Podcast
CHURN FM
Hosted by Andrew Michael · EN
CHURN FM is the podcast for subscription economy pros. Every Wednesday we hear how the world’s fastest growing companies are tackling churn and using retention & engagement to fuel their growth.
22episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
E303 | Customer Success Is Dead. Meet the Growth Department.
Apr 800:35:40Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we have Alex Raymond, founder of AMplify and author of The Growth Department, a book reframing how post-sales teams think about their role inside B2B companies.In this episode, we dig into why customer success and account management are in an identity crisis — and why the answer lies in orienting the entire function around one core purpose: helping the company win. We explore the “keep, grow, no surprises” framework, how NRR as a North Star metric can align sales and CS around shared incentives, and why consolidating all revenue under a true CRO is becoming a more common org design move.We discuss the confidence gap in CS teams when it comes to commercial conversations, why over-indexing on relationships is one of the most common mistakes in post-sales, and why parachuting an AE back in at renewal is a poor experience for the customer — and for the team.Finally, we tackle the economics hiding in plain sight: why 100% of a company’s profits come from existing customers, how resource allocation between new business and existing accounts is wildly mismatched, and why the language CS and account management professionals use to describe their work has a direct impact on their standing inside the business.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E302 | Why 51% of Subscribers Cancel Each Year—and How to Reduce Voluntary Churn
Feb 2500:33:30Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we have Priya Lakshminarayanan, CPO of Recurly, a subscription management platform empowering brands like Twitch, PupBox, Sprout Social, and Pipedrive to launch, scale, and optimize subscription experiences.In this episode, we dive deep into Recurly's 2026 State of Subscriptions report, uncovering surprising trends that challenge conventional wisdom about churn. We explore why "selective churn" might actually reflect stronger consumer intent rather than fatigue, and why the pause button has evolved from a red flag into a strategic retention tool.We discuss the dramatic shift in subscriber behavior, including why 51% of consumers cancelled at least one subscription in the last 12 months, how micro-subscriptions are becoming the new trial experience in an AI-driven world, and why traditional free trials are becoming cost-prohibitive as LLM costs rise.Finally, we tackle the loyalty paradox: why transparency and easy cancellation actually drive long-term retention, how annual subscription renewals have become critical inflection points, and why the best retention strategy might be proactively canceling customers who aren't using your service.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E301 | Smarter Dunning: How Data and Intent Change Payment Recovery with Charles Rosenblatt of Butter Payments
Feb 400:38:10Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we have Charles Rosenblatt, CEO of Butter Payments, providing ML AI-driven payment recovery for subscription merchants and recurring payments. Previously, Charles was CSO of Payoneer, CRO at Velo Payments, and ran treasury at D.E. Shaw during the late 90s—where managing a financial crisis taught him that outside factors can derail even the best strategies and smartest teams. In this episode, we uncover why the 14-day dunning period is an arbitrary standard that shouldn't exist—and how decoupling dunning strategy from product access unlocks smarter business decisions. Charles shares how Butter analyzes 128 variables across billions of transactions to predict payment recovery within 10 seconds, allowing companies to shut off high-cost AI users immediately when recovery is unlikely, while keeping loyal customers active when payments will clear. We explore why involuntary churn creates dangerous false signals: 30% of customers leaving might actually want to stay but have expired cards or temporary payment issues. This can lead product teams to catastrophic decisions—like Coca-Cola changing their formula when the real problem was payment infrastructure, not product-market fit. The lesson: understand what's within your control versus what's not before making strategic pivots. We also discuss how Capital One shifted their best people from acquisition to retention after realizing they were churning the equivalent of the 7th largest credit card company every year—because spending $20 to save a $500 NPV customer beats spending $300 to acquire a new one who might churn anyway. Finally, we dig into payment recovery ethics and strategy: why Butter refuses "forced payments" that drive customer accounts negative, how different card types (Amex vs. debit vs. prepaid) require completely different retry logic, and why competitors who inflate recovery promises by 100% damage trust across the industry.As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me directly at andrew@churn.fm, and don’t forget to follow us on X.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E300 | Building Retention into Your DNA: Matthew Tharp on Churn Signals, ICP & Cold Email
