CaddieOpen in CaddieDownload for Mac

Boost Your App Subscription Revenue: Proven Strategies and Optimization Tips

Shared by Caddie Library · Updated
App Masters20:50Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Subscription revenue grows most by showing a long paywall to every user during onboarding. Fixing monetization beats chasing downloads, so test each change on your own app.

Key takeaways

  • Most buyers pay in their first session, so the paywall belongs in onboarding. 3:55
    • 60 to 80 percent of buyers subscribe during the first-time experience, and 80 to 90 percent do so across onboarding and the home page.
    • One app added onboarding screens that restate the benefits and saw a 234 percent increase in conversions.
  • More paywall views mean more sales, so a paywall users cannot close earns more. 5:54
    • Showing the paywall first and asking for push notifications after lifted sales 52 percent, and paywall views went from 40 to 94 percent.
    • Adding one small X to a hard paywall cut sales in half.
  • A long paywall beats a short one because people read when asked to pay. 8:05
    • The long version lifted revenue 65 percent with flat downloads, and another app made 12 times more.
    • An app with only 15 downloads a day went from $250 to $1,000 by optimizing its paywall.
  • A free trial helps inside onboarding, but may cost sales after it. 16:11
    • Adding a trial to onboarding raised sales 420 percent for a tiny app.
    • A photo vault app took $12,000 with no trial for active users, against $4,000 with a trial.
  • A hard paywall can lower lifetime value, so it needs a test on your own app. 12:24
    • Buyers may pick the monthly plan, which has the lowest lifetime value, and it fits niche apps best.
    • Locked content performed about the same as a hard paywall in one friend's test.

They're going to read when you're asking them for money. That's the one time they'll read.

Steve, App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 Find the funnel's hole before buying traffic

Fixing monetization moves growth more than acquisition, and the funnel shows where to fix.

  • Read the funnel to find the leak before chasing downloads 1:46
    • A trial conversion of 5 to 10 percent is healthy.
    • A trial-to-paid rate of 30 to 40 percent is the industry average.
    • With no hole in the funnel, getting more downloads is the next move.
    • Steve borrowed the slide from Rosie: improving monetization has four times the growth impact of acquisition.
    • He separates his opinion from claims he has data for.
    • Pricing is a hard topic, so test it on your own app.

2:58 Put the paywall in onboarding

Buyers arrive as hot leads, so the paywall and a benefit-led onboarding belong at the start.

  • Showing the paywall during onboarding can double revenue 3:00
    • Calm shows its paywall during onboarding.
    • Steve has heard the same from people who did it: I don't know why it took so long.
    • Buyers come in warm. They searched, saw an ad, read the screenshots and the reviews.
    • Purchases were tracked across onboarding, home page, settings and push notifications.
  • Onboarding screens should sell benefits, not list features 4:21
    • Few users open the app right after installing, so onboarding has to remind them what it is.
    • Installs to first opens run about 70 to 80 percent.
    • One app's screens just said "search" and "saved". Those are features, not benefits.
    • Onboarding and the home page together catch the bulk of purchases, so they get the most attention.

5:30 Paywall first, then everything else

Every extra paywall view is another chance to sell, so it should come before other asks.

  • Asking for sign-up and push permission after the paywall earns more 5:31
    • The test compared Calm's original order against paywall first, then sign-up, then push.
    • Trial activations tripled, a 190 percent increase.
    • Calm itself forces sign-up after a user starts a trial, so email is still collected.
    • The number one metric is first open to paywall view, and it should be as close to 100 percent as possible.
    • Steve's line: You're going to miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take.
  • Closing the paywall can trigger a discount offer 7:21
    • Headway shows a 50 percent off gift on every app open after the first.
    • One client app pairs a remove-ads offer with the close button.
    • Steve is thinking a lot about win-backs and plans to test more of them.
    • He read the offer on the second open as a reason the X is not a dead end.

7:50 Make the paywall long

A long paywall works like a long sales page, because people read when money is at stake.

  • Long paywalls borrow from long web sales pages 8:05
    • Readers skim until a headline catches them, as with a long blog post.
    • An emoji app expected graphics to win. More text won instead.
    • Adding the word "free" in front of an ad blocker feature raised conversion 11 percent.
    • The result may not hold for every app, so test it.
    • Steve's hypothesis came from digital marketers who sell online courses with long pages.
  • A long paywall has a standard set of parts 9:45
    • Start with a headline on the benefit.
    • Put the paywall above the fold, with a floating button.
    • Then add benefits, social proof, a feature table, testimonials, pricing and FAQs.
    • Social proof can be as simple as the Apple rating.
    • The team uses this as a template, with a floating button.

