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Mastering App Monetization: CRM & Discounting Strategies Revealed

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App Masters13:22Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Improving monetization grows an app more than chasing downloads, and the best levers are timely discounts and a gentle freemium paywall flow. Done with restraint, they turn more of today's users into payers without burning the channels.

Key takeaways

  • Monetization work has about four times the growth impact of acquisition work. 11:50
    • A study of initiatives across acquisition, retention and monetization found monetization projects had 4x the impact on growth.
    • Forecasts agree: a small move in price or conversion beats pushing more people into the top of the funnel. Under about $5K to $10K a month, focus on monetization because cash flow keeps the business alive.
  • Most people buy in their first session, so offer a discount right after they dismiss the first paywall. 0:57
    • Show the normal paywall first. If the user closes it, show a discounted version with urgency. Offer a discount rather than lowering the price.
    • Price-sensitive users never pay the first price, and push or email retargeting may never bring them back. A push with a discount after a trial is cancelled also brought in sales for one app developer.
  • Discounts convert better when the message is personal and the number is specific. 4:16
    • Calm's offer of 31% off stood out from the usual 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. An odd number suggests someone thought about the value for you.
    • Repeating "last chance for 50 off" in the inbox causes banner blindness. Offers that escalate in value and speak to the user's state, like "are you burnt out", work better.
  • A freemium app with locked content converts better than a hard paywall. 9:49
    • Make the premium tier visible with home-screen space and locked items. Show a contextual upgrade screen instead of repeating the upsell the user already closed.
    • Small tests matter. In one A/B test a yellow crown icon beat the upgrade text and a star, and the gaps were large.
  • Too many pushes, emails and paywalls burn the channel and drive users away. 5:14
    • The average US smartphone user gets 46 pushes a day. Apple now makes it easy to turn them off for good, and those users are very hard to retarget.
    • Asking for payment about three times is fine. Reviews of the app Flow complain of "too much monetization", and retention falls as it rises.

Every single extra push that you send reduces how effective all the others are.

App Masters

Chapter summaries

0:00 CRM: re-engage users without burning the channel

CRM earns money by bringing lapsed users back, but it only works with the right frequency and quality.

  • Having no CRM is a mistake, and overusing it is just as bad. 0:10
    • Some teams run nothing, while others have killed their channels by sending too much.
    • Some brands run it well and are worth studying.
    • Banner blindness: a banner seen too often starts to look like an ad, so people tune it out.
    • Email has a harder failure, because bad practice sends you to the spam folder.
  • E-commerce brands discount up front to win the first purchase. 1:47
    • The spinning wheel hands over a discount right away to trigger a first buy.
    • It also captures an email, so the brand can keep dripping offers.
    • Superwall's Jake Moore suggested two paywall views, which the speaker adapts into normal first, discount second.
    • That spinning wheel does work.
  • Asking again is right, but the user must feel the app is worth it. 2:28
    • Users who see one ask may simply forget or delay.
    • Never asking again after a refusal is a bad habit.
    • The fix is to understand your users and give enough value that an occasional paywall feels fair.
    • The risk is the other extreme, where users say I used to love this app and leave.

3:05 Real flows: Calm, push timing and a quiz that hides the price

The best flows use the trial exit, personal messages and a gentle price reveal.

  • Calm chains several offers around a cancelled trial. 3:05
    • A cancelled subscription brought four discounts in one month, after a 50% Amex partner offer.
    • After a trial was cancelled, an email gave another seven days of calm on us, then a 50% offer, then an in-app message on return.
    • The discounts were not stepped up in value, so the inbox started to blur together.
    • The "are you burnt out" subject line is the part worth copying.
  • Personal, well-timed pushes with emojis are tolerated even in volume. 4:44
    • Both speakers say they don't mind many pushes if they are personalized.
    • Emojis work, and timing is the key factor.
    • Sending too many pushes costs more than the extra messages gain.
    • The slide's numbers are easy to screenshot and reuse.
  • A high price is best shown only after the user has been eased in. 5:44
    • Second Nature, a nutrition and dieting app, costs about £70 a quarter, or £30 a month.
    • Its first money screen comes only after a quiz written in the user's own language.
    • The speaker nearly bought the app while only testing it: they know me so well.
    • Lesson: don't show a high price at the start and freak them out. The final question comes first: are you ready to invest.