Jan 2300:38:58Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we have Matthew Tharp, CEO of Hunter.io, the all-in-one email outreach platform used by over 4 million people to identify prospects and run cold email campaigns. Previously, Matthew was VP of Worldwide Retention at LogMeIn, where he owned NRR across nine products—giving him a rare masterclass in retention challenges at different stages and scales.In this episode, we uncover why retention isn't a problem you solve when growth stalls—it's DNA you build from day one. Matthew shares the paradox of his career: building a company with 95%+ annual retention that got acquired, versus joining a high-growth PLG business with churn issues that needed solving before scaling further.We explore why over-indexing on either growth or retention creates problems, how to identify the usage patterns that predict churn in the first three weeks, and why every company that tries to fix retention late struggles. The lesson: balance from the beginning beats transformation later.We also discuss how Hunter achieved 3X growth this year by going back to basics—running a rigorous ICP analysis, choosing battles they could win instead of markets where competitors were spending $100M, and layering new customer segments without creating product bloat.Finally, we dig into cold outreach data: why email lists under 100 people dramatically outperform larger ones, why shorter emails force the clarity that drives replies, and how constraints—not scale—are the real performance lever in outbound.As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me directly at andrew@churn.fm, and don’t forget to follow us on X.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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EP299 | How to Build a Brand That Speaks to Robots and Humans with Susan Keplinger | Force of Nature
Dec 500:41:13Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we have Susan Keplinger, CEO of Force of Nature, a boutique performance marketing shop behind the growth of brands like Ring, Oofos, and other category leaders. With experience building data-driven growth engines across e-commerce and DTC, Suzanne has helped companies shift from chaotic marketing to orchestrated, scalable systems.In this episode, we uncover why the future of performance marketing isn’t about hacking audiences or chasing the “one winning creative”—but building portfolio-driven creative systems, trusting your data, and showing up clearly for both humans and algorithms.We explore why Google and Meta still dominate the ecosystem, why clean data is the new competitive edge, and how brands should think about programmatic everything—from ads to email to retargeting.We also discuss how Suzanne built the original performance infrastructure at Ring, how brands like Oofos leverage their “growth signal system,” and why the best-performing companies today treat robots as part of their audience.Finally, we dig deep into retention: why 10 customers leaving is the same as your 11th leaving, why the “leaky bucket” kills great brands, and how to know when it's time to stop relying on founder intuition — and start trusting the data.As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me directly at andrew@churn.fm, and don’t forget to follow us on X.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E298 | Why LLM Agents Are Now your VIP Visitors and How to Optimize for Them
Nov 1400:35:01Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we have Kevin White, Head of Marketing at Scrunch AI, a platform helping brands stay discoverable in the era of AI-powered search. Kevin brings experience from leading go-to-market and marketing teams at Segment, Retool, and Common Room, as well as advising fast-growing startups like Ashby, Deepnote, and Gretel.ai. In this episode, we explore how the rise of answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity is reshaping how people find information online—and what it means for marketers. We discuss how Scrunch helps brands optimize their sites for large language models (LLMs), why bots are becoming the new audience, and how AI-driven search is redefining visibility and discovery. We also delve into lessons from Segment and Retool on balancing self-serve and enterprise growth, how activation-first onboarding drives retention, and why doing “white-glove at scale” can triple user success. We wrap up by unpacking Kevin’s biggest learnings on churn and growth—from Reforge’s “don’t fill a leaky bucket” principle to why something as simple as naming conventions can make or break a company’s ability to scale.Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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EP297 | How Freemius Aligns Pricing With Growth to Reduce Graduation Churn
