The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56%

All right, I'm going to talk all about app monetization. What's up, Colin? And I like to say it's like, you know, you always need a good hook. Strategies that work until they stop working and everybody stops adopting. I'm going to share this case study about how somebody increased his sales by 21%. Pretty simple and something that you could do literally in 10 minutes. And then this an RPO, and that's something that you can add to your onboarding. It's a little teaser, that's what I like to call teasers, all right?

And then here, the three screens before the paywall that will instantly increase your trial activations. But first, I was born in Myanmar, Burma. Anybody know where that is by any chance? Yeah, thank you, Colin. Thank Thank you, Julia. All right. Came here when I was six, there it is on the map. Had this dream. I was like, "Hey, I want to be an entrepreneur. Don't know what that journey looks like." I sold cassette tapes when I was younger. And I was like, "You know what? I think I'd be a pretty decent at this podcasting thing." So I decided to do that. So I recorded in 2013, started building up an audience, the audience started coming to me for app marketing help. That 6 months after starting that podcast, I left my full-time job to do this full-time.

And I didn't know what I was going to do for that first year until people I just listened to my audience. And so I've interviewed some of the greatest in the app space, Matthew Hall, Colin Hodge, Abid Down, and we've done a lot of great work and some trust symbols here just for you guys. All right. Paywall and onboarding, I'm going to skip through this very fast, but that's for the newbies out there. Yes, people who buy usually buy during that first time experience. Yes, before they even use your app. The numbers all back it up.

I'm going to move on. Please put that in your head. And if you're not doing it, please do it cuz it will instantly increase your revenues. All right. Hard paywall on paid traffic. So I started thinking there are two commonalities when I started talking to really cool bootstrap entrepreneurs. No offense, you guys raised, you know, we're bootstrap, we got to be ROI positive, right? So here's a stat, like hard paywall. That's a trend. Meta traffic, trend. I was like, "Huh." So, at the time, I bought an app that was making about $1,000 to $2,000 a month, and it quickly rose to $8,000 a month. No new features, just a hard paywall, and jack up that price from a one-time purchase of $3 all the way to a $60 a year product. When Apple forced us to put the little X, it dropped our revenues in half. So, that's a little proof that hard paywalls do work, okay? But, there's a downside. You get one-star reviews. Hey, it is what it

is. It's there. So, I started thinking, how do you balance between the two? Right? So, you see this This is a very popular page, how did you hear about us? So, I think it's All right, you know what? There's the onboarding, there's the paywall. What if people hit search on App Store, you put the little X? Right? It's like, obviously, if you search on the App Store, I rank organically pretty well, maybe you search for the brand. Hey, I want to put the X.

Cool. What if you put Instagram or Meta or Facebook or even TikTok, any of these paid channels, you remove the X. It's gone. Right? I was like, "Hey, that might be a good balance." And somebody saw really good success with doing just that. Hard paywall does work. For us, our trial to paid did not change just because of the X or no X, but our trial activation completely changed in that chart. We dropped half. And I knew right away, I had a Mixpanel email that said, "Yo, your trial activation used to be 13, it's now 6%."

All right. Now, talking about that how did you hear about us page, I got this advice from past podcast guests. I love learning from podcast guests. All right. Here's some, you know, how did you hear about us pages. This is Rest of Me, this is Flow, this is Calia, I pretty obvious, right? Pretty basic. Now, I asked the podcast guest, "Hey, my audience is a little bit older. What can I do to increase conversions? He said, "Steve, I got you, man."

Add these two things to your how did you hear about us? Anybody shaking their head? No, see I'm a scammy marketer. I was like, "Yo, I get this right away. I get this." Cuz you know what? It adds instant credibility even if I'm not running TV ads. Did you hear it from it? Probably not. Did you hear from a lawyer? Probably not, but hey, I'm asking, so maybe it's happening. And guess what happened? The ARPU increased by 30% for somebody that I work with just by adding those two options. Yeah.

