Welltory · B2C · Apple Watch stress and energy app
Keep basic and possibly life-saving health tracking free; charge for deeper analysis
Over 60% of conversions happen after day one, over the next couple of months
Unknownpaywallretention
What they did
Free: vital health tracking (signs you're getting sick), blood pressure entry and analysis, energy battery, stress built up, sleep score, activity. Paid: trends over time, the day timeline showing drained/recovering/reversing periods, and activity recommendations to improve artery elasticity and stress resilience.
What happened
Big burst on day one, but over 60% of conversions come in a long tail over the following couple of months, unusual for health and fitness apps. Guest doesn't attribute this directly to the free tier.
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
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- Tell users how their habits affect things they care about, like next-day work output
- Check each big feature idea against the mission, main persona, trigger and user jobGuest says the team has used it successfully; scoring features with points didn't work
- Drop the feature list from your paywall and speak to the user's problem
- Make your wellness app something people open when bored, instead of TikTokBecame the company's final big pivot to reach the mass market; no numbers
- Show new text and visuals, based on the user's own data, every time they openGave the initial retention boost; built by hand before gen AI, which was very painful
More from this episode
- Welltory: Ask users to sync their Apple Watch data on the very first screenOver 90% connect their data; intro screens before it did worse
- Welltory: Ask to turn on notifications right away, before showing much valueWorked best in that spot, against best-practice advice; no numbers
- Welltory: Build onboarding as a six-step pitch that ends on what users lose todaySucceeded after repeated failed onboardings; no numbers given
- Welltory: Show users their own stress data during onboarding as the proofGuest calls it the strongest proof, above reviews and research; no numbers
- Welltory: End onboarding with 'Stress is building right now' instead of promising more energyBeat an ending that promised more energy with a progress chart
- Welltory: After the permission screens, ask 'Ever feel tired when you haven't done much?'
- Welltory: Ask 'How do you usually feel?' with both 'drained' and 'stressed' answers50-70% of women pick low energy; men pick stressed or fine
- Welltory: Hook every ad on something scary happening inside your bodyBeat long-term 'feel less tired' hooks on Meta, per guest; no numbersBlack hat
- Welltory: Build the product around the promise your ads sell, not the ad featuresGuest reports a big payoff after 1.5-2 years; no numbers
- Welltory: Offer just a $99.99 yearly plan with no free trial, but let users close it
- Welltory: Open the App Store page with a video saying 'Find out how you're really feeling in 2 minutes'