Life360 · B2C · family location and safety app
Ship a 'just landed' alert, then partner with Uber to offer a ride on landing
Uber approached them; a broader Uber partnership is about to launch
What they did
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Freemium at Scale: Why Life360 Protects its Free Users – Giordano Contestabile
Giordano ContestabileYeah. I mean, really good question. And I will say it took a long time for Life360 to get into the ad business. If you think the company has been around, I think 15 years or so, and only in the last two years, really we started working in ads.
Giordano ContestabileSo the baseline is do no harm, meaning make sure that the ads are not intrusive, not invasive, and they're not unwelcome by the audience. In Italy, you measure that in a qualitative and quantitative standpoint. Look at attention, look at engagement, and your total users, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of the baseline.
Giordano ContestabileBut then the one that I think is more interesting that we're building towards, is how do we use all the data that we have, all the knowledge that we have to actually provide value to users? So Uber will be an example. Uber started as a partnership on the lending notification product that we built and that's a product we built for users. We built it just because it was actually a Hackathon product project.
David BarnardOh, nice.
Giordano ContestabileAnd so we ship it. And so basically when you land, it inform people in your circle that you landed, right? It's a peace of mind feature that people love. And Uber approach us and say, "Oh, we saw this. What if then we could also ask you if you want to call Uber?"
David BarnardNice.
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More from this episode
- Keep 2 days of free location history even though cutting it doubled subscribersCutting to 6-12 hours doubled subs from that hook; not shipped to protect free users
- Show the top-price plan on the paywall only to people a model predicts will buy itDoubled new Platinum subscribers without losing a single Gold subscriber
- Let every team, even finance and HR, run growth experiments with AI toolsWork in progress; no numbers given
- Track test speed, win rate and average win, and count inconclusive tests as failures
- On day 2, nudge people to an unused feature using a family member's nameNo numbers; first-week activation strongly predicts users still around a year later
- Announce a pet feature with a cute animated dog that asks to be pettedCalled a huge success; many users made pet profiles; no numbers
- Add pet and aging-parent features so families keep using the app after kids leave
- Sell trackers at low margins to pull people into the app and keep them longerTile owners retain better than non-owners; Pet GPS requires a subscription
- Offer a free Tile tracker to people who subscribeHelps conversion for certain users; no numbers
- Show one paywall screen during onboarding, even with a generous free planRemoving it would cut a significant share of new subscribers; no numbers
- Give every software feature a great free version; charge for costly services
- Add in-app share buttons and gifted subscriptions to copy parents' word of mouthFailed across the board; parents don't share inside apps
Tags: uber, hackathon, contextual-offers, ads-monetization