Yeah, Susanna. You like it or you just saying? Oprah. Okay, that's a That's a good one. You can ask You can ask Steve P. Young. That might That might help, too. All right. Three screen paywalls. This is one of my favorite ones, and I'm going to show you different variations of it cuz it does really work. Okay. This is the Blinkist based on the Blinkist. Here's the social proof. Right? I first saw it on Resumes. I was like, "Oh, this is brilliant."

They had the onboarding answers questions, and then they had a video, and then it's like, "How did you hear You know, we offer 7 days for free. We'll remind you 2 days, then we'll hit you with the push notification." Perfect. And then the paywall. Like, "Oh, that's brilliant." When I first saw it, I was like, "This has to work." So, I started sharing on YouTube, and it did work, right? Here's Calouste Eyes' version. This is the video. We want you to try Calouste Eyes for free. Try for free. We'll send you a reminder, and this paywall.

Here's another example. Okay. These are all different examples, and what I'm sharing with this for you is we tried this on one of our apps. We tried it this on a client app. It did not work. So, but this kind of did. Now, I don't want to show off the client because just to protect the privacy, but this is very similar. So, I was like, "Let's talk about me then, all right?" We want you to try App Masters for free. This is just a screenshot of some cool things.

Then hit you with the social proof, the world's okayest app marketer. hit continue, and then this timeline paywall worked. And this is what worked for one of our apps when we started operating on those three screen paywalls. 56% increase in trial activations. Cuz you're just trying to overcome objections, right? Right before the paywall, that's all you're trying to do. All right. Here's the other one that I'm super excited about, and it takes a little bit of time. So, you got to be a little bit patient, okay?

Look, I'm really good at naming names, okay? Brandon Cade and Joe offer. Pretty obvious. All right. So, here it is. 7 days for free, yearly subscription. Basic. Thank you, Steve. Nothing new here. All right. $1.99. Oh, I'm sorry. $3.99 for the first month that renews. Oh, I'm sorry. It is $1.99. My bad. For the first month, then $60 per year. So, they're both yearly subscriptions. One and most people, let's say 75 to 80% of the people will select this 7 days for free.

I got my little laser in front of all you guys' photos. And then the $1.99 Look, about 20 to 25%, 30% will select that. But, those who do select that will actually stay on and renew. So, we're running this test right now for one of our apps, my personal app, but we're seeing pretty good Actually, the numbers suck right now, but we are starting to see this happen. Like, people are renewing to the year. But, one of the people that did do this, he saw this. So, he had a monthly plan.

He replaced his monthly plan for this. He ran it over 1.5 months. His conversion rates went up, and so did his sales. Test it out. All right. This is called a reverse trial. It all goes downhill from here. All right. I gave you all the best stuff. I front-loaded it. This is a reverse trial. This is somebody, John, on my podcast. He came on, and I really love this. So, if you got a freemium app, you're like, "Steve, you know what? That the hard paywall stuff, that's too scammy for me. I'm not going to be that aggressive." Well, John really talked about value-based onboarding. I left all his stuff here. This is his freaking brand guide. Welcome permissions, user benefits, not the features, benefits, pre-paywall, again social proof before the paywall. All right, now this is where the reverse trial comes in. You activate a trial, welcome to pro. You don't activate a trial, hey enjoy a free week on us.

Pretty cool, right? So, I started digging deeper and I was like, "John, how He 10x'd his conversion rates with this new one, okay?" Little spoiler, right? But, John I was like, "Hey, here's the nifty part." So, his app is bus times, train times, kind of makes sense. He wants you to start adopting some of those pro features, right? Let's go back real quick. This is the onboarding. Same secondary onboarding whether you activate a trial or not, but in these two screens, he's trying to get you to adopt some of those pro features. Guess what? You give something, then you take it away.

And so, he tells you, "Hey, your pro membership ends in 5 days." Once you tap that, you get a little discount and then boom bing bing, you get 10 per 10x more conversions. So, these are all the free users. Those people that said, "X, heck no, I would never pay for an app." Hit X on your paywall, then started using your app for free. These freeloaders, well they convert at 0.4 before John did this and then they convert at 4.5. Now, the average install to paid, this is a Apple's numbers, is 2 to 3%.

