If you want to grow subscriptions, you have three levers:
- Keep users longer
- Get more users
- Charge more
What if you could do all three just by shipping the right features or acquisitions?
At Canva, where I led Subscriptions Growth, we realized that one of the fastest ways to drive both retention and acquisition was to expand what users could actually do in the product. This meant not just improving the existing product but reshaping the boundaries of what Canva even was.
Rethinking Retention: Make Your Product More Useful, More Often
Retention improves when users find repeated, expanding value. One of the best ways to do that? Build or buy adjacent features that fit into your users’ workflow.
Take Canva as a case study. Initially, it was “just” a graphic design tool. But when we saw people using Canva to create presentations, docs, videos, and even websites, we leaned in.
Instead of building everything from scratch, Canva acquired companies like Flourish (interactive data visualizations) and affinity mapping tools that enhanced our core editor and opened us up to new, higher-value use cases like:
- Enterprise reporting and dashboards
- Internal team documentation
- Animated content for TikTok, LinkedIn, and beyond
Result:
- Customers stuck around longer because Canva became their all-in-one design and content platform
- Larger Total Addressable Market (TAM) as Canva became useful to product teams, marketers, educators, and data analysts
- Higher Average Contract Value (ACV) as companies started replacing multiple tools with Canva
New Features Drive Re-Activation and Expansion
Notion is another great example. What started as a note-taking app has morphed into an operating system for teams.
How? Through strategic feature expansion and community-driven discovery.
- They introduced databases, API integrations, and AI features that re-engaged lapsed users and unlocked new business use cases
- By allowing deep customization, Notion turned passive users into builders, increasing engagement and virality
- They made acquisitions like the Cron calendar team to rethink productivity from the ground up and move toward becoming a full productivity suite
Expanding TAM Through Acquisitions and Adjacencies
Zoom made a similar move with their expansion into email and calendar. You might think: why would a meetings tool need to enter such a crowded space?
Because owning the meeting isn’t enough—you need to own the workflow. Meetings start from calendars and end in emails. By expanding into these adjacent surfaces, Zoom:
- Increased stickiness for existing users
- Reduced churn (users are less likely to switch when everything’s in one place)
- Grew TAM by attracting new use cases such as salespeople, recruiters, and executives
Same playbook applies to:
- Figma acquiring Diagram to power AI-assisted design workflows
- Atlassian acquiring Trello to serve lightweight project use cases
- Shopify acquiring Remix to boost developer friendliness and reduce churn from devs moving to Next.js or Vercel
Playbook: Grow Retention and Revenue by Expanding Product Surface Area
Here’s a framework to apply:
- Map Your Customer Journey
Identify what users do before and after using your product. What other tools are involved? - Identify “Edge” Use Cases with High Frequency or Value
These are your entry points for feature expansion or acquisitions. - Build or Buy
If speed or expertise is critical, acquire.
If it’s a core differentiator, build in-house. - Bundle and Expand Pricing Tiers
Add new value into higher tiers to increase expansion revenue without losing users on lower plans. - Market to the Expanded TAM
Create acquisition campaigns targeted at the new personas now served by your expanded offering.
Most founders focus on acquiring users.
The best ones focus on earning the right to serve them more deeply.
If your product is a house, every new feature or acquisition is another room you add on. Done right, you’re not just growing square footage—you’re turning it into a mansion people never want to leave.
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