Pray.com · Christian prayer and devotional app
Put most of a big Meta budget behind one winning ad
Failed: Meta pulled the ad in peak season and CAC became untenable
Failedpaid-social
What they did
Ran tens of thousands of dollars a day on Meta with most of it behind one high-performing creative (showing five stars in the description) that Meta had approved. Meta later took it down without warning during 'Q5' (post-Christmas to end of January, the best season for subscription apps). Campaigns had to be paused, retooled and relaunched. Lesson: diversify creative like an investment portfolio, no single creative above roughly 30% of spend.
What happened
CAC went 'upside down' and became untenable; campaigns were pulled and rebuilt during peak season. 'It cost lots of money.'
- Effort
- Tens of thousands of dollars a day on Meta
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building Trust with Users to Drive Revenue and Retention – Ryan Beck, Pray.com“So we had Meta going. It was tens of thousands of dollars a day, and most of it was behind one creative. It was performing really great, and it had five stars in the description, and Meta approved it.”
“And they took it down on a dime, and it totally went upside down. Our our CACs went upside down, our customer acquisition costs, were untenable.”
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- 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: 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
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- 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