Life360 · B2C · family location and safety app
Add in-app share buttons and gifted subscriptions to copy parents' word of mouth
Failed across the board; parents don't share inside apps
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
- Effort
- A series of experiments over the past year
In their words
Freemium at Scale: Why Life360 Protects its Free Users – Giordano Contestabile
Giordano ContestabileAnd so we wanted to replicate that in the app, which makes sense. It's like 40% of users tell us they found us because someone else told them about the app. And then great, let's put a button in the app where people can do that in the app and it's going to be much easier.
Giordano ContestabileAnd maybe we say, "Hey, you can gift a silver subscription, you can get yourself a silver subscription." Different things, right? Nothing, nothing, really failure across the board. And the reason is people my age or families or older people are not viral. Parents are not viral.
Giordano ContestabileAnd so one that are viral are their kids, but their kids are not usually the core audience of our app. They're on the app, but the decision between the app is made by the parents. And so that has been a series of successes for us.
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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
- Ship a 'just landed' alert, then partner with Uber to offer a ride on landingUber approached them; a broader Uber partnership is about to launch
Tags: in-app-sharing, gift-subscription, virality