About
Hans Kunisch, SVP at Heights, needed a retention baseline the team could defend as the business scaled from the UK and prepared to enter the US. Subscription shipping patterns made “active” a misleading metric, and key growth decisions were being made on definitions that didn’t reflect repurchase intent.
SourceMedium gave Heights room to pressure-test the numbers, align on a retention definition that mapped to LTV, and standardize exec reporting around it.
Heights is a subscription-first supplement brand founded in 2019.
The challenge
- “Active” subscriber reporting overstated retention because shipments happened in multi-month cycles
- Decisions on growth and US expansion depended on understanding what “healthy” retention actually looked like
- Without consistent definitions, the team couldn’t build confidence in LTV reporting
Heights grew quickly with subscription demand, and Kunisch oversaw revenue, growth, and analytics. But as the business scaled, they realized they didn’t have enough visibility into what “healthy” retention actually looked like.
Because subscriptions were delivered in multi-month shipments, Heights was counting many subscribers as “active” even when they had no intent to repurchase. To maximize value, they needed to re-evaluate what they were counting as success and build a clearer picture of customer lifetime value (LTV).
The solution
- Pressure-tested dashboards and definitions in a trial period before standardizing on them
- Unified dashboards that execs and founders could reference daily without rebuilding a stack
- A measurable shift in focus from “active subscribers” to LTV as the success metric
SourceMedium offered an established, flexible solution without the time and cost of building an internal analytics stack from scratch.
“We need to be nimble, and we need to be quick because we’re growing fast, so having clear data and clear insights is key,” Kunisch explains. “SourceMedium provides the ability to do that without a lot of effort on our part.”
Heights began with a two-week trial, which extended into a three-month trial and then a longer-term contract. That ramp gave the team time to pressure-test the outputs before making a commitment.
“As our business continues to grow, the more data insights we get, and so we have more questions,” Kunisch says. “We know that the platform SourceMedium provides is adaptable to our changing needs.”
With unified dashboards referenced daily by executives and founders, the team could visualize and optimize performance without needing a dedicated analyst for every question.
Heights also worked closely with customer solutions analysts to interpret results and pressure-test what mattered most. That collaboration helped the team make a specific shift: stop optimizing for “active subscribers” and refocus around LTV as the core success metric.
What changed
- Decision enabled: The team changed how they measured retention success, shifting from “active customers” to LTV-driven decision-making.
- How they validated it: Unified dashboards and guided analysis made it possible to challenge assumptions and align on one set of definitions.
- What got faster: Daily exec reporting and optimization without rebuilding a custom analytics tool.
The results
-
2 weeks to isolate the retention signal we’d trust
Heights started with a short trial to verify the outputs matched how subscription shipments and repurchase intent actually behaved. -
3 months to lock a baseline and stop debating definitions
The extended trial period gave the team time to build confidence in the reporting before moving into a longer-term contract. -
LTV became the north-star metric
The team redefined “success” by shifting focus from “active” subscribers to customer lifetime value, and aligned exec reporting around that change.