years
content strategist
end to end
4
formats
video, podcast, webinars, courses
JTBD
customer research
designed, led and synthesised
CONTEXT
A subscription platform that needed to understand why people stayed
Subscription platform for entrepreneurs and business professionals. Video series, podcasts, webinars, courses. Stable recurring revenue across my entire three-year tenure.
As a content strategist, I owned every format, end to end, from editorial planning through production-ready scripts. But the most valuable thing I did wasn't the content itself. It was figuring out what the content needed to be about.
Retention on a subscription platform isn't a production problem. It's a listening problem.
THE RESEARCH
What subscribers said when we actually asked
I designed and led a customer research project using the Jobs-to-be-Done methodology. Structured interviews with existing subscribers, followed by synthesis into concrete decisions about content and platform design.
What they told us was more specific than expected. They weren't looking for more content. They were exhausted by content that felt addressed to everyone and therefore to no one. Several used almost identical language unprompted.
Two findings reshaped everything that followed:
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Integration over separation. Subscribers valued entrepreneurship and marketing thinking together. Pure marketing content felt hollow without the business layer. They wanted one integrated editorial perspective, not two siloed content tracks.
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Grounded over aspirational. The most requested gap was case studies from real small and medium businesses. Not aspirational examples from global brands with unlimited budgets. They wanted to see their own scale reflected back.
They wanted content that was direct, disruptive, and felt made for them specifically.
REDESIGN
Findings that didn't stay in a document
The research changed two things at once: content strategy and platform design.
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On the content side, I restructured the editorial approach across all four formats: topic selection, framing, format mix. The siloed tracks were gone. Real businesses with real constraints became a recurring pillar — and the highest-engagement format on the platform.
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On the platform side, the research shaped UX copy, feature prioritisation, and how the platform presented itself to subscribers. I used their own language directly, closing the gap between how the platform described itself and how its best users actually experienced it.
The redesign was built on what subscribers told us they needed, not on internal assumptions about what they should want.
RESULTS
What happened after the research-led changes
Monthly cancellation revenue dropped 38% over the twelve months following the research-led content restructure and platform redesign — a sustained, directional improvement in retention across the entire period.
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The trend was almost entirely one-directional. After the changes were implemented, cancellation revenue declined month after month, with only one minor uptick across the full twelve-month window.
Research drove measurable retention improvement
The JTBD findings shaped both content and platform. Cancellation revenue dropped 38% in the year that followed. The research paid for itself many times over.
Content strategy and platform design aligned
When the content, the copy, and the platform all speak the language subscribers use to describe their own situation, the whole system aligns. That alignment is what retention looks like at a structural level.
Four formats, one person, three years
Video, podcast, webinars, courses. All planned and scripted by one content strategist with full end-to-end ownership. The consistency of editorial judgment across formats is what made the platform feel coherent.
Subscriber language became the operating system
The most valuable output of the research wasn't a strategy document. It was a shared vocabulary — the subscribers' own words — that informed every content and design decision from that point on.
What this project taught me
Retention isn't about volume. It isn't even just about content quality. It's about whether the whole experience—content, copy, design, positioning—reflects what subscribers actually value, in language they recognise as their own.
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The research was the most valuable thing I did in three years. Not because it produced a document. Because it changed the foundation every decision sat on. The 38% drop didn't come from producing more. It came from listening better, and then building on what we heard.