For anyone running a membership or subscription business, the daily reality can feel like running on a treadmill. You’re constantly pushing to acquire new members, hoping the influx outpaces the inevitable stream of cancellations. This relentless cycle of acquisition and retention is the central challenge of the subscription economy, forcing owners to constantly search for the next marketing hack or retention tactic just to stay even.
But what if the most effective strategies for building a truly sustainable, multi-decade subscription business have nothing to do with modern digital marketing trends? In a recent conversation, marketing legends Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson explored the foundational principles that have allowed Kennedy to maintain a loyal subscriber base for over 40 years. Their insights are refreshingly counter-intuitive.
Instead of chasing fleeting viral trends or optimizing ad spend, their playbook focuses on intentionality, personality, and genuine human connection. This article distills their conversation into three of the most powerful and timeless takeaways for building a membership that members will never want to leave.
Takeaway 1: Stop Chasing “Growth.” Hunt for “Floods and Trickles” Instead.
Instead of a vague, continuous push for “growth,” Dan Kennedy advocates for a highly intentional, two-pronged strategy for member acquisition: “Floods and Trickles.” This approach replaces reactive marketing with a disciplined system for generating new members.
First, you create “Floods.” These are intentional, large-scale campaigns designed to create a massive surge of new members all at once. Kennedy gives the example of a Valentine’s Day gift campaign where 75-80 different information marketers promoted his newsletter to their audiences simultaneously. These are not random occurrences; they are planned events—like tying membership to a major product launch or creating a specific event for that purpose—that happen periodically throughout the year to create a significant, predictable influx of subscribers.
Second, you establish “Trickles.” This is the process of getting a continuous, small stream of new members from many different sources where you are “permanently available.” The goal isn’t to be dramatically promoted everywhere, but to be consistently present in the right places. It’s a strategy of “mention marketing”—getting mentioned on a consistent basis in publications that contain your ideal customer. Kennedy emphasizes the importance of targeting, noting he’d rather be mentioned in Investor’s Business Daily or Entrepreneur than the New York Times. To fuel this strategy, his team created the “Most Incredible Free Gift Ever” (MIFGE) specifically so that partners and affiliates would have a high-value asset to give away, creating countless trickles of new leads. The philosophy is about breadth over depth, as Kennedy explains with an analogy:
As the founder of Coca-Cola once said, “I don’t want 100 places that sell a lot of coke; I want a million places that sell a Coke.” It hits vending machines, C-stores, how do we get it in restaurants, how do we put it in airports.
This disciplined, two-part strategy is far more sustainable than simply “running ads” and hoping for the best. It requires intentionality—both in planning the periodic floods and in systematically setting up the countless trickles that ensure a steady, reliable stream of new members over the long term.
Takeaway 2: Your Core Product Isn’t Enough. You Must Be Interesting and Entertaining.
Once you have members, the conventional wisdom is to focus on delivering value related to your core topic. But Kennedy argues this is the bare minimum and, increasingly, the least effective pillar for long-term retention. He outlines four essential elements for keeping members happy and paying for years, even decades.
The four pillars are:
- Be of practical value.
- Be perpetually interesting.
- Be entertaining.
- Be there (frequency).
While the first pillar—practical value—is necessary, it’s also the most commoditized. In an age where you can learn almost anything for free on YouTube, simply providing “how-to” information is not enough to command loyalty. People can find the “what” anywhere. They stay for the “who.”
This is why the other pillars are so crucial. To be perpetually interesting means creating anticipation, making members wonder, “What are they going to say next?” Kennedy modeled this after television legends like Regis Philbin, whose opening monologue was a daily take on his personal experiences and the morning news, and Johnny Carson, whose monologue offered a witty, relatively apolitical perspective on current events. This unique viewpoint, the rants, and the opinions are what create a bond.
Being entertaining is even more fundamental. People value entertainment more than they value education, and building it into your content creates a powerful bond. Kennedy drives this point home by recounting a quote he heard from the legendary late-night host Johnny Carson:
Carson said if you want to know what the American public values more, entertainment or education, compare my salary with the school teacher’s.
Finally, you must be there with frequency. Kennedy cites Walt Disney’s 360° strategy, which aimed for a customer to be unable to turn around in their own home without seeing something Disney. The goal is to become an unmissable part of a member’s daily life. Like the principle of “church every Sunday,” frequency prevents churn because your presence becomes a valued ritual they would miss if it were gone.
Takeaway 3: A Membership is a Relationship to Nurture, Not a Resource to Squeeze.
The ultimate key to creating “lifers”—members who stay for decades—is to stop treating the relationship as a transaction. Squeezing your member base for more revenue with constant upsells is a short-term strategy that eventually breeds resentment. The goal is to transform the membership into a genuine relationship.
Kennedy highlights the importance of what he calls “white mail”—non-transactional fan mail from members. He shared a timely anecdote of receiving a fax that very morning from a 30-year subscriber. His plan was not to delegate a response, but to personally scribble a note on the fax and send it right back. For a long-term subscriber, this personal acknowledgment is incredibly valuable. It validates their feeling of connection and reinforces that they are part of a community, not just a line item on a spreadsheet.
This approach stands in stark contrast to the common mistake of only communicating with members when you want to sell them something. Over time, this one-sided communication erodes trust and makes the member feel used. Kennedy warns against this destructive pattern:
…they begin to even resent it because now all communication is like a booty call. No communication is just about the relationship.
When a member feels that the communication is a two-way street, that their presence is valued beyond their wallet, they are far more likely to stay. Russell Brunson perfectly captured why this principle is the ultimate retention tool, recalling a comment Kennedy made at an event after seeing members who had been with him for 40 years: “I haven’t said anything new in the last 40 years.” They no longer stay for what they can learn; they stay for who they’re with.
Conclusion: A Final Thought
Building a lasting subscription business is less about mastering the latest marketing tactics and more about mastering human nature. It requires a commitment to an intentional acquisition strategy, the courage to infuse your product with a distinct personality, and the discipline to nurture member relationships over transactions. These principles are not hacks; they are the foundation of a business built to endure.
As you plan the next move for your business, ask yourself: Are you just providing information, or are you creating a relationship your members would truly miss if it were gone?
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