10:25 Hard paywalls and locked content

Apps with few downloads should test a hard paywall, and a softer lock on content is the fallback.

  • Apps under 100 downloads a day should test a hard paywall, and the data should decide. 10:44
    • A hard paywall means no X anywhere. The co-founder built one, and Steve opposed it.
    • Steve told him don't change anything, let the data tell us what to do, and the data proved the co-founder right.
    • The app was bought while ranking well organically, and the hard paywall was in place when it joined the portfolio.
    • Steve first objected because he wanted people to use and love the app before paying.
  • A hard paywall works best for niche apps where the user's intent is clear. 12:54
    • A sleep sounds app ranks number one for keywords like green noise and brown noise, so users get exactly what they searched for.
    • Nearly everyone buys the yearly plan, and refunds have been few.
    • Jake Moore of Superwall warns of lower LTV. Monthly suits Netflix or Disney+, and B2B apps may prefer multi-seat plans.
    • The sleep app's pitch is a pun-laden stiff paywall with no X.
  • Softer options still lift sales when a full hard paywall feels too risky. 13:26
    • A jigsaw dating app A/B tested social proof (see what members say) and saw about a 35 percent increase.
    • Calm and Headway lock most of their content, so free content is hard to find within 30 seconds.
    • Lingo Kids looks hard until you tap "view all plans", which opens the full plan list.
    • Another paywall says "continue free" but actually starts a free trial, so Steve suggests changing the message.

15:22 Free trials: length and placement

Trial length should match the plan, and a trial belongs in onboarding more than after it.

  • Trial length should follow the plan: three days for weekly, seven for yearly. 15:24
    • Seven days is the industry average, and 14 seems too long.
    • Weekly plans sometimes have a higher LTV, and most weekly apps use three days.
    • Steve's own app goes for yearly, so it uses seven days.
    • The right length depends on the app, so test it.
  • After onboarding, users already using the app should be tested without a trial. 16:40
    • A trial overcomes the objection of paying before using the app. The client had asked why would I give you a free trial.
    • Past onboarding, users are either in or out, and a trial only adds leakage.
    • William's photo vault app tested trial against no trial. Trials never convert 100 percent.
    • If content is locked, trials are still needed.

17:47 Plans, pricing and win-backs

Showing more plans up front and making offers after the exit lifts conversions.

  • Three plans beat two, and two beat one. 17:47
    • One web app case saw a 233 percent conversion lift, with 40 percent buying yearly and 60 percent monthly.
    • Moore saw a 61 percent lift from one plan to two and 44 percent from two to three.
    • The case study is in the growth hacking book by Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis.
    • Steve's three plans are one cheap plan, one high-LTV plan he wants sold, and one decoy nobody buys.
  • Showing the monthly plan directly beats a "view all plans" link. 19:08
    • Replacing the link with the monthly price gave a 31 percent improvement in conversions.
    • The test was on Blinkist's paywall, and the audience guessed the winner.
    • Only the yearly plan has a trial, and the decoy plan is never bought.
  • Offer a discount after someone closes the paywall or tries to delete the app. 19:39
    • Headway shows a discounted annual offer after the X. It is their third most popular in-app purchase.
    • Websites do the same with a "spin the wheel to save 20 percent" widget.
    • A special offer can also appear as users are about to delete the app.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency and podcast host. Subscription app revenue can be lifted a lot by changing the paywall rather than buying more downloads: show it in onboarding, make it long, test a hard paywall, and tune trials and plans. Case studies show gains of 52%, 65%, 234% and 420%, including one app going from $250 to $1,000 with only 15 downloads a day.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript573 lines
0:03

to improve ways just a little bit about me I'll make that quick trust work with over 3000 apps so I started a podcast back in 2013 when renan was just born probably and I had an app so I started building apps 2011 in 2013 I was like I want to take this seriously let me interview people in the app space to see how I did it so I interviewed the co-founder Shazam interviewed the co-founder of the guy who created crossy Road color switch Rovio everybody that I could talk to I just talked to him to learn because I was just doing apps on the side I had a full-time job doing marketing for a startup in San Francisco and through that built up an audience who then started coming to me for marketing help because I had a background now back then I didn't know crap I was like yo I don't know anything all I know is digital marketing stuff but enough started coming to me that six months after starting the podcast ended up leaving my