Crazy. Great, right? Really cool. All right, trial to discount. I have no data on this. I just thought it was interesting. I saw it on LinkedIn as well. This is Flow. I'm not going to make you go through their entire app flow because it is stinking long, but it does work. Health and fitness, longer onboardings work. This is their app to web. So, if I hit start 14-day trial, I got to Safari and try to pay on the web. This usually declines conversions, but hey, wanted to highlight that.

All right, here's the interesting part. Let's go through this. So, I'm starting to use the app. I've actually heard from other clients this chat feature that you have right here actually increases conversions. Kind of hard to build, maybe with AI it's easier to build, but this little little chat feature, hey, here's what my app does, are you interested in this, you know, select all of that, so it's just chat. So, I subscribe to Flow.

Right? Like yearly plan, free trial enabled, cool. I start the free trial. Cool, perfect, let's do it. Then they hit me with this. Free gift just for you. Huh, interesting. All right, let me open this. Claim 30%. So, I activated a trial and this is interesting if you got very low trial to paid, right? I activated a trial, they then hit me with a offer for $39.99. Now, Apple will take care of all of this for us. Long as it's in the same subscription group, Apple will take me from that trial offer of what was it, 80 bucks or something?

60 bucks all the way into this $40 plan. You just do the math to yourself. If you got like a 20% trial activation, right? Trial to paid rate and you think this would perform a bit better, do it. And I just thought it was interesting cuz everything in business comes down to math formulas. All right. The other thing I want to talk about is longer trial longer trials on paywall exits. You know, Revenue Cat has been talking about this. Hey guys, this is you know, like longer trials net net over it all, longer trials convert better, okay?

Cool, so I don't want you running out and be like, let's do 30-day trials. Most of the time that won't work. 7-day trials usually work the best on yearly, sometimes 14 days does a little bit better, 3-day trial on weekly plans. Usually the best practice monthly, their LTV sucks. All right, here's the key takeaway. This this is rest You hit X. I like this, by the way. I like this. You hit X because most people will hit X.

They then hit you with the 14-day bonus trial. Don't hate me, Will. From Resemble. All right. We got another app. Normal paywall, the three-step paywall. They hit you this, you hit X. 14-day free trial. So, this is what I'm thinking, right? Revenue saying RevenueCat saying, "Hey, longer trials convert better." I'm like, "Uh-uh. It depends on when they're showing." And I think the trend, this is my personal opinion, the trend is because people are showing this longer free trial on exit intent. And I've heard from clients that sometimes 14-day free trials work better. I'm always the proponent. I'm like, "Yo, if they said no, give them a discount." But clients have reported back to me that, "Hey, no, no, no. Showing a longer trial actually works better for us than giving them a discount." Okay.

So, those are anecdotal. All right. That's it. I got 7 minutes. I'm so freaking good. I got to have more time. And I don't want to stop you from alcohol. You know what I mean? Start to compete with alcohol. Anybody got questions before we say goodbye and you guys can go away for some alcohol happy hour. Yes, sir. >> Any Any advice on my like on hard paywalls or the free trial? >> Yeah. Are you just starting out? Like or Oh, yeah. Then why would you I mean, unless you want like more data or something else. I'd say just keep it. Just keep scaling it, right? There is ways to do a soft paywall.

If you really wanted, do it this way. They hit X. They're like, "No problem. You know, we'll give you a longer trial." Or "No problem. Enjoy certain things for free on us." You know, one thing I really did really well that was led to higher convert like ratings. This could be something that you consider. You do a hard paywall. They hit X on this. You say, "No problem. We'll give you four credits for free, five credits for free." And then they hit claim, you then ask for a review. And that like doubled the reviews. We went from 4.5 average rating in 1 month to 4.7 and doubled the average rating. So, we had like 600 reviews versus the 300 that we usually get.

