A subscription app with web billing · B2C · guest's past project
When web subscribers cancel, offer half their money back to stay subscribed
Many cancellers took it; profitable, good feedback and decent retention
Workedcancellation-flowpayments-checkout
What they did
For subscribers billed on the web, the cancel flow stays easy (a clear confirm button), but one screen before confirmation shows a counteroffer: a refund of half of what they already paid while keeping the subscription active. Only possible when you own the transaction; not doable on the App Store.
What happened
A massive number of about-to-churn users accepted; the math was beneficial and the segment retained decently.
- Stage
- Scale (scaling)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Understanding When to Use Web2App and How to Do It Well — Thomas Petit, Independent App Consultant“"Okay, so you can confirm, it's this button, but here's a counteroffer, and we refund you half of what you already paid, and you keep the subscription live, but we keep the other half."”
“And there was a massive amount of people who were about to churn that were like, "Oh yeah, that's a great deal. I'll take it."”
“I remember when we made the math, for us it was beneficial”
“and eventually, we had a quite decent retention on on this segment.”
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
- Blinkist: Send Taboola and Outbrain ads to a page that reads like an articleBlinkist cracked this channel; Facebook traffic gets a different flow; no numbers
- Noom: Run a 50-screen onboarding quiz on the web for a high-intent productStill works for Noom; the guest doubts it would for a quick-use app
- Photoroom: Put 10+ of the app's features on your website as free tools, no loginGuest thinks it pays off long term; no internal numbers
- Ladder: Send ad clicks to a web survey and flag likely payers to TikTok and InstagramWorking really well, host says, even with fuzzy web-to-install tracking
- Open with a fun web quiz or mini-game before pitching a serious appChosen over building a second app; no results given
- Run 'What's your IQ?' ads into an easy web quiz, then send people to the appA success, guest says; asking for payment on the web would have hurt
- Let small teams pay on the web with invoices