Pray.com · Christian prayer and devotional app
Rebuild the app so paywalls and onboarding can be tested without app updates
Enabled rapid test cycles that showed what could be monetized; no numbers
Workedexperimentationpaywallonboarding
What they did
Redid the whole product platform so onboarding flows and paywalls are driven from the server, letting the team run rapid A/B iterations without shipping new app builds each time.
What happened
Guest says rapid iteration is what showed what could and couldn't monetize and how far to push it.
- Stage
- Launch (monetization launch)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building Trust with Users to Drive Revenue and Retention – Ryan Beck, Pray.com“We redid our whole product platform to allow for testing of onboarding flows, paywalls, and having that from the server side, so that we didn't have to deploy new apps every time we wanted to test something.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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: 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: Reply to every piece of feedback, and have founders call upset usersHow they handle 'faith should be free' pushback; 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