6:41 A paywall that builds trust

An honest paywall that makes the trial optional and shows the main benefit earns trust, which matters most for an expensive product.

  • Hiding the price and offering a free path makes a costly subscription feel fair. 7:01
    • The price is played down, and "not sure, let me try risk free" or "use the free version for now" are real options.
    • The next screen leads with private support from a nutritionist, the main benefit of the package.
    • Many apps hide the free option. Being open about it "built my trust".
    • The 12 months of personal support also anchors the price. It makes the reader ask how much that would cost elsewhere.

8:06 Making the premium tier visible

Free users should see what they are missing through visual cues and community locks, not a repeated upsell.

  • Locked content and tied-in community give free users a reason to pay. 9:01
    • Readers can read community stories, but sharing their own needs premium.
    • A crossword developer is moving from a hard paywall to locked content, because revenue was similar with both.
    • The RevenueCat podcast says the app's CEO credits community for many premium users.
    • The best number of locked items is still debated, so test it. An app with very little content may not suit locking.

10:41 Testing the upgrade button

Small changes to the upgrade call to action can move results by a real amount.

  • Early-stage apps should test their upgrade button, because small changes are not trivial. 11:07
    • A client's star icon was replaced by a crown in an A/B test, and the crown won on a white background.
    • The gaps were "not tiny", though not huge either.
    • The upgrade text and the upgrade-plus-star version were among the lowest.
    • Many early apps assume one tiny change makes no difference.

11:50 Where to focus first

Fix the weakest part of the funnel, which is usually monetization early on, and save advanced growth for later.

  • Past a revenue threshold, the focus can move to lifetime value and virality. 12:35
    • Once cash flow is safe, ask what a high LTV looks like and how to engage users.
    • Free users may be worth keeping if they promote the app.
    • Work out where the whole funnel performs worst, then fix that first.
    • The study also looked at retention, asking where the biggest growth impact lies.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young and Rosie, Steve hosts App Masters; Rosie is an app growth and monetization consultant. Covers how to re-engage lapsed users with CRM, push and email, how to use discounts without training users to wait for them, and how to set up paywalls and freemium experiences that convert. The standout result is a study where monetization projects had 4x the growth impact of acquisition projects.

Lessons that draw on this:

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

Transcript387 lines
0:00

people call it lifestyle marketing I like to just say how do I re-engage my users and make that money so let's kick it off with your CRM when I think about these were the big things that came to mind I've either worked with people who have nothing in which case don't snooze on it you need to do it right and there's some really cool brands that I think are doing it really well some brands that I don't use but then counter to that I've also worked with people who have essentially killed the channels because they've done it too much too high frequency to the quality and people just get Banner blindness which is like a psychological thing where if you see a banner too many times then it looks like an ad you start to check out and so that happens with push and then in terms of email um you can just go into people's spam so like really big issues if you use bad people so it's a balance I'm starting to

0:55

say discount like literally on onboarding after that first paywall if people do not buy that first time give them a quick little discount because my hypothesis is that I think everybody knows this most people who buy buy during that first time user experience during the onboarding process so I almost like want to optimize that experience Jake Moore from Super walleyes like have two paywall views and so my spin on that one would be show them the normal play wall if they hit X on that pay wall show them the discounted version with some urgency on there what do you think about that I like it because essentially if someone doesn't pay in the first instance yeah you can retarget them with push and with email but they might never come back to that um so I definitely think hit people with the discount because there's some people who are price sensitive and they're never ever gonna pay at the first the first price you do not to say

1:46

bring a price down don't do that just offer them a discount if you think about e-commerce Brands you know everybody's in that little Spinning Wheel right like they're almost trying to give you that discount right off the bat to just get you to buy that very first time too so that it can get you in the email well they can drip you to that Spinning Wheel does work you know one of the things that we saw with we have an app community and Masood shout out to you for sharing this he said look I started adding a push notification to when people actually canceled their their trial and then he gave him a discount and he's seen some sales really come in through that I was looking at the app views recently for flow and flow is a period tracking app and something I've seen in the past is when you kind of spam people with too many payables all the time asking for money all the time and then like people start to get

