The New Year Playbook for Health & Wellness Subscriptions: How to turn high intent seasons into recurring revenue

Every January, health and wellness brands see the same pattern: a surge of motivated shoppers followed by an equally sharp drop in repeat engagement. Customers arrive ready to reset their routines. But without the right subscription strategy, most of that demand never turns into profitable revenue. 

January intent may spike acquisition, but it rarely solves the hard part: retaining customers long enough to recover CAC.

For wellness and healthy-living brands like vitamins, supplements, health aids, healthy food, and meal kits, that early churn erodes the repeat revenue needed to make January acquisition profitable. 

The strongest health and wellness brands understand this. They aren’t treating January as an acquisition month. They’re treating it as a recurring revenue inflection point. With the right subscription levers, they stabilize early retention, accelerate CAC recovery, and build the routines that drive predictable subscriber value all year.

Brands can turn this surge of wellness motivation into momentum that lasts. This playbook breaks down seven strategies wellness brands use with Ordergroove to convert high-intent demand into durable subscriber value.

1. Guide shoppers toward the right regimen with personalized product discovery

Ordergroove’s Guided Selling capabilities give wellness brands a way to align shopper intent with the right products from the first interaction, which strengthens the downstream impact of every subscription touchpoint.

Shoppers often know their goals, but not which products will help them achieve them. Guided Selling closes that gap by translating wellness objectives and New Year’s resolutions into subscription-ready product paths. 

Life Time brings this strategy to life with a goal-based quiz that recommends products for sleep, recovery, weight support, or performance, giving shoppers the option to choose items individually or subscribe to a complete regimen.

This kind of guided selection reduces friction at the decision point and improves conversion, especially when paired with personalization. One study found that 80% of consumers prefer bespoke shopping journeys and spend 50% more with brands that offer them.

That’s why subscribers who start with goal-matched products convert at higher rates, retain longer, and generate stronger LTV, accelerating CAC recovery.

Ordergroove strengthens these personalized journeys with tools that let subscribers continue shaping their selections after enrollment. Subscription Manager and 1-click order actions make it easy for customers to fine-tune and expand their choices, leading to higher engagement, better retention, and increased subscriber spend.

2. Win budget-conscious January buyers with stackable subscription incentives

After peak holiday spending, shoppers enter the new year focused on stretching their budgets just as much as resetting habits. Stackable incentives align with this mindset by combining promotional offers with ongoing subscription perks for extra sustained value.

GNC leans into this strategy by letting customers combine limited-time offers, Subscribe and Save discounts, and loyalty benefits, making subscription enrollment as the strongest financial choice.

Brands with physical retail locations can extend this value and flexibility further with in-store pickup for subscription orders (SAPIS). The payoff includes repeat foot traffic, increased in-store conversions, and more attachment purchases, all of which strengthen unit economics.

Instead of relying on aggressive discounting, stackable incentives give brands multiple levers to convert high-intent January buyers into subscribers. Ordergroove brings these levers into one configurable system so merchants can activate, customize, and test the incentive structure that best fits their strategy and margins.

3. Use bundles to increase AOV and give shoppers control over their wellness routine

Build-Your-Own bundles and Subscribe More, Save More discounts give customers a clear reason to increase cart size while discovering the combination of products that suits their goals.

Daily Harvest’s Build Your Own Box model lets shoppers mix and match items. As the box grows, pricing improves, driving exploration and helping customers build a regimen that aligns with their goals.

Subscribe More, Save More incentives follow the same principle. brainMD uses quantity-based pricing to encourage shoppers to build multi-product wellness stacks across gut health, immunity, and stress support.

Both models raise average order value (AOV), prevent churn from overstock or product fatigue, and give brands a margin-friendly way to steer customers toward seasonal assortments and high-return SKUs.

Many brands avoid bundles and quantity-based incentives because of operational lift. Ordergroove removes that barrier with dynamic bundle logic and subscription-based quantity thresholds, making it easier to offer these value plays across a wide assortment without added technical burden.

