Cornbread Hemp Grew Subscriber Count 88% and Boosted Cancel Flow Save Rate 150% with Skio

A Kentucky Hempire with Subscription Platform Problems

Cornbread Hemp launched in 2018 when cousins Eric Zipperle and Jim Higdon built on 250 years of Kentucky cannabis tradition to create the first USDA organic CBD company. The family-owned Louisville brand now employs almost 100 people after growing nearly 3,000% over three years.

Their mission is simple: improve quality of life with flower-only CBD products sourced exclusively from Kentucky-grown organic hemp. That means gummies, oils, capsules, topicals, and now THC beverages following a manufacturing expansion backed by the state of Kentucky.

Katherine Goodman joined as Senior Director of Retention & Customer Experience with one mandate: turn subscriptions into the core revenue engine. With tens of thousands of active subscribers driving significant MRR, the program was already central to Cornbread Hemp's growth, and the team had ambitious retention plans. But the platform they'd chosen to build on simply wasn't built to support them.

Rigid Cancel Flow and Middling Recovery Tools Led to a Leaky Bucket

Cornbread Hemp's retention team knew exactly what they wanted to build: targeted save offers based on cancellation reasons, pre-cancel intercepts to catch subscribers before they hit the final button, and payment recovery flows that didn't require manual intervention. The strategy was clear, but Stay.AI just didn't allow them to execute.

The platform restricted customization across payment recovery and cancellation flows in ways that blocked nearly every play the team wanted to run. Want to surface different offers to subscribers canceling for price versus those canceling for too much product? Not possible. Want to test a splash screen that intercepts high-intent churners? Not supported. Want subscribers to fix failed payments directly from a billing reminder email? Build a workaround.

The biggest blocker was tiered discounts. 

Stay.AI told Cornbread Hemp they could support tiered subscribe & save promotions to drive higher AOV and adoption across their full product line. Then they couldn't. That broken promise became the biggest driver to find a platform that could actually deliver.

As the subscription program scaled, the gap between what Cornbread Hemp wanted to do and what Stay.AI allowed them to do kept widening. The platform that should have been enabling their retention strategy was blocking it, and with subscription revenue compounding monthly, every percentage point of churn they couldn't prevent carried real cost.

Finally, A Subscription Platform that Worked (at Scale!)

After migrating in December 2024, the team rebuilt their subscription experience around the plays they'd been waiting to run.

Tiered discounts came first. The subscribe & save promotions that Stay.AI had promised but couldn't deliver were live within weeks, driving higher AOV and product adoption across Cornbread Hemp's full line. The team could finally reward subscribers for buying more and trying new products.

Payment recovery came next. Skio's recovery tools combined with Klaviyo billing reminders created the systematic approach they'd mapped out but couldn't build on Stay.AI, and Quick Actions let subscribers fix payment issues, add products, or update details directly from reminder emails without logging into the portal.

The cancel flow overhaul came next. The team could finally surface save treatments matched to specific cancellation reasons, and then they launched the Splash Screen, the pre-cancel intercept they'd wanted all along. High-intent churners now see targeted offers before they reach the final step.

"Migration was white glove. We did not see a huge dropoff in subs due to migration, and actually had great feedback from customers about the improved subscription platform for self management," said Katherine.

Skio's team partnered closely throughout the rollout, helping optimize treatments based on actual subscriber behavior. More recently, Customer Portal v3 gave support visibility into subscription details alongside orders and shipments, putting everything in one place.

This wasn't a platform teaching Cornbread Hemp how to do retention. It was a platform finally letting them run their playbooks their way.

Key Growth Indicators Are Up and to the Right

In less than a year on Skio, Cornbread Hemp more than doubled their cancel save rate, turned Quick Actions into a conversion engine, and built payment recovery that performs. Every play they'd designed but couldn't run is now driving compounding gains.

150% Higher Cancel Save Rate

Before September 2024, Cornbread Hemp's cancel save rate averaged 9.5%. After launching Splash Screen and refining cancel flow treatments, save rates climbed to 25.6%, meaning one in four subscribers who initiate cancellation now stays. The Splash Screen intercepts high-intent churners before they reach the final step, surfacing the targeted offers the team had planned but couldn't deploy on Stay.AI.

25% Quick Action Conversion

One in four subscribers who click a Quick Action link takes meaningful action, whether that's adding products, updating payment details, or modifying upcoming orders. Because Quick Actions embed directly in billing reminder emails, subscribers can self-serve without logging into the portal, which drives higher AOV on subscription orders and catches failed payments before they slip through.

44% Payment Recovery Rate

Since September, Cornbread Hemp has recovered 44% of failed payments through the combination of billing reminders, Quick Actions, and improved recovery UX. The recovery system the team envisioned is now live and performing.

88% Subscriber Growth

All of this added up. Better save rates, higher recovery, and increased subscriber engagement meant fewer people leaving and more reasons to stay, and in twelve months, Cornbread Hemp's active subscriber base grew 88% year-over-year. The subscription program nearly doubled, not through aggressive acquisition alone, but because retention finally had the infrastructure to match the strategy.

Still Just Getting Started

Cornbread Hemp continues deepening their Skio partnership, actively using Customer Portal v3 and relying on analytics to guide retention strategy week over week.

With Splash Screen showing immediate ROI, the team is already designing what's next: enhanced billing reminders and post-cancel winback strategies to push retention even further. The partnership stays collaborative, with Cornbread Hemp bringing the retention expertise and ambitious roadmap while Skio provides the platform that lets them execute.

For the fastest-growing hemp company in America, that combination is just getting started.