From Drop-Off to Daily Practice: How a Yoga Course Could Reduce Churn and Boost Engagement with Lifecycle Retention

Introduction

Digital courses rarely struggle to attract new customers. The real challenge is keeping them engaged long enough to feel the value of what they paid for. Many members start with excitement, take one or two classes, then disappear as motivation fades or daily life gets in the way. Many customers even forget that they purchased the course, and end up cancelling their subscription in the future after all motivation has dissipated. It's crucial for programs and courses to have lifecycle flows. When a program follows the customer throughout their journey, guiding, motivating, and re-engaging them at the right moments, retention naturally rises. This keeps them engaged with the content and subscribed for longer. Lifecycle flows will also increase the perceived value of the course. 

Challenge

Based on our online yoga program’s metrics, we can see that their monthly churn is much higher than industry benchmarks. This indicates two things: either the program isn’t motivating customers to stay, or there are quality issues relating to the program.

The first 30-day engagement of the program is concerningly low. At 30%, this indicates that a massive portion of customers are not accessing the program after purchase. This is likely leading to the high monthly churn rate as well as low monthly retention. 

After the initial 6–10 weeks, motivation declined even further. The platform lacked guided paths, accountability mechanisms, or personalized encouragement, causing subscribers to quietly disengage before eventually cancelling.

Strategy & Execution

1. Remove Friction

The first task is to motivate customers to access and engage with the program. We start with auditing the platform and content to ensure that there aren’t any bugs, low-quality content, or UX issues. Once that is resolved, we would also need to audit the welcome sequence and ensure that customers are receiving simple instructions to access the program. Once we are sure there are no uncontrollable retention roadblocks, we can jump into executing external engagement methods. This ensures that churn isn’t caused by product friction, but by engagement gaps we can actively solve.

2. Build Lifecycle Flows

We would start by segmenting the email and SMS list of current members by tenure in the program. People who have been in the program longer would receive custom bi-weekly emails with advanced Yoga tips and motivational encouragement that aligns with their skill level. Beginners in the program would receive similar motivational encouragement emails, along with beginner tips and strategies to get started. 

Members with over a year in the program will be segmented into a VIP flow that offers unique deals, upsells, and community pathways.

SMS flows will be strategically created to align with the email flows and segmented in the same way by tenure. Text messages will be leveraged to gently remind members to log in to the platform, along with time-sensitive events.

3. Lifecycle Logic

We believe that regular engagement with the program would lead to a decline in churn rate and an increase in retention rate. When members consistently engage with the program, they feel improvements, and feeling improvement is the strongest predictor of retention. Our goal is simple: guide members into routines that make them want to stay.

4. Detect Disengagement Early

For programs, we understand that life happens, and disengagement can happen for many different uncontrollable reasons. (Examples: member goes on vacation, or busy week at work..etc) This is where we create crucial inactivity flows for maintaining retention. 

We would set up an automated flow that detects when members have been inactive for 7 days. If still inactive after 10 days, another email will be sent, and then at 14 days.

5. Re-activate Past Members

Lastly, we would create win-back flows for previous members who have unsubscribed. The emails and texts would showcase new programs, fresh content, social proof, and an exclusive returning-member discount. 

Results

Key Takeaways

• Early engagement drives long-term retention
  
  • First impressions are important. Helping new members form an immediate habit is the best way to reduce churn.
• Motivation drops without guided pathways
  
  • A step-by-step journey keeps members active and directly contributes to the improved monthly churn (22% → 16%).
• Segmented lifecycle flows outperform generic communication
  
  • Members received content that matched their progress and skill level, resulting in more relevant touchpoints and directly impacting monthly and annual retention rates.
• Inactivity detection prevents churn
  
  • Automated re-engagement flows at days 7, 10, and 14 reactivated members before they slipped away, reducing silent churn and boosting mid-term subscription longevity.
• Accountability beats discounts in health & wellness
  
  • Short SMS nudges, milestone celebrations, and progress updates created an emotional connection and routine that ultimately increased one-year retention for annual subscribers. No aggressive promotional tactics needed.