0:57

job to pursue this full-time so we're known for the space ASO strategies in 2019 I really made a shift to be focused more on monetization and so that's what we're going to talk about today so unlike the other podcasts out there who might be using as a marketing channel the podcast came first for me okay then the business all right right let's get to it so I love this slide I sold this I stole this from Rosie I saw her talk in London improving the monetization has forexed the impact on growth compared to acquisition I don't gotta read it you guys can read it look that's what I believe and I got case studies to prove it that's why I said proven because for me I like to show things in data form right and I'll always distinguish between my opinion versus something that I have data to prove it for you so here's what I look at when I'm working with anybody I pull up this spreadsheet this me is my

1:52

one of my apps right and I look at the trial conversion so this is the funnel if you got downloads who's got over 50 a day you can be proud come on a thousand downloads a day all right cool that's what I look at if you got downloads look at the trial conversion I just try to find the holes right if your trial conversion is around five to ten percent you're good if your child to paid which is you know people activating is around 30 or 40 you're on industry average right and then we got to play around with pricing now that's a hard topic all right I might not cover that you're gonna have to test that on your own but that's how we play around with it right I'm like look this is where the hole is if you got no hole just get more downloads number one if you do nothing else after this hopefully everybody's doing it here already especially those 1000 downloads a day what's the app at least a thousand

2:44

what oh wait what we talked brain wave sleep sounds at rain rain oh yeah yeah okay I like it so if you do nothing else show your paywall during the onboarding process okay it's a no-brainer it will double your revenues look I've talked to enough people who've done it and they're like oh Steve I don't know why it took so long to do it you can see calm I just pick on the big guys they're showing their paywall during their onboarding process now here's the reason why getting data wanna because of my community like I like to think of myself as like the Encyclopedia of the app business because I took it to talk to people learn right we're still doing the podcast I got my clients execute I got my own apps to execute and test so this is where most people this is where everybody buys so somebody tracked it right onboarding home page settings push notifications so forth you guys want to guess how of the people

3:42

who bought how many bought over 50 percent raise your hand if you think it's over 50 percent raise your hand if you think it's under 50 percent cool it is over 50 anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the people who end up buying will buy during that first time user experience and yes let me repeat it just for those in the back yes they buy before using your app right because a hot lead they looked at your they searched for something they saw an ad they looked at your screenshots they looked at your reviews this isn't somebody just saying yo I'm gonna click on this Banner ad no there's somebody who came in as a hot lead number two that's why I swear alert you want to have an onboarding process look somebody was just like yo okay let me just show the paywall in the first open and then he was listening to the podcast and watching the YouTube channel added some onboarding screens and he saw 234 percent increase in

4:40

conversions so I love these onboarding screens because you want to remind users of what the app is they're not going to download immediately and open the app as much as we would love them to do that I mean I've seen like installs to First opens right 70 to 80 okay so you want a good onboarding process that talks about your benefits one app we just looked at you like search you know saved it's like bro you're not even talking about what the app does what are the benefits those are the features these are the benefits so as you can see anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of all the people who buy will buy during these two things onboarding my little red dot is on your photos by the way onboarding and homepage those right 80 to 90 so really pay attention to those two things all right I'm gonna play a game with you guys I gotta hold two things good thing I'm gonna hold the mic a this is com's the original board look you can X out and

5:39

then they ask for you for push notifications then they show the paywall which one made more money or B where you show the paywall first ask you to sign up and then ask for push notifications all right ready get your hands ready loosen up who thinks to say who thinks this would be all right it is B 52 increase in sales so this is one of my clients right it is a hard paywall which all it means is no X okay I was like dude if we just swap it I bet you weren't going to make more money and he did it why because more paywall views equal more money you're gonna miss 100 of the shots you do not take so don't be shy all right it's a hot lead close them all right and this is just uh up close so this is one of the clients right I like to always have data his paywall views went from 40 to 94 and this is one of the numbers I know David talked about this in his talk earlier this morning but the number one metric I look at is

6:34

first open to pay wall view again you're going to miss 100 of the shots you don't take right so you want to really pay attention install to paywall view you want to get it it's close to 100 as you imagine as you possibly can now for those who are like Steve okay here's some numbers right trial activations 3x that 190 increase and then 52 increase in sales like Steve I have to get their email all right Olivia you're probably saying that well look at what com does if you hit trial and subscribe they then force you to sign up you can't do anything else you got to sign up right cool look at pay what more paywall views more money Headway I love this example we're going to be testing this a lot I'm thinking about win backs a lot recently and so second opening every app open they show you this we have a special gift here's 50 off your offer I love that and we have seen this work too one of the apps we work with it says remove ads