What's up, Colin? >> So, we don't know. >> We download them targeting them. Yeah, I I wouldn't say I'm an expert in that, Colin. Yeah, no. No, I know. I'm supposed to know everything, but no. I would say, you know, like down or down funnel, like as long as you try to activate, especially if you're retargeting, you want to go down funnel versus just like awareness campaign. So, I think you would try to try to like really, really activate and see how down funnel you can get.

Yes, sir. >> Hi, I just had a question regarding, you know, the paywalls and for example, like the 14-day free trials as as a third paywall. Do you have any data or have you had heard of any issues with people trying to like abuse that system and is there any safeguards to if like on day 13, they cancel it and then, you know, they try to sign back up and get another free 7- or 14-days? >> Oh, you know, Apple takes care of it. If they activated a trial, they will they won't get the trial again. Apple will actually take care of all of that. Yeah.

Katie, I can also repeat the question if it's for the recording. >> Um yeah, no problem. So, you said that it helped increase reviews. What do you What is your framing for asking for reviews? Because obviously, they haven't used the app yet and I we actually get most of our one-star reviews because of like the hard paywall. >> Yeah. >> Um what's the framing that worked that doubled your your review rate? >> I have the visual. Unfortunately, it's literally what we do is So, if you're giving away something in the app, so one of our clients, he had a AI app gave you eight generations for free. Did not let you know about it at all. Like, the home screen was like, "Okay, you said hit X on the paywall, you get to the screen, and you got these eight free credits in the right-hand corner, right?" I was like, "Why don't you just tell them you got eight free credits?" So, we just told them.

You hit X on the paywall, like, "Hey, you get eight free credits on us. Renews every month or whatever, right? Claim now." They hit claim now, does nothing. It's already going to give you the eight free credits. And then after they hit claim now, we just ask for a review. And that's how we double the reviews there. >> Okay, got it. Is there any copywriting specifically that worked? Because I know that makes a big difference for the reviews.

>> No. I mean, yeah, yes. And I do have the visual. Maybe I I have it here. It's You want to put the five stars at the very top. And then you want to put some social proof, like thousand You should just look at the CaliAI one. That's literally it. Yeah, and you'll do it. I mean, there's an aggressive version where you can do it before the paywall. You can do it semi-aggressive, which is after they activate a trial, cuz they already like you enough, right? We've seen good results with that. Or you can do it the last way, the chill way.

Julia, I think it's marked this trial done, unless they move to that new subscription with this 14 days. You know what? I actually have a bonus. That's what I do. Yeah, I like to surprise you guys. All right, I'm going to forget about the layout the paywall. I'm just going to give you the components, some of the elements that have worked really well for us, or decently well. I shouldn't oversell it. All right, the word free, adding the word free to a feature, buy a burger, get free fries, come to Steve's event, get drinks after this on MAU. It increased conversion by 11%.

30% increase increase in conversions. Don't put subscribe, please. Okay, nobody wants to subscribe. Some client added on his website, and I was like, "Bro, nobody wants to do that." We changed it to continue or get started, increased conversions by 30%. Continue works better on iOS as the main call to action. Start free trial works better on Android. And lastly, not lastly, second to lastly, adding the words no payment now right underneath your call to action, especially if you have a free trial, increase conversions by 30% for another client. And now, lastly, if you show my hypothesis here was like, "Yo, I want this $60 to look really cheap." So, I took every one of our prices, just multiply this by 12, multiply by 52. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to show it like that." So, give you a better visual. If you show the prices as this, you can do monthly, okay? You can do monthly. I did yearly.

versus just showing nothing. So, you're essentially na- na- na- of all doing the math for the end user, we saw a 38% increase in conversions when we did that. Here's some other paywalls that have worked really well. Photos better than graphics, video better than photos. Okay, that is literally it. I've got nothing after this. Any other questions before we say goodbye? No? All right. Thank you guys. I'll see you at happy hour.