4. Capture New Year motivation early with prepaid subscription plans

Prepaid subscriptions convert early motivation into guaranteed revenue by encouraging shoppers to commit to multiple order cycles up front. 

Shoppers get better pricing and added convenience, while wellness brands benefit from stronger recurring revenue and early retention during a high-stakes time of year.

SmartyPants structures prepaid plans around the natural cadence of vitamin and supplement use, rewarding customers who commit to several months at a time.

Consistency is what makes the prepaid model so effective for health and wellness categories where vitamins, supplements, sleep products, and healthy foods require ongoing use to show results. Across Ordergroove merchants, prepaid subscriptions have increased retention by up to 60% and revenue by up to 40%.

Prepaid plans also create more recurring touchpoints than one-time bulk purchases like Buy One Get One Free, giving brands ongoing opportunities to introduce cross-sells and expand subscriber value.

Ordergroove gives brands the control to launch and optimize prepaid plans with flexible pricing structures and a unified subscriber experience across prepaid and standard cycles. The result is a commitment-driven model that stabilizes early retention and expands long-term revenue potential.

5. Default to subscription to capture high-intent moments

High intent shoppers move quickly at the start of the year. Making subscriptions the default option on high-demand SKUs captures that intent before it slips away.

ONNIT put this into practice immediately after migrating a five-figure subscriber base to Ordergroove with a 99.6% success rate. By defaulting key products to subscription, they surfaced their best-value offer upfront and removed unnecessary decision steps.

BPN takes a similar approach across its performance products, making subscription enrollment the obvious choice for customers who regularly replenish.

Defaulting to subscription meaningfully lifts enrollment without relying on constant promotions. Among Ordergroove merchants who adopted this tactic early, enrollment rates increased by up to 577% with an average lift of 114% when A/B tested over 30 to 90 days.

For wellness brands looking to convert January’s surge of traffic into long-term subscribers, Ordergroove amplifies this strategy with testing and optimization tools that pinpoint the product page configuration that converts. Teams can test program-wide and product-group offers out of the box, measure lifetime revenue as a native KPI, and confidently scale the version that delivers the strongest subscriber growth.

6. Keep New Year resolutions on track with milestone incentives

Milestone incentives like Nth order rewards give subscribers timely reasons to continue, especially during the initial order cycles when churn risk is highest.

Native Remedies applies this model with a free gift on the second recurring order, turning a typically high drop-off point into a moment that reinforces subscribers’ progress.

By acknowledging momentum, milestone incentives keep subscribers engaged through the critical early phase of habit formation. Ordergroove makes it easy to tailor milestone logic to specific wellness purchasing patterns, and convert early progress into lasting retention without taking on extra CAC.

7. Drive AOV with personalized cross-sells

New Year motivation opens the door for discovery. Well-timed cross-sells introduce complementary products that enhance results and increase order value.

Bonafide uses Ordergroove’s cross-sell capabilities to surface personalized add-ons based on subscriber behavior, helping shoppers round out their wellness regimen with relevant products.

These recommendations increase AOV among existing subscribers, generating the incremental revenue brands need to turn a profit during January’s competitive acquisition window. And by encouraging subscribers to build a fuller regimen instead of relying on a single item, cross-sells keep wellness paths relevant and comprehensive for stronger retention.

Because Ordergroove handles both the logic and timing of cross-sells, brands can deliver these offers at optimal moments without operational burden. That includes the ability to promote subscription upgrades like moving from monthly billing to prepaid plans, or targeting one-time buyers with subscribe messaging through Klaviyo or Attentive. 

January brings extraordinary wellness intent, but without the right infrastructure, most of that demand slips away. Flat discounts and rigid subscription tools can’t create the wellness-specific experiences needed to shape behavior, build routine, protect retention, and strengthen LTV.

Capturing this moment takes technology and strategy that move as fast as customer intent. Ordergroove helps wellness and meal kit teams shift from holiday-driven acquisition to year-round subscription-led growth with a flexible platform and strategic guidance needed to launch high-impact experiences quickly and scale the ones that perform.

Ready to  to turn more of your early-year buyers into long-term subscribers?