Your subscription program is adding customers every month—so why has it stopped growing?

Matt Holman, founder of Subscription Prescription and known as “The Subscription Doc,” explains how churn creates a hidden ceiling: eventually, the subscribers coming
in simply replace those going out.

Matt and Kurt discuss why improving the offer can produce a better return than obsessing over retention, including:

• Why Matt considers a 40% subscription opt-in rate achievable
• How gifts can outperform deeper subscription discounts
• Why customers who switch products or flavors can be worth 6x more
• When migrating subscription platforms is worth the risk
• How to simplify the initial offer without limiting existing subscribers
• Which products probably shouldn’t be sold by subscription
• The inexpensive billing-email improvement most brands overlook

They also compare Recharge, Skio, and Loop—and explore how AI could change subscription management.

Guest

Matt Holman, The Subscription Doc
Subscription Prescription: https://thesubscriptiondoc.com
The Cancel Page: https://thecancelpage.com

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"This traffic is nothing. It is a rounding error."

Kurt and Paul pulled 24 months of raw order data from 10 established Shopify stores: 94 million sessions, 2.2 million orders, $274 million in revenue. They went looking for the AI shopping revolution and found 0.1% of revenue. The catch: those referrals convert better than any other channel, and getting ready for them takes one afternoon of free work.

Then the discount data. Across $285 million in gross sales, nearly every store hands the same 20% code to new and returning customers alike, all year long, while the promo type that wins on every metric gets 7% of the budget.

Also covered: the channel quietly outselling all AI sources combined 35 to 1, and the leaked evergreen code that cost one store $349,000.

SPONSORS

Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com

Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• State of Ecommerce 2026 (AI traffic report): https://ethercycle.com/pages/state-of-ecommerce-2026
• State of Discounts 2026: https://ethercycle.com/pages/state-of-discounts-2026
• Promo Party (free gift with purchase app): [PROMO PARTY URL]
• Shopify Agentic dashboard: Shopify admin, under Sales channels

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"Man, what didn't I get wrong? It's so much harder."

Brian Nolan sold his SaaS company Sellbrite to GoDaddy. Then he bought Darren & Phillip, an Australian dog apparel brand built around viral matching dog-and-owner bathrobes, and found out that owning a store is a different beast than building software for stores. The founder was the face of the brand, and she left with the sale. The Google Workspace account was locked to Australian billing. Moving inventory from Australia to the US costs more than shipping it from China.

In this episode: what nobody warns you about when buying an 8-year-old brand, how customers with 80+ repeat purchases justify losing money on the first order, and the TikTok creator seeding playbook that works in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands.

SPONSORS

Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com

Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Darren & Phillip: darrenandphillip.com
• Loop Returns (returns & exchanges): loopreturns.com
• Judge.me (reviews): judge.me
• Promo Party (Kurt's free gift with purchase app): promoparty.app

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Kurt pulled the agentic sales numbers on a store doing $1.8 million a month. ChatGPT drove $4,200 of it. So he dragooned business partner Paul Reda into an unscripted reaction to Shopify's Editions announcements. No pre-cleared questions, no talking points, just two people who've optimized eight-figure stores for AI search comparing notes on what's actually real.

They get into why Universal Commerce Protocol is legitimately impressive tech still waiting for its payday, what the app store review crackdown means for honest developers, and a discovery buried in Shopify's dev docs: a commission-based paid placements program that might finally be the part that makes the money.

SPONSORS

Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com

Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• DollScout, Kurt's Universal Commerce Protocol tech demo: dollscout.com
• Promo Party Pro, Ethercycle's Shopify app: promoparty.app
• Shopify dev docs, agents/catalog (paid placements developer preview): shopify.dev/docs/agents

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"It's an in-house, ready-to-go agency. Which is free for all merchants."

That's how Sachin Malhotra, Shopify's Director of Product for Merchant Marketing, describes Campaign Autopilot, the new AI marketing tool Shopify just announced as part of Editions. It sets up your ad accounts, syncs your catalog, and runs Meta Advantage+ checkout campaigns inside the guardrails you set. You teach it your boundaries, it does the heavy lifting, and you keep oversight the whole way.

Sachin walks Kurt through how the "ask me first" controls work, why the tool optimizes across Meta, Microsoft Ads, ChatGPT, and Snap instead of fixating on one channel, and how it stacks with Shop Campaigns and its pay-only-when-you-get-an-order billing. If online advertising has ever felt like yelling into the void, start here.

LINKS

• Campaign Autopilot: shopify.com/blog/introducing-campaign-autopilot
• Shopify Editions

SPONSORS

Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com

Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

WORK WITH KURT

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ethercycle.com/apply

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ethercycle.com/work

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"Being on Shopify means you get access to agentic automatically, out of the box."

Your store is already selling inside ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Shop, whether you've noticed or not. Aaron Glazer, Director of Product at Shopify, joins Kurt to explain Agentic Storefronts, the new Admin experience that finally makes that presence visible and controllable.

The buyer behavior has already shifted. Shoppers now have long conversations with an AI about a whole use case, a camping trip, a problem, a gift, and arrive at your store already sold. Agentic Storefronts shows you the traffic, sales, and conversions from each AI channel, plus the real queries surfacing your products, so you can see where you rank and where you don't.

Aaron and Kurt get into why this is the new SEO, why complete product data is the whole game, how Shopify Catalog structures your catalog for agents, what native checkout in an AI channel actually means, and why you stay the merchant of record with the customer relationship intact. Plus a bonus on Rollouts and SimGem heading into BFCM.

