Duolingo · B2C · language learning app
When free days end, say 'Your benefits have ended' and show how to rejoin
What they did
In their words
How Clarity and Personalization Help Drive Duolingo’s Growth – Anmol Tiwari, Duolingo
David BarnardAnd then I would imagine the paywall they land on after a free taste looks different and has different copy than a onboarding paywall. So does that paywall say, "Did you enjoy your three days? Extend it indefinitely." Or are there any kind of copy wins you've had there that kind of help remind people or reinforce that loss aversion, "You're going to lose this if you don't." How do you position that after the free taste?
Anmol TiwariYeah, usually after we ... We always let users know, I think it's like a home drawer that comes up. I think one of the things we just emphasize is that, "Your X benefits have ended." And then we usually always give two sets of options. One is either to continue or to basically kind of explore or resubscribe. And I think that the important thing there is that being super clear that it's ended. And two, we're drawing attention to the fact that you can easily rejoin.
David BarnardWhat about personalization? Are you doing any kind of user level personalization on these paywalls and offers and when to offer the free trials and things like that?
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More from this episode
- Let trial users pick which day they get the reminder before being chargedTested; added friction but built trust and delayed cancel decisions. No numbers given
- Show what happens on each trial day and exactly how refunds workGuest says clarity beats persuasion for trial starts; no numbers
- When users run out of hearts, offer a free trial so they keep their lesson progressUsers much more likely to start a trial; no numbers
- Ask new users in onboarding if they want to learn with or without adsSignificantly higher uptake; one of the biggest wins of the year
- Cut the free trial from 14 days to 7More conversions overall and experiment results twice as fast
- Offer the same user a free trial three or four times over timeEffective in aggregate across attempts, per guest; no numbers
- Give 3 free days of the paid tier, no card needed, even to current subscribersEffective for free-to-paid and for upgrading subscribers to the top tier, per guest
- Give users one free AI video call from the top tierEffective lever for getting people to try the feature, per guest
- Give the free 3 days as a reward right after a finished lessonFelt more rewarding than on the learning path; no numbers
- Use each user's signals to pick between your own upgrade ads and paid adsGood wins, per guest; no numbers
- Let a bandit algorithm pick which upgrade ad each user sees after a lessonSome wins so far, still improving; no numbers
Tags: free-taste, win-back, copy