Duolingo · B2C · language learning app
Give users one free AI video call from the top tier
Effective lever for getting people to try the feature, per guest
What they did
What happened
In their words
How Clarity and Personalization Help Drive Duolingo’s Growth – Anmol Tiwari, Duolingo
Anmol Tiwari… lever for not just free to paid, but paid to paid, because to your point about Apple, it's quite difficult for ... We can't offer another free trial one, you're already a paying subscriber. But what we can do is we can offer you a free taste and then still take you back to the original subscription tier that you were on. And that's been a really effective lever for us to get people to try our highest tier, Max, with video calls, especially.
Anmol TiwariOne last point is, when you think about free taste or free trials, it doesn't just extend to the tiers or the whole product. Sometimes you can even extend it to a single individual feature. We have something called a video call, which is part of the Max tier. And what we've seen sometimes is offering just enough free tastes of that video call just in isolation. Just one call is actually not a bad way to try and get people to try a feature and see if they want to convert. And we've seen that also as an effective lever.
David BarnardWhat are the specific ways you make it really clear that they're getting this, reverse trial is what it's typically called in the industry, where you don't have a credit card and they actually have to subscribe to get back to the subscription state. How do you make that clear? Is there a countdown? What kind of copy is on the buttons? Because this is something, I know I've heard from other folks who've done this. I've done some of this in my own …
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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 the free 3 days as a reward right after a finished lessonFelt more rewarding than on the learning path; no numbers
- When free days end, say 'Your benefits have ended' and show how to rejoin
- 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, feature-sampling