Skylight · B2C · digital family calendars and frames
Test a free trial, with and without asking for a credit card
No extra subscribers; trial takers were people who'd have subscribed anyway
No effectpaywallexperimentation
What they did
Skylight has never offered a free trial; most people subscribe at purchase. Ran a free trial test in two variants: one taking the customer's credit card and one without. Run as a side project with ~5% of the roadmap, no follow-up iterations.
What happened
No additional lift: roughly the same people opted into the trial as would have subscribed anyway. CEO calls it a resourcing failure: the first test fails and you need eight more.
- Effort
- One test with two variants; no dedicated growth PM, no iterations
“We tried to do a free trial where we would take a customer's credit card. And we did one with not taking the customer's credit card. So we did both variants and that was not successful in getting us any additional lift.”
“You can't moonlight growth PMing when you have 5% of your roadmap available to do it, because the first test is going to fail and you need to run eight more.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Skylight: Raise the yearly plan from $39 to $79, not the $99 tests favoredMinimal loss of subscribers or retention; ARR curve 'transformative'; no exact numbers
- Skylight: Keep old customers on the old price, and honor it for anyone who asksGave up an estimated couple million dollars for goodwill; no measured effect
- Skylight: Send the device's QR code to an Apple in-app purchase instead of a web checkoutOver 100% more conversions, on a small slice of users
- Skylight: Knock money off the device when people buy it with the subscriptionMuch higher subscription attach on the own website than on Amazon or in stores; no numbers
- Skylight: Make every first purchase cover what you paid to get the customerEvery order in company history paid back on day zero; grew without VC money
- Skylight: Borrow from risk-tolerant lenders at 15-20% to buy holiday inventory, not raise VCStayed bootstrapped and profitable; paid 15-20% a year at times
- Skylight: Keep what people bought the device for free; charge for new add-ons like meal planningPhotos-on-calendar paywall 'just worked' for years; now some customers want it free
- Skylight: Don't mark which features are premium once someone has subscribedRenewal rates high even for light users of paid features; no numbers
- Skylight: Survey customers on whether the product is life-changing, and build to raise that shareAbout 20% say life-changing today; goal is 50%
- Skylight: Push marketing spend on a new calendar product before the product was goodDidn't work; nearly killed the product; took off only after product fixes in fall 2022
- Skylight: Sell the device everywhere: your own site, Amazon, Costco and Best BuyCalled very successful; retail acts as a quality stamp, but lowers subscription attach
- Skylight: Change how you show what's in the subscription bundleRarely moved the share of buyers who subscribe