GTM Sauce

Yousician · B2C · music learning app

Before calling a paywall test, wait two weeks and check refunds and chargebacks

Refunds show up fast and can erase a paywall win; no numbers

Unknownpaywallexperimentation

What they did

For paywall tests, look at revenue per user but always also check refunds and chargebacks, waiting a couple of weeks since that effect appears quickly. Pay special attention when introducing a new payment method.

In their words

Stop Celebrating Conversion Wins Before Checking Renewals – Sara Grana, Yousician

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Sara Grana… probably [inaudible 00:13:14]. What usually happens is that the share for those different cohorts is changing over time. And this is what bringing you fluctuation on renewal rates. It might be different when you're doing a specific experiment, that might change that, but I think it's really always good to look at what are those things and make a difference that are upper funnel, as upper funnel as it gets, so to say. And then look for that.

Sara GranaAnd then when it comes to when I'm looking at a test that I do in the paywall one, then I'm looking at revenue per user of course, but then I'm also having a look always on pre-funds or chargeback. So I always wait a couple of weeks what is happening there because that's like an immediate effect that you can see. And then always after some months, recheck the cohort. What has happened with these people? Sometimes it's a bit frustrating because you have the majority of users buying a 12-month subscription, so you won't see it until later on. But maybe there's something that you can do if you see that the one month behaving in a particular way, maybe you can assume that the same would happen for the 12 months.

Sara GranaYou can also look when you have the result, make some scenarios of renewal rates of those different... If the one month was to renew at this 10% less or 5% more, whatever you want based on the result of your test, what would happen. And then you can know once you have some really easy way to check in a way, in a sense. You keep an eye, okay, if this goes below 10, then I know we are in trouble. I know that probably the winner is actually the …

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Tags: refunds, chargebacks, paywall-test