An audio story app · B2C · Hannah's past product
Find how many stories make users stick (6), then give everyone 10 free
Users who hit 6 stories first converted 2x better from trial to paid
Workedproduct-activationpaywallretention
What they did
Defined a first meaningful action and a core action (listening to a story), then found the number of core actions after which users are 'hard activated': six stories on average. Gave every user 10 free stories (not 6, since the average is not the truth) while still offering the trial in onboarding. Then studied the step-by-step funnel: most listened to one story, so the focus became getting people to the second (autoplay, tooltips, rewards, light gamification).
What happened
Users who completed six stories without a trial then started trials that converted 2x better to paid; after six stories, ~98% continued to each next story.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · App Optimization Through Experimentation — Hannah Parvaz, Aperture“So, imagine I was working at one content product, and we knew that someone had to listen to six stories to become hard activated. What we did then was we gave everybody 10 free stories to make sure that they would get to that point.”
“people who completed actually six stories who hadn't taken out a trial would then take out a trial and convert 2x better to paid from that trial than people who hadn't, for example.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Ask for tracking permission the moment the app first opensLeast impact of all placements tested on sign-ups, trials, paying and activation
- Start with ~$6K of install ads, then optimize for sign-ups and trials once volume allows
- Test 4 ad messages on one design, then put the winner in 4 formats
- Judge ad results in your attribution tool, not in Meta's dashboardMeta shows only ~60% of the results the MMP sees for some clients
- Advertise free apps on Android only, to skip iOS's minimum install volumes
- Offer the free trial during onboarding, then offer it again once users are warmerMoving the trial later cut trial starts too much; kept it in onboarding
- Count a user as churning when they miss their own usual visit rhythm
- When ads don't pay back, check each funnel step from ad to paid before spending moreFound one client where only 70% of installs ever opened the app
- Divide all ad spend by all installs, trials and purchases, organic included
- Launch one ad channel at a time and add the next once it works
- Boost your Instagram and TikTok posts for $1-2 CPMs next to your conversion adsAwareness CPMs $1-2 vs $7-12 for direct response; overall costs come down
- Move ad money from Meta to Google when Meta costs jumpGoogle still 2x+ profitable while Meta costs rose; aim for balanced spend
- Spend on cheap awareness in November; push sales ads from December 1 into JanuarySame pattern for 12 years: November costs terrible, drop from December 1
- Start Apple Search Ads spend after noon, once rivals' daily budgets run outGot much better prices after noon; no numbers
- Duolingo: Ask for tracking permission only after a few lessons are done