OTP to Subscriber
18%
60-day risk free trial
Market Leader: AG1
AG1 is the category-defining foundational nutrition supplement, combining 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single daily scoop. Founded in 2010, the brand has built a global following among high-performers, endurance athletes, and health-conscious consumers who want comprehensive nutritional coverage without a cabinet full of individual supplements. With investors including Lewis Hamilton and Hugh Jackman and endorsements from Olympic athletes, AG1 occupies the premium position in a crowded wellness market.
The brand's commercial model is built around subscription. AG1's retention team, working alongside Paper Run partner, Underground eCom, is laser-focused on that conversion moment, applying sophisticated segmentation and lifecycle strategy to move new customers from a single purchase into a daily habit.
The One-Scoop Problem
For a brand whose value proposition is a daily habit, a customer who buys once and doesn't return represents a missed opportunity of significant scale. AG1 attracts genuinely curious first-time buyers, people who have heard of the product on a podcast, seen it in a gym bag, or been gifted a trial. The challenge is converting that initial curiosity into a subscription before the moment of intent fades and digital touchpoints get lost in the noise of a busy inbox.
Post-purchase email sequences are a standard tool in any retention stack, but in a category where multiple brands are competing for the same consumer's attention and inbox, standing out in the days after a first order requires more than a well-crafted subject line. AG1 needed a touchpoint that arrived with weight, matched the premium feel of the product itself, and spoke to the customer in a context where they were actually paying attention.
A Welcome Worth Opening
AG1, in partnership with retention agency Underground eCom, deployed a series of automated direct mail flows through Paper Run. One such flow is targeting first-time buyers who had not yet subscribed. Triggered by purchase behavior, each new one-time customer receives a physical direct mail piece in the days following their order, arriving at home at the moment they are most likely to be forming an opinion about the product. The format carries the premium positioning AG1 is known for, in a channel where the brand faces no inbox competition.
The flow runs continuously and requires no manual campaign management. A holdout group is maintained throughout, giving AG1's retention team a clean measure of true incremental impact rather than organic subscription conversion that would have occurred regardless. Underground eCom brought lifecycle strategy and audience intelligence to the brief; Paper Run handled the physical execution at scale.
One Purchase Became a Habit
The flow delivers an 9.2x incremental ROAS with an 18% uplift in subscription conversion, measured against the holdout group. For a subscription product at $79 per month, the downstream value of each reactivated subscriber compounds month on month. Measured across the customer lifetime of those converted subscribers, this single direct mail touch continues to generate more and more value.
The always-on nature of the flow means these results accumulate without additional resource from AG1's team. Every new one-time buyer enters the flow automatically, receives a physical touchpoint at the right moment, and is tracked against a control. The result is a retention channel that runs in the background, converting curious first-timers into the kind of daily-habit customers that AG1's business is built on.
"We know the window to convert a first-time buyer into a subscriber is narrow. Paper Run's Automated direct mail flow gives us a way to show up physically in that window, and drive a significant increase in conversion to Subscription."
Director of Lifecycle & Retention, AG1
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