2:30

annoyed and so yes make sure that you've asked for their money not just once maybe like three times you know if you ask once they forget sometimes they don't want to then you might catch them later some people like oh they didn't pay that time so I'll never ask them again that's a bad thing to do however on the other side like if you bombard people then they get quite annoyed so the reviews and flow is like I used to love this app it's really gone downhill too much monetization this is so irritating and I've seen that in data too where like retention goes down over time so I think again it's a balance understand your users make sure that you're providing enough value so that you can hit them with a paywall every now and then this is the car so I canceled my calm subscription I think I got it I got it for 50 off with Amex some sort of partnership I'm receiving discounts often so I received

3:18

four this month a couple last month and what I like about them is like the the messaging of are you burnt out for this specific one so escalating the value of those discounts whereas here I'm kind of getting a bit of you know Banner blindness with calm because in my inbox I always just see last chance for 50 off so I like their messaging I don't necessarily like the fact that they haven't judged it up a bit you know I got my own calm flow as well Rosie here's here's mine so we activated a trial because I was like look and then this is my old email but he's like hey you did it and so you can see sort of like their subject lines when I canceled my trial I was like hey here's another seven days of calm on us and they hit me with the same type of messaging and then they hit me with the 50 offer here after I canceled a trial and get this when I came back into the app you know they said hey here's you know

4:11

they had some in-app messaging as well one more second open after trial they gave me a 31 offer for that I like that because I was so used to saying 10 20 30 40 50. if you like spice up and put an odd number in there it makes people it kind of cuts through all of the noise of the discounts if it's a specific discount people are thinking oh they've actually put some time into thinking how much value this is for me and you know the right discount it's like a psychological thing where if you use odd numbers um you get people to stop and think a bit more I found that the average US smartphone user receives 46 pushes a day this is like damn but I don't mind if they're personalized yes I agree emojis I like these yeah add emojis the 34 like you know people ask me this all the time so these are great numbers I don't mind these type of slides Rosie because obviously just take a screenshot right and you guys can do that but

5:08

personalization all that stuff emojis work and I think timing is so key to a push notification so I've been in places where you send too many and then every single extra push that you send reduces how effective all the others are and I think it's like recently or in the past few years Apple have made it way more easy to turn them off so you can just go into your home screen you can swipey but like turn these off forever so you do have to be really careful that you don't because once you burn that Channel Once people have turned off your push notifications it's so so difficult than to retarget them this is second nature an app which is kind of a nutrition um dieting app and it's really expensive it's like 70 pound for a quarter like very high 30 pound a month type thing what I love about their monetization screens is the first time you see money is this screen here so there's some onboarding screens where it's a quiz you

6:08

land on the welcome screen you have a little quiz it's an amazing quiz because it uses user language like I don't feel personally like I need one of these apps but I was going through to test it and by the end of that quiz I was like they know me so well and I nearly bought this app and I was just testing it that's how much I like the quiz because it uses user language but the first time because it's such a high price point essentially I think my learning from this is that you don't necessarily want to give them that high price point like on the screen and like freak them out before you've eased them into it and so here is like final question are you ready to invest 10 pound a week in your health and that's a no-brainer of course I'm ready to invest 10 pound a week in your health includes one I can't say no though either well you can so you scroll so you scroll is this super interesting yes let's get started

6:58

I'm not sure let me try risk free so they're giving you an option for a trial or no I'll use the free version for now and I think in terms of ux writing this ticks a number of boxes because it's so honest and transparent about the fact that there's a trial there's not or you can go for free and like I think a lot of apps try and hide that point but here it really built my trust and I think that's important when you've got a really expensive product and so that's what I found interesting so they hid the massive number they made it optional and then when I tapped not sure let me try risk free and then the next screens this one get private support and they pulled out the most important part of their in my view subscription package which is the fact that you actually get private support from the nutritionist like that is the thing that you know and you then it's an anchor as well because you're

7:48

anchoring the fact that you get something that I think we know is quite extensive it's a person they have an extra cities they they're going to be with me for 12 months oh my God how much would that cost me if I wasn't using this app so I think it's one one it's pulling out the main benefit of the subscription and two is an anchor for the price of that thing and then this is their freemium experience so if you click no you're going to the app I think what a lot of apps do as well is if you say no to your upsell screen and say you said no to the discount that you like putting after a screen and then you get into the app and I find a lot of apps just kind of forget to make some visual cues that there is a premium tier and that you're kind of missing out here it's got really big real estate on the home screen learn about premium and then if I try and use things it's locked and I can see it's locked and I get this

