Practitioner pattern · Sara Grana (Yousician, Babbel)
Split renewal rates by plan, discount, and web vs app before reading them
Web buyers renew much better, so blended renewals rise from mix shift alone
Unknownanalytics-attributionretention
What they did
Cut every cohort by which plan was bought, discounted or not, and where (web checkout vs in-app), plus marketing channel where it produces different users. Blended renewal rates move mostly because the share of these cohorts changes (e.g. more web buyers or more 1-month plans), not because the product improved. Discounts can bring revenue but low renewals; price increases can shrink the pool of users to upgrade.
What happened
Web-purchased subscriptions renew significantly better than in-app across companies she has seen.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Stop Celebrating Conversion Wins Before Checking Renewals – Sara Grana, Yousician“So what is most important to me is which plan did they buy, discounted or not, and where? Web versus app.”
“If they were to slice from what is the cohort of users that bought natively in app, what is the cohort of users that bought through web, maybe the renewal rates are flat and what just happened is you are acquiring users through other means.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Babbel: Chart revenue from new, upgrading, renewing and returning subscribers, then explain each spikeSurfaces which past decisions moved revenue, e.g. a lifetime plan launch; no numbers
- Yousician: Set calendar reminders to recheck price tests at 3 and 6 monthsCatches price 'wins' that flip once renewals come in; no numbers
- Yousician: Before calling a paywall test, wait two weeks and check refunds and chargebacksRefunds show up fast and can erase a paywall win; no numbers
- Send an offer to people who turn off auto-renewLooked great, but users refunded first and then took the offer; net negative
- Judge a new lifetime plan against what a subscriber pays over timeTests otherwise wrongly crown lifetime, e.g. 250 vs 100 instead of 250 vs 300 euros
- Yousician: Use monthly-plan renewals to set a warning threshold for yearly-plan test winners