Nov 500:32:04Tap to summarizeToday on the show we have Vova Feldman, the Founder and CEO of Freemius.In this episode, Vova shares his experience in launching Freemius from a side project into a platform powering thousands of indie software businesses.We then discussed how Freemius is repositioning itself from its WordPress roots to become the go-to solution for small SaaS and desktop software businesses.We wrapped up by discussing their new transparent pricing model — designed to align with growth and reduce graduation churn.Mentioned ResourcesFreemiusLinkedIn | Vova FeldmanRatingWidget.comSenexx | GartnerTechstarsWordPressPaddleStripePayPalChurn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E296 | What thousands of A/B tests reveal about websites that convert and retain with Casey Hill | DoWhatWorks
Sep 1900:45:05Tap to summarizeToday on the show we have Casey Hill, CMO of DoWhatWorks, a patented growth experiment tracking engine that reveals which website changes actually drive results. Casey brings experience from ActiveCampaign, his work as a Stanford instructor and advisor, and years of research into how leading companies like Slack, Shopify, and Asana run experiments. In this episode, Casey breaks down why most A/B tests fail and how to focus on the few elements that truly move the needle. We explore why two CTAs often outperform one, why customer logo bars underdeliver, and why expectation-to-reality alignment is the hidden driver of both conversions and retention. Casey also shares how DoWhatWorks blends large-scale data with human research to surface reliable best practices, why expansion revenue has become its biggest growth lever, and how enterprise clients are tackling churn by setting clear expectations from day one. We also discuss how onboarding experiments reduce early churn, why traffic sources should shape your CTA strategy, and why simplicity always wins on pricing pages.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on X.Key Resources:DoWhatWorksLinkedIn | Casey HillEp 235 The Lifecycle of Loyalty: Tackling Churn at Critical Stages in the User JourneySlackAsanaKlaviyoShopifyRampHockeyStackLinearY CombinatorHotjarClayHexBufferRipplingOptimizelyAmplitudeWebflowAdobe TargetBetScoresChurn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E295 | The Future of SEO in an AI-First world with Kevin Indig | HyperGrowth Partners
Jul 1000:41:53Tap to summarizeToday on the show we have Kevin Indig, Growth Advisor and Partner at HyperGrowth Partners, a stage accelerator that invests time into early-stage startups to help them achieve and sustain rapid growth post-Series A. Kevin is also the former Director of SEO at Shopify and VP of SEO & Content at G2, with a rich background advising top startups like Glean, Toast, and Reddit.In this episode, Kevin breaks down how AI is fundamentally changing the world of SEO. We explore why 2024 might have been the last year of peak organic traffic, how AI is creating higher-intent traffic that converts better, and why brand trust matters more than ever in search results.Kevin also dives into how LLMs use search engine data to ground responses, why traditional content strategies are losing relevance, and how modern companies should pivot toward first-party data, robust documentation, and strong communities.We also discuss the evolving role of Chrome, why Reddit is having a moment, and why retention—not just clicks—is becoming the ultimate SEO metric.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.Key Resources:WebsiteLinkedInGrowth MemoHyperGrowth PartnersGoogle I/OOpenAIChatGPTRedditPerplexityPostHogChurn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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E294 | SaaS isn’t dead, it’s just different: Alexander Theuma from SaaStock on the industry’s turning point
Jun 2500:42:15Tap to summarizeToday on the show, we welcome Alexander Theuma, founder of SaaStock and general partner at BackFuture VC. In this episode, Alexander dives deep into the shifting SaaS landscape, exploring how AI is redefining capital efficiency, company structure, and startup strategy.We discuss how VC trends are evolving, the rise of M&A and SaaS consolidation, and how lean, AI-powered startups are replacing bloated headcounts. Alexander also shares the lessons he’s learned from running SaaStock for over a decade and how his unique vantage point shapes the way he backs early-stage founders.As always, let us know what you think by emailing me at andrew@churn.fm, and don’t forget to follow us on X.Mentioned Resources:SaaStockBackFuture VCChurn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.
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