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Duolingo · B2C · language learning app

Let trial users pick which day they get the reminder before being charged

Tested; added friction but built trust and delayed cancel decisions. No numbers given

Workednotificationspaywall

What they did

Default: a notification is sent about 2 days before the free trial expires. Test: at trial signup, let the user choose which day they get that reminder. The extra step draws attention to the fact that a reminder is coming and they can cancel later, so users wait until day 5 or 6 to judge whether they are getting value instead of cancelling immediately.

What happened

Guest calls it a counterintuitive win that increased confidence in starting the trial; no lift figures.

In their words

How Clarity and Personalization Help Drive Duolingo’s Growth – Anmol Tiwari, Duolingo

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Anmol Tiwari… and confidence to purchase. So the most effective way for users to be able to feel confident to try a trial is to know like, "Well, what does that really entail?" And that is anything from being able to explain in a timeline what happens on which day of the trial. We've seen even if, for example, when you're on one plan and you want to move to a different plan, trying to be clear about how much money are you going to get back, the refunds.

Anmol TiwariClarity is so important. And very recently, a great example of this is that we've had this functionality where when you sign up for a free trial, you'll get a reminder, a notification sent to you about two days before your trial expires. And we decided to test, "Well, what if we let you choose which day you get that reminder?" And counterintuitive, normally you would think that friction is probably not a good thing, but what we saw was that that drew attention to the fact that you can choose when you want your reminder and we're going to remind you, and so you can decide to cancel later. That buys us enough time so that you wait 'till that fifth day or sixth day to decide really, "Okay, am I getting value out of this?" And it was a really great way to increase confidence in the product that you're going to try.

David BarnardAny other lessons around clarity, in copy? I know Duolingo has done a lot with multi-step paywalls. Seems like another way to introduce clarity. Any other lessons there?

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Tags: trial-reminder, trust, free-trial, transparency