7:41

too and you hit X guess what happens yeah exactly can I call you schedules from now on I'm just kidding all right let's play another game a who do you think won this is pay walls this is a short nice and sweet this is super long who the hell wants to read this who speaks way who thinks B I like it when you guys lose it's big it's 65 now look you got a test it might not work for everybody but my hypothesis when I started thinking about this was yo longer pricing Pages work on the web it is just known if you talk to any digital marketing guy like who creates online courses people will read what they want to read it's like a Long blog post right you just skim until you see a headline you're like oh that's interesting let me read look they're going to read when you're asking them for money that's the one time they'll read don't believe me here's the chart week over week you can see downloads

8:34

flat Revenue up 65 thank you Rudy for letting me show this it's another app we work with two 12x more revenues going long another one this guy I love all right now if you think you got too many downloads you're like oh I only got 25 downloads a day I'm not making any money anymore I need more downloads I need more downloads well guess what this guy went from 250 to a thousand dollars just by optimizing his paywall with just 15 downloads a day that's one five download today so you don't need more downloads I at the time was saying you need at least 25 downloads you don't need more downloads to make more money but he did it with his team all right even another friend of mine started listening this is a bit emoji app right you think highly graphical so you thought like but having more Graphics would help but nope added more text use the word free which works by the way we added the Ford free right

9:32

here for one of our clients increased conversion by 11 percent it's just a feature it was like a ad blocker and I was like let's just add the word free in front of it see what the hell happened saw an improvement in conversion so all right long pricing Pages I'm just gonna break move fast on this all right there's another slide that has a summary but we're gonna break this down all the elements think about it good headline right what is the benefit paywall above the fold this is a floating button benefits social proof feature stable if you want that I've actually tried like just having your Apple rating or some other social proof too paywall again or testimonials more social proof pricing and then FAQs and this is just a template that we use and a floating button so super simple right that's all the elements you want you go to any any landing page I sign up for one of these courses right digital courses I got one

10:28

okay so I'm guilty but you'll see all the different elements and that's what I just borrowed it from right good headline features all that stuff so there it is breakdown summary all right here we go number five Tessa hard paywall especially if you're under let's say a hundred downloads or even 25 downloads I would test a hard paywall in a hard pay wall again just no X all right here's one of here's one of our apps and I'll get to why I have these pricing just for you just so you can see a sample of a hard payable HTC no X anywhere okay here's our sales so we bought the app it was ranking really well organically we ended up buying the app and it was kind of we're still building it but here's where it really went into our portfolio right and so it was a hard pay wall now I know what you're thinking that's super scammy Steve like bro you're not even gonna let them try the app I thought the same way

11:27

my co-founder was like yeah we built a hard paywall I was like what the hell why that's I want people to use the app love the app and then want to pay us right but I was like don't change anything let the data tell us what to do and the data says he was right and I was wrong so you're like what happened Steve you're so cold an app marketing expert what the hell happened here well we put an X all right and so our sales dropped in half by putting an x one little x on a paywall drop half the sales yes yes hard payroll just means no X yeah yeah I still think you can still try thank you what's your name Tim thanks Tim okay we got back put our pay wall we're back to our normal stuff all right shows you the value now the thing about hard pay walls is Jake Moore from superwall he said this look it could lead to a lower LTV now for us everybody's buying the yearly so it's great for us right but if you're

12:34

starting to see like maybe people buying a monthly which has on average the lowest LTV depending on your type of app right if you're Netflix if you're a Disney plus monthly makes sense for you B2B multi probably makes more sense to you from an LTV perspective yep no we haven't seen too many refunds actually and I think it's because look the the way I think the hard pay wall works well is for Niche apps so this is a sleep sounds app but it's not about sleep sounds I know exactly what you're searching for we're number one for that keyword So Think Green noise think Brown noise right like I'm ranking number one for that term So you you're you're telling me exactly what you want and I'm giving you exactly what you want so that's why I think it's working well for us okay my little puns if you want a stiff one this is ours no X all right I got some I got some other ones so look this is a jigsaw dating app we we did this on

13:32

YouTube live stream this was an A B test that they run free doesn't work I love that messaging this was their highest performing this was publicly shown they a b tested this see what members say with some social proof this one saw a 35 if I I think it's a 35 increase by just having some social proof here but I just want to give you guys an example of another stiff hard paywall right semi-hard look at this lingo kids right looks pretty hard until you click view all plans and then they're like yo we've seen this before each week or maybe later and then you get you're presented with that right it's just to give you the flow again pretty cool I thought that was pretty cool all right it's one of my friends never none I like this because it looks like there's no X how do I get out of this now I know what you think continue free actually starts a free trial okay you should probably change the messaging