8:35

nice little upgrade screen a lot of the time as well I've seen apps like when you get into the freemium experience you try some content and you just get hit with the same upsell screen you've already shown people that upsells green didn't work like could you make it more contextual could you kind of ease them into a bit more so that's what I really like about this it's like real estate for the premium premium in the freemium and then not the same upsell well not the same intro to the upsell as someone's already exited I love it there's a couple things I'll mention too that they'll tag on first I love that there's lock stuff A friend of mine is testing he's got like crossword game testing like lock content versus a hard pay wallet which essentially means no X on your paywall so you have to either pay or get out and you've seen similar like Revenue numbers with both and so he's moving towards more of a locked

9:19

content type of stuff and then I listened to a podcast on the revenue cat podcast and they were talking about healthy this the CEO he was talking about how Community drives a lot of their premium users and so you can read all the community stuff but he's like if you want to both guess what you're gonna have to pay and so this sort of reminded me that like hey premium to share your stories with the you can read the stories but if you want to share your own I'm that's what I'm assuming from this app too you can you can do that here I've seen High conversion rates when you have a freemium experience I you can exit the upsell screen and people then get into the app whether you lock everything you know or leave one thing that's Up For Debate but I've seen higher conversion rates that way than a hard upsell screen where you actually can't get in if you don't subscribe I'm probably starting to lean that way

10:10

too even though we have a hard but we haven't you know we haven't messed around with one of our apps we haven't messed around with the lock stuff because it's very minimal content wise it's just a very interesting feature and so that's it I like that I like that it's different for different obviously test it but I feel like it's it's kind of builds Trust like hey we'll let you in we'll let you have a little peruse but then yeah no it's true because they want to see how much content you have especially for like apps that have a lot of content you know so I'm gonna pick on them learn about premium one of my clients you know I was like I don't know I don't have enough data to say this but I don't think learn about premium nobody I mean maybe this might be a great copy I don't know but he had just a star that's all it was it was like up here I was like I don't know but I've seen crowns use all

10:57

the time and I think crowns are better I was in the UK so like you know crown and then he he's like funny enough Steve I'm a b testing this right now and he saw that a Yellow Crown now it's a white background for his app okay but the yellow Crown has the highest and then upgrade text I don't know what he said in the upgrade text it might just been upgrade right was the one of the lowest and then upgrade plus a star one of the lowest and so you can see the crown black I love that because I think a lot of apps that I've worked for are super super early stage and there's the there's the assumption that oh if we change one tiny thing it went make a difference but those are big differences it was and they've got pretty decent but they're not like tiny they're not tiny but you know it's not like super big either but yeah I think play around with this call to action as well and I really love that it's a different paywall it's

11:48

a little bit more work but I like that experience improved monetization has Forex impact on growth compared to acquisition and I completely agree like especially in the beginning if you're let's just say make up a number Rosie like five under 5K a month or maybe 10K a month you really want to focus on monetization as long as you get some decent downloads you want to focus on monetization because you know cash flow is the life of your business and so you're a business you're not a hobbyist you got to make that money and then you can get into once you hit a certain point you can get into these more interesting what's a high LTV how do we engage our users how do we get viral maybe we want free users because they turn you know they will promote the app and get more users into the app and you can think about all these more advanced creative strategies too that's just my opinion though so feel free to disagree

12:33

rosie no no disagree anything I've seen when I've tried to forecast out like let's what would happen if we moved price what would happen if we moved conversion rate what would happen if we like you know brought in more users top of funnel and when you kind of model them out if you kind of move the monetization ones just a little bit you see massive increases versus just like putting more people in the top you should ideally work out where you're doing worse across your whole funnel and then focus on that that's the best way forward but that that study was let's look at initiatives across acquisition and monetization and they the study actually looked at retention too and it was like how can you impact growth where's the biggest place to focus and they found that the projects that focus on monetization had Forex the impact of the projects that worked in the acquisition on growth