Ladder · B2C · strength training app
Test annual prices, lead the paywall with annual, and add annual-only features
Annual members now outnumber monthly; payback periods very tight
Workedpricingpaywall
What they did
First round: price testing and iteration to find the annual 'clearing price' for people willing to commit upfront. Then paywall experiments anchoring to annual and adding incentives/extra features to the annual membership. Near trial end, users who completed a workout are pitched annual as the cheaper monthly equivalent with added features and a year of accountability.
What happened
More annual than monthly members in the subscriber base, reversed from before.
- Stage
- growth
- Effort
- Multiple rounds of price and paywall testing
This shipped together with other changes, so the result can't be credited to this alone.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How to Use Segmentation to Maximize LTV — Greg Stewart, Ladder“The first rev of that was on price, and that was a bunch of testing and iteration, and then we got to a place where we thought we had the right clearing price for folks that were willing to commit upfront.”
“And then we did some experimentation around the paywall, anchoring to annual, putting incentives and added features into the annual membership to entice folks to commit on a longer time frame.”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Ladder
All 46 Ladder tactics- Price the annual plan at $14.99 a month ($179), half the monthly priceAnnual take rate rose from 20% to ~30% of new paying members
- Sell monthly only until retention is clear, then show an annual option side by sideAnnual went from ~0% to 20% of new paying members
- Ask new visitors 15 fitness questions, then recommend three matching programsA million people have taken it in 18 months; fixed confused cold-traffic users
- Run a new coach's TikTok for them, using only videos already on their phone250K followers in 45 days, with million-view videos every week
- Send every TikTok ad click to a web quiz and track answers that mark ideal usersTargeting tightened within a week; payback in low single-digit months
- Run a big yearly user survey and use AI to read the answers7,500+ responses in a year; led directly to the nutrition feature
More from this episode
- Ladder: Make a separate ad and coach-led program for each type of lifterFounder says it brings in users more likely to stick; no numbers
- Ladder: Offer a 7-day free trial without asking for a credit cardUsers who finish one or two workouts convert at a very high rate
- Ladder: Aim every feature at getting new members to 3 workouts in week oneHitting it in week one makes month-one retention very likely
- Ladder: Nudge members to cheer on others so new trial users get lots of cheersCheers received correlated with workout completions and long-term retention
- Ladder: Pitch annual only to trial users who worked out; offer others a cheap first monthHelped make annual the majority plan; no split numbers
- Ladder: Offer non-converted trial users their first month for $5, then $29.99About half stay into month two at full price; consistent across cohorts
- Ladder: Run 6-week workout series and pitch discounts to past leads before each startsFounder says deals work best at these moments; no numbers