SPONSORS

Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com

Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Agentic Storefronts: Shopify Admin > Agentic Storefronts (left nav)
• Shopify Catalog (for developers): build on the product discovery API
• Rollouts and SimGem: in Shopify Admin

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

"I hear store associates asking people in person for their email all the time, and it always is a little bit awkward."

Helen Mou runs product for retail at Shopify, and she just helped rebuild the thing every store runs on. This spring edition is the fastest POS Shopify has shipped. The rebuilt core selling flow saves over a minute on complex transactions, the kind with multiple items, stacked discounts, split shipping, and a customer attached for loyalty.

Helen breaks down what actually changed on a busy floor: automatic email capture through the Shop network's 200 million-plus buyers, scannable discount codes that kill the keyboard-smash, multi-select line items, per-line staff attribution, the new POS Hub, and the new Verifone Victa Mobile device for selling shoulder to shoulder instead of stuck behind the counter.

SPONSORS

Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt

Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com

Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Shopify POS: shopify.com/pos
• Shopify hardware store (Verifone Victa Mobile pre-orders): shopify.com/hardware
• Get started: Shopify Admin > POS sales channel

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bgrJVYiDQKc

"If I don't see that purple button at checkout, bye-bye." That's what Shop's buyers tell Kenny Cohen, and it's a clue to why Shop has quietly become one of the most valuable channels a Shopify merchant has.

Kenny runs product for Shop, and in this spring edition he walks Kurt through three updates. Agentic Shop Search now understands a buyer's taste from their real purchase history, not generic web guesses. Posts let you auto cross-post your Instagram reels into a feed where people actually came to shop. And a new retail integration lets buyers check local inventory and start a return in the app to finish it in store.

The throughline: Shop already has hundreds of millions of buyers interacting with your brand for free, mostly through order tracking. The merchants who win are the ones who show up with Posts and a dialed-in storefront instead of leaving that attention on the table.

SPONSORS

Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and moregetswym.com/kurt

Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnelszipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Shop: shop.app
• Set up Posts: Shopify Admin > Shop sales channel > Posts tab
• Check your search placement: Shopify Admin > Agentic sales channel
• Sign in with Shop on the Catalog API (for developers)

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

VP of Product Vanessa Lee joins Kurt to break down the 2026 "Everywhere" edition and the years of quiet groundwork behind it: taxonomy, attributes, clustering, and a universal product identifier that now power a search catalog of billions of products. The payoff for merchants is strange and good. You're already enrolled in agentic commerce by default. One real store is doing $60K a month through it.

Inside this episode: why the catalog plus UCP makes every Shopify store callable by any AI app, how to use Agentic Storefronts to see exactly where you rank and what data to fix, and why Vanessa says not to sleep on Shopify retail in 2026.

SPONSORS

Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more
getswym.com/kurt

Ecommerce Alley — The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale
Special offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt

Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Shopify Spring 2026 "Everywhere" Edition: shopify.com/editions/spring2026
• What is Shopify Catalog (merchant explainer): shopify.com/blog/what-is-shopify-catalog
• Shopify Engineering blog, product taxonomy at scale: shopify.engineering/product-taxonomy-at-scale
• Shopify Engineering blog, catalog clustering: shopify.engineering/catalog-clustering
• Shopify Catalog API + dev dashboard: shopify.dev
• Agentic Storefronts: in your Shopify admin sales channels
• Vanessa Lee on X: x.com/vlaurenlee

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Also on YouTube

Montana Knife Company was finally releasing its first folding knife, a $390 piece their fans had been begging for, and they wanted an announcement page worthy of the moment. Apple-style scroll animations. Exploding diagrams. Every element on screen doing something. The catch: you couldn't buy anything from it. The entire page existed to introduce the new product, build the hype, and capture emails before the drop. Then it had to survive launch day.

Paul Reda walks through the build that crashed Safari before it sold out in minutes: why video was the obvious answer and the wrong one, how a canvas-based flipbook moved 40MB without killing phones, where "French developer Claude" wrote every line of GSAP, and the one rule that made it all possible. Content leads design, or you don't get the dinner.

SPONSORS

Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more
getswym.com/kurt

Ecommerce Alley — The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale
Special offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt

Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Montana Knife Company: montanaknifecompany.com
• The Montana (the folding knife landing page): montanaknifecompany.com
• GSAP (animation library): gsap.com
• Prior MKC episodes with Brandon [Horejsi]: search the feed for Montana Knife Company

WORK WITH KURT

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Also available on YouTube

"It was a mind and body brokenness. I'll just say like depression."

By 39, Chris Lang was running 10 businesses and falling apart. He killed most of them and bet everything on Fresh Chile, his bootstrapped Shopify chili brand from Hatch, New Mexico. It cracked the top 1% of Shopify and 8 figures in revenue, but didn't turn a profit until Q1 of year six.

Inside: why he started publishing his real ROAS on LinkedIn when the numbers were ugly, the 80% Meta cut that finally flipped him profitable, and how a 250K-follower organic community out-engages Heinz, Tabasco, and Sriracha combined.

SPONSORS

Swym — Wishlists, back-in-stock alerts, and more
getswym.com/kurt

Ecommerce Alley - The Meta Ads System 400+ Brands Use to Scale
Special Offer: ecommercealley.com/kurt

Zipify — Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT

LINKS

• Fresh Chile: https://freshchileco.com/
• Chris Lang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislangsocial/
• Chris Lang on X: https://x.com/chrislangsocial

WORK WITH KURT

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.