GTM Sauce

LinkedIn · professional social network

Give subscribers free months of partner apps like Notion, Spotify and Headspace

Perk users tend to stay longer; no numbers given

Workedpartnershipsretention

What they did

A perks section in the Premium benefits dashboard. Monthly rotating perks (e.g. Notion with AI free for six months, three months of Spotify, four months of Headspace) plus evergreen perks rotated less often, every 6-12 months (e.g. three months of Duolingo, 'Washington Journal', coaching).

What happened

Members who use more features and get to know Premium better stay longer and look for new perks.
Stage
scale

In their words

Value-Driven Growth: LinkedIn's Billion-Dollar Subscription Strategy — Ora Levit, LinkedIn

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David BarnardOne of the other things you all did recently was partnering with Notion and the idea of bundling is such a fascinating thing with subscriptions, because if you are able to, like you said with the family plan, if you're getting additional value through your subscription, you're more likely to retain. So tell me about the Notion deal or any other partnership programs that you have that you use to add value to your product.

Ora LevitYeah. So we have partners that we work with. You can see them. If you're a Premium member, you can go to your Premium benefits dashboard and there's a perks offering there. And we have several different types of partnerships. One of them is rotating partnerships that we provide around a monthly basis, such as you can now get access to Notion with AI for six months, which is a great offering for our audience, that type of product is helpful for. We also offer more of a green perks that we also rotate but in less frequency. And so that would be access to Duolingo or Washington Journal or other benefits. And for us, it's a way to give more value back to our members. We definitely try to provide that when we can.

David BarnardAnd do you see engagement with those perks as a signal for better retention?

Ora LevitYeah, we definitely see that members who generally use our features more and get to know Premium better stay for the value, they want to see what additional perks we'd have. We refresh them every six, 12 months. They want to see the monthly rotating perk. We now have three months with Spotify for free and four months of Headspace. And so there's a variety of offerings. I mentioned three months to Duolingo. There's coaching and whatnot. And so if you get more out of the subscription, you're more likely ultimately to see this value and stay with us.

David BarnardYeah, that's great. The last thing I wanted to talk about was industry learnings. So when I think about a company like LinkedIn, I think, "Oh, with billion plus users and one of the largest subscription products in the world," it feels like you're operating on such a different plane that you wouldn't have anything to learn, but I was incredibly flattered to hear that you'd actually listen to a Sub Club Podcast, but I'd love to hear how you …

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Tags: bundling, perks, partner-perks