14:26

on this but how do you get out of this anybody know yes I've down so like I'm thinking like maybe people won't know that so if you're gonna do this don't put the X like just see what happens you know what I mean just leave it so if you don't want to go super like a hard pay wall think about lock content a friend of mine sorry to test this he did a hard pay wall he's already making about eight thousand ten thousand dollars a month did a hard pay wall saw Improvement it is sales and then he's like well calm Headway all these guys are locking a lot of their content right I dare you to try to find calms free content within like 10 15 30 seconds be pretty hard to find so you can see lock content he a b tested this he's seeing that lock content is on average pretty much the same as a hard pay wall so he's seen good results with his app doing that so if you don't want to go hard you know set my heart or you can just do a lot of

15:20

block content as well all right free trials I'm going to talk about this really quick I think seven is probably the ideal 14 seems a little bit too long now it all depends on your app obviously right so Tess three I like it depends on if you're going after weekly sometimes weekly has a higher LTV so if you're going after that I would do a three-day trial that seems to be what most apps are doing but seven if you're going for yearly like I am is the industry average oh okay so here here's a quick little a B test I'll go quick I'll make you guys play this game by adding the free trial on the onboarding because my client said I give you three invoices for free why would I give you a free trial and I was like yo because most people who buy buy during the onboarding process and if free trials like overcome that objection of using your app so just by doing that we saw a 420 percent increase in sales

16:13

now it's a tiny little app he went from like not making any money to finally making some money just by putting the trial so if you're gonna have trials have it on your onboarding process okay but what about after onboarding where users what happens users don't buy William thank you shout out to William he did this we did a video together so thank you William thank him so he it's all public right William public I'm not sharing anything you didn't share so he what he did was he removed it so if you didn't buy doing the onboarding process screw you all right you started using Williams app can I mention the name William or you want me to hush okay it's a private Photo Vault app right and so you start using it he's decided to a B test versus trial and no trial he saw no trial now again people are using the app right saw twelve thousand dollars come in through his app just with uh no trial and then four thousand if you include a

17:12

trial because if you have a trial it's never going to be 100 percent people are they're always going to be leakage if you have no trial obviously you're going to make that money so start testing that and I think that's for me becoming a best practice I really like this case study all right so onboarding definitely have trials after onboarding probably test no trials especially if they started using your app if you're going to do law content you obviously need trials all right but if they're starting to use your app consider not having trials they're either in or they're out like dark people yeah they're in Europe all right rule of Threes I like this so this was at an old company I used to work for so it's a web app this is what we typically see right a and then B this case study actually was in the growth hacking book wrote by my friend Morgan Brown and Sean Ellis who wrote this is like the

18:03

growth hacking King so we saw a 233 in conversions 40 of this plan bought the yearly 60 bought the monthly and then just by laying out this way 86 because here's what I feel Jake Moore from superwall he did his case study he saw two plans versus one 61 lift three plans versus two 44 lift now the key is he said this too but I kind of disagree the key is when you have three plans it might lead to a lower LTV so the way I like to think about three plans is one is a cheap plan one is my ideal High LTV plan one is completely a decoy plan right if you go back this is a complete decoy I didn't want you to buy nobody buys this go to my app nobody buys anything besides the yearly these guys don't even have trials by the way right only the yearly has a trial so short on time but I got 10 seconds I'm gonna play this quick game everybody knows the blink is paywall yeah all right who thinks A1 just by having this

19:11

text view all plans I changed it to or 99 who thinks A1 everybody's like yo everything who thinks V1 like if he seems to always win dude 31 Improvement in conversions because I think I thought that two plans always work better so instead of just saying view all plans and making people click let's just put the freaking monthly blender right it's just another thing that just shows the monthly plan so that's what I like too all right bonus real quick promotions and win back I'm going to show you this lot content really quick here start free trial you don't want to do that you see I like this too this annual has no trial but discounted right if I X out of this paywall I see another offer now I don't know how well this is performing for Headway but I do know it's their third most popular in-app purchase so I love win backs so I always want to show an offer after they hit X on their paywall so you go to any web

20:07

website they show this little spinning thing right like save 20 spin that wheel and they get that okay last tip all right I love this they're about to delete your app and like yo special offer for you tap here just a discount that's in my community all right any questions I'm out of time I know you want more time I know you want more time that's it guys check out the YouTube channel YouTube app Masters we are an app marketing agency full disclosure but check out my content don't contact me until you check out at least one of the videos no questions Bianca how are we on time we're out of time thank you guys so much have a great rest today