App Masters · Mar 21Early Stage Strategies to Drive App Subscriptions
Its two-step paywall, with no close button on the first screen, lifted download-to-trial-or-purchase conversion about 4% and then reached 16.4%. Email offers via Stripe, a Postpartum Support International partnership (942 activations) and daily push notifications also drove early revenue.
Tips
- Remove the close button on the first paywall, keep the second closable▶ 4:28Download to trial or purchase conversion rose about 4% from adding the double paywall, then recovered to 16.4% with the semi-hard version, and active free trials climbed back toward seasonal levels.
- Send email offers with a Stripe checkout to users who never converted in-app▶ 7:17The team reported strong email open rates and uses this to capture conversions missed in the app.
- Compare your download to trial rate against 5 to 10 percent▶ 6:11Mindful Mamas reached 16.4% download to trial or purchase after the semi-hard paywall.
- Run partnerships with a nonprofit that matches your users' core needs▶ 19:40942 activations from the initial campaign, plus purchases from those moms after their promo expired.
- Test your deep link flow so campaign downloads can be attributed▶ 20:12They only worked out the source of the 942 activations afterwards.
- Check every build for paywall bugs before release▶ 3:42Active free trials fell sharply, then climbed back after the fix and the removal of the first close button.
- Be open to email and push as conversion channels, not just the app▶ 27:00Good email conversion became an early revenue source for Mindful Mamas.
- Test daily push and email content before cutting it▶ 27:40Moms protested when the daily affirmation pushes stopped.
- Build an owned email list instead of relying on social reach▶ 28:53
- Use RevenueCat for pricing tests, but budget dev time for each variant▶ 30:11
