Pray.com · Christian prayer and devotional app
Run TV and radio ads to reach older people who trust TV more than online ads
Worked well pre- and during the pandemic; TV agencies were blown away (no numbers)
Workedoffline-ads
What they did
Used TV and radio because the older, higher-LTV faith audience trusted 'as seen on TV' more than digital ads. Worked with large TV-buying agencies. Creatives included James Earl Jones reading the Bible plus in-house spots. Split spend: about 50% spread thinly across many channels and time slots for consistency, the rest on big bets like prime time, since a given slot can be the best one week and the worst the next. Watched by-minute real-time response feeds while ads ran.
What happened
Guest says TV worked really well pre-pandemic and during the pandemic; agencies were blown away by the ads' effectiveness.
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building Trust with Users to Drive Revenue and Retention – Ryan Beck, Pray.com“we went TV worked really well for us pre-pandemic and during the pandemic because that older cohort was there. And that was the medium in which they trusted for advertisement.”
“We worked with some of the the biggest TV-buying agencies, and they were blown away by the effectiveness of of our advertisements”
“And then you have to have a a 50% strategy covering 50% of your spend that's very well spread out across many channels, time slots, so that you can have some consistencies, cuz a Tuesday prime time one week may just be the best thing you've ever seen, and it may be the worst thing you ever seen the next week.”
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: 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: 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