Loop Subscriptions

What it does

The subscription engine that powers the Kaching Bundles subscription widget. Kaching is the UI on your product page. Loop is the recurring billing infrastructure underneath that actually charges the cards.

Without Loop installed, the Kaching subscription toggle is just a button that does nothing. Loop makes it functional.

The setup that matters

The Loop install drops you into a setup wizard. Speed through the basic questions:

• "What do you sell?" → quick answer
• "Are you already running subscriptions?" → No
• "Get started now" → click through

The wizard takes 60 seconds. The actual sauce is in the Selling Plan configuration.

Create a Selling Plan

Plan name (customer-facing)

This text shows on the product page widget and the customer's order confirmation. Keep it clean, descriptive, white hat.

✅ "Delivered monthly" — clean, accurate

✅ "Subscribe & Save 20%" — fine if the discount is real

❌ Anything that frames the discount as something it isn't — gray hat, generates chargebacks

I default to "Delivered monthly" for the plan name. Simple, accurate, no surprises.

Plan dropdown: Charge and Deliver

In the plan setup, the dropdown defaults to "Charge and Deliver" — meaning the customer is charged at the same cadence as fulfillment. Standard, white hat, do this.

The 28-day rebill trick (the sauce)

This is where most operators leave money on the table.

Default subscription cadence is monthly = 12 rebills per year.

A 28-day rebill cadence = 13.04 rebills per year. That's a free 8.7% revenue lift on every subscriber, with the same operational lift, the same fulfillment cost, the same product cost.

Look at Grunz (publicly visible) — they ship every 4 weeks instead of every month. Subscriber doesn't notice the difference. The brand bags an extra rebill cycle per customer per year. Compounded across thousands of subscribers, this is six figures of additional MRR per year.

The 28-day cadence works best when your product has a 28-unit count:

• Supplement with 28 capsules → 1 capsule per day → 28 days = natural cadence
• 28-day skincare regimen → natural cadence
• 28-serving powder → natural cadence

Brandon-rule: be upfront about it. If your billing cadence is every 28 days, say so on the subscription widget. Don't put "Delivered monthly" on the cart and then charge every 28 days. That's deceptive and generates chargebacks.

Match the copy to the math. Plan name = "Delivered every 4 weeks" or "Delivered every 28 days." Customer sees it, agrees to it, no surprise on the rebill.

If your product count doesn't fit 28 days (60-count bottles, 30-count bottles), stay on monthly. Don't force the 28-day cadence onto a product that doesn't justify it.

Discount setup

The math:

If your one-time price is $34.99 and you want the subscription price to be $29.99, calculate the percentage:

Plug 14.3% into the discount percentage field. Done.

Use any online discount calculator for the math — search "discount calculator," plug in your numbers, get the percentage. Don't overcomplicate this.

Standard discount targets

Most operators land in this range:

I run 20-25% on most new launches to maximize subscription opt-in rate. Once the brand is established and LTV is proven, I'll test pulling back to 15-20% to recover margin.

Cancellation policy — go white hat

Some operators set up cancellation restrictions:

• "Cancel anytime after 3 months"
• "Cancellation requires email request with 30-day notice"
• "Cannot cancel from the customer portal"

Do not do this. All of it is gray hat. All of it generates chargebacks.

Allow customers to cancel whenever they want, from the customer portal, with zero friction.

The math:

Better to have happy subscribers who stay for 6-12 months than forced subscribers who fight you and damage your processor relationship.

Cross-reference ChargeFlow (sibling sub-page) — the chargeback rate damage from forced subscriptions is one of the top three reasons operators get kicked off Shopify Payments.

Add the product to the plan

After the Selling Plan is configured:

1. Select your product
2. Add it to the plan
3. Save

Subscription is now live on that product. If Kaching is properly installed, the subscription toggle on the product page will activate.

Subscription tags (after upgrading the plan)

Loop's plan upgrade unlocks subscription tags — labels on each order that tell you whether the buyer is:

• A first-time subscriber (subscribing on initial purchase)
• A recurring subscriber (existing subscriber buying again)
• A one-time purchaser (not subscribed)

Useful for back-end ops — sort orders by tag, understand subscriber cohort behavior, segment for email/SMS flows.

Not urgent — set this up in week 2-3, not on day one.

Customer Portal setup

The customer portal is where your subscribers manage their own subscriptions (pause, skip, change product, update payment, cancel).

Turn everything on:

• Allow customers to skip a shipment
• Allow customers to pause subscription
• Allow customers to change product
• Allow customers to update shipping address
• Allow customers to update payment method
• Allow customers to cancel (covered above — non-negotiable)

The principle: the more your customers can self-serve, the less load on your CS team. Cross-reference Module 2 → Customer Support SOP.

Adding the portal link to your store

Once configured, Loop generates a customer portal link under the Accessibility section of the app settings.

Add this link to your store navigation so subscribers can find their portal without emailing CS asking how to manage their subscription.

Suggested nav placement: footer menu or account dropdown. Label it "Manage Subscription" or "My Subscription."

When to actually turn subscriptions on

Pulling forward the Brandon-rules from the Kaching sub-page since they apply equally here:

Only run subscriptions if you're actually going to fulfill orders properly and run customer support.

Subscription customers who don't get their orders, get billed wrong, or can't cancel become chargebacks. Chargebacks at scale kill payment processors.

If you'd rather delay subs: wait until you hit $800-$1,200/day in consistent revenue. By then you've validated the offer, you have CS infrastructure, and the LTV from subs starts compounding immediately on top of validated demand.

For a cold launch with no validation and no CS team: launch without subs. Add them in week 4-8 once the basics are stable.

Cross-references

• Kaching Bundles (sibling sub-page) — the customer-facing widget that Loop powers underneath. Configure both together
• ChargeFlow (sibling sub-page) — subscription chargebacks are the highest-risk category. White-hat cancellation policy = low chargeback rate
• Parcel Panel (sibling sub-page) — subscription orders ship on a cadence. Tracking visibility is critical to subscriber retention
• Module 2 → Customer Support SOP — the CS flow for subscription pause/cancel/upgrade requests, plus the chargeback recovery script
• Module 4 → Email Marketing — the post-purchase email flows that retain subscribers and reduce churn
• Module 6 → Winning Product — Next Steps — graduating from drop-ship fulfillment to 3PL improves subscription LTV through faster shipping and consistent product quality

What's gatekept inside the masterclass

• Full Loop Subscriptions setup walkthrough video — wizard speedrun, Selling Plan configuration, customer portal customization
• The Grunz 28-day rebill math worked out on a real product — me showing the per-unit count justification and the annual revenue lift calculation
• The subscription retention mechanics — free gifts on Nth rebill, exclusive rewards tier setup, win-back flows
• The cancellation flow customization — what to ask before cancellation (without forcing retention), gift card offer scripts, save flows
• Subscription churn analysis — how to read Loop's analytics to identify which products / personas churn fastest and why
• Cross-app integration — Loop + Kaching + ChargeFlow configured together end-to-end

Want the full setup walkthrough, the 28-day rebill math demo, the retention mechanics, the cancellation save flows, and the cross-app integration setup? All inside the RunItUp Masterclass → Join here

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