Burner · B2C · second phone number app
Capture people already searching for a second phone number instead of running brand ads
Several million downloads a year of high-intent users; press-driven users didn't convert
Workedasopaid-searchapple-search-ads
What they did
Little brand marketing: mainstream press (e.g. Vogue) brought downloads that neither converted nor retained. Instead they focus UA and store presence on existing intent: App Store and search engine queries like 'second phone number', 'temporary phone number', 'private phone number' and the Burner brand name, backed by a mature UA program with many creative variants. Competitors bid on the Burner keyword to cannibalize brand searches.
What happened
Several million downloads per year of a high-intent audience, which also gives a large surface for paywall/onboarding tests.
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Pivots, Funding, and Building Apps That Last – Greg Cohn, Burner“People go into the app store, people go on to search engines and search for second phone number, temporary phone number, private phone number, Burner app by brand. And we're very good at finding that and harvesting that in terms of getting people to download the app.”
“every now and again, we've been covered in Vogue or something and people come download the app, but those people don't convert and they don't retain.”
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More from this episode
- Burner: Test a throwaway phone number by posting it in real Craigslist adsFlood of calls and 10-100x the response of the old app; confirmed a real problem
- Burner: Demo the unreleased app to people at SXSW and collect a waitlistNew York Times interview and a panel slot; $50K revenue on launch day
- Burner: Charge $1.99 upfront and price credit packs to cover phone costsAbout $50K revenue on launch day
- Burner: Drop the $1.99 download price once there is money to cover free users
- Burner: Try a freemium version of an app where every free user costs moneyDidn't scale without lots of capital; stayed a premium, paid-first app
- Ad Hoc Labs: Skip the next VC round and run the app at breakeven insteadBreakeven or profitable for 6-8 years, grew past $10M a year
- Burner: Add a monthly and annual plan with unlimited texts, calls and photosBiggest single jump in revenue in company history; subscriptions now 90%+ of revenue
- Burner: Phase out one-off credits so everyone goes through a subscriptionFairly high churn from short-term users; founder now thinks credits might have fit them better
- Burner: Add caller lookup for unknown numbers to the premium planVery popular and a driver of premium upsells; founder didn't expect it to win
- Burner: Offer 8 plans so short-term and long-term users pick what fits
- Burner: Let people choose on the paywall whether to take a free trialVery positive A/B test result; no numbers given
- Burner: When someone deletes their number, offer them a new oneRetains some users into a second number; 20-30% of new subs are returning users
- Burner: Add a white-label VPN inside the main app's premium planDrove a lot of premium-tier growth, but cost more to build than it should have
- Firewall: Launch separate robocall-blocking and business-number appsNeither got real traction; one was killed by an Apple feature
- Burner: Use paywall tools so the product team can launch tests without engineersFrom 1-2 paywall tests a month to several times that; about 1 in 4-5 wins
- Burner: Judge paywall tests by projected customer lifetime value from day-8 and day-30 data
- Ad Hoc Labs: Buy small apps that fit your users' needs and sell them inside your main app