Pray.com · Christian prayer and devotional app
Reply to every piece of feedback, and have founders call upset users
How they handle 'faith should be free' pushback; no numbers
Workedcustomer-supportretention
What they did
Every report or review, positive or negative, gets a response from a person: a dedicated support lead (Earl) runs it, and the CTO or CEO (Steve) gets on a call with users, including those complaining that the app just wants money. Labor-intensive, decided from day one. Paired with keeping a free version for people who expect faith content to be free.
What happened
Guest says this is how they handle objections to monetization, which are more common in the faith space.
- Effort
- Every piece of feedback answered since launch
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building Trust with Users to Drive Revenue and Retention – Ryan Beck, Pray.com“We'll get feedback that says, "Doubt anybody's going to respond to this and you're just charging, trying to make money." And we'll respond, and I'll get on a call, my business partner, Steve, who's the CEO, he'll get on a call”
“there is not one report that comes in, positive or negative, that is not getting a person responding. And so that's how we've handled it, and it's labor-intensive, but that was something we decided from the very beginning.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Pray.com: Visit each church in person, often more than once, to sign up its membersFacebook-level retention, but too slow to grow; dropped for consumer subscriptions
- Pray.com: Turn pastors' popular daily prayer posts into morning, noon and night prayersGreat engagement; became the main feature and the path into subscriptions
- Pray.com: Make faith versions of Calm-style content: bedtime Bible stories and sleep psalmsGuest says it made monetizing easy; no numbers
- Pray.com: Rebuild the app so paywalls and onboarding can be tested without app updatesEnabled rapid test cycles that showed what could be monetized; no numbers
- Pray.com: Stop asking for a phone number at signupPhone field hurt subscription conversion; removing it helped monetization (no numbers)
- Pray.com: Put most of a big Meta budget behind one winning adFailed: Meta pulled the ad in peak season and CAC became untenable
- Pray.com: Test lots of ad ideas borrowed from games and dating apps, not just your categoryGuest says it produces a diversified creative mix that scales campaigns
- Pray.com: Move ads from Facebook image posts to Reels video earlyVideo ads didn't land at first; Reels is now where most spend runs
- Pray.com: Run TV and radio ads to reach older people who trust TV more than online adsWorked well pre- and during the pandemic; TV agencies were blown away (no numbers)
- Pray.com: Measure TV and online ads together with a statistical model, not click trackingComfortable running on statistical models since before ATT; no numbers
- Pray.com: Keep one shared roadmap for product, engineering and marketingGuest's key lesson; keeps a lean team aligned (no numbers)
- Pray.com: Ask a few quiz questions at signup to tailor the prayer planGuest says quiz onboarding has worked well; theirs is still light
- Pray.com: Add ads and one-time purchases like books on top of the subscription