Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Stop Celebrating Conversion Wins Before Checking Renewals – Sara Grana, Yousician

Short episode (RevenueCat State of Subscription Apps series). Sara Grana, revenue strategy lead at Yousician after ~7 years at Babbel, explains how she maps revenue into four buckets (new, upgrade, renewal, win-back) and annotates it with past decisions, why paywall and price 'wins' must be rechecked for refunds, chargebacks and renewals, why new plans (lifetime) must be judged on LTV, and why blended renewal rates mislead when the mix of plan, discount and web vs app purchases shifts.

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7 tactics

Babbel · B2C · language learning app

Chart revenue from new, upgrading, renewing and returning subscribers, then explain each spike

Surfaces which past decisions moved revenue, e.g. a lifetime plan launch; no numbers

“You can either get money from people that never had the subscription and start a new subscription, people that upgraded from a subscription to another, people that renew a subscription or people that used to have subscription then churned and then came back. So these four buckets, you have these four buckets.”

Unknownanalytics-attributionexperimentation

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Yousician · B2C · music learning app

Set calendar reminders to recheck price tests at 3 and 6 months

Catches price 'wins' that flip once renewals come in; no numbers

“Yeah, my Google Calendar up there has this experiment recheck with my live data analyst.”

Unknownexperimentationpricing

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Yousician · B2C · music learning app

Before calling a paywall test, wait two weeks and check refunds and chargebacks

Refunds show up fast and can erase a paywall win; no numbers

“then I'm looking at revenue per user of course, but then I'm also having a look always on pre-funds or chargeback. So I always wait a couple of weeks what is happening there because that's like an immediate effect that you can see.”

Unknownpaywallexperimentation

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Practitioner pattern · Sara Grana (Yousician, Babbel)

Send an offer to people who turn off auto-renew

Looked great, but users refunded first and then took the offer; net negative

“Okay, you look a bit more deep and you realize, oh, a lot of people are cancel, putting their auto-renewal off right at the beginning, and what they are doing is they're asking for a refund and then they're getting the offer. So you are actually net negative.”

Failedcancellation-flowanalytics-attribution

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Practitioner pattern · Sara Grana (Yousician, Babbel)

Judge a new lifetime plan against what a subscriber pays over time

Tests otherwise wrongly crown lifetime, e.g. 250 vs 100 instead of 250 vs 300 euros

“And then every time time you do a test like lifetime versus something else, always the something else is going to lose because people are not looking at what is the LTV of that something else.”

Unknownpricingexperimentation

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Practitioner pattern · Sara Grana (Yousician, Babbel)

Split renewal rates by plan, discount, and web vs app before reading them

Web buyers renew much better, so blended renewals rise from mix shift alone

“So what is most important to me is which plan did they buy, discounted or not, and where? Web versus app.”

Unknownanalytics-attributionretention

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Yousician · B2C · music learning app

Use monthly-plan renewals to set a warning threshold for yearly-plan test winners

“If the one month was to renew at this 10% less or 5% more, whatever you want based on the result of your test, what would happen.”

Unknownexperimentationanalytics-attribution

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2026-02-28

Numbers mentioned

Subject	Metric	Value	Quote
aggregateSubscription apps Sara Grana has worked with that sell via web checkout	retention Renewal rate of web-purchased vs natively in-app purchased subscriptions	web renewal rates significantly higher than in-app renewal rates approximate	“What I've seen in different companies is the web renewal rates are significantly higher than the app rate.”
benchmarkTypical price-doubling test outcome in subscription apps	arpu Occasional outcome of doubling the price; more often conversion halves and revenue is flat	+25% illustrative	“Sometimes you'll get that win where you double the price and you do get a 25% lift in average revenue per user or something like that.”
benchmarkLifetime plan vs subscription plan value comparison	ltv Illustrative: a subscription plan's lifetime value (300 EUR) vs its first payment (100 EUR) when compared against a 250 EUR lifetime plan	EUR 300per customer illustrative	“they are not bringing you the 100 euros, they are bringing you 300 euros, so don't compare it with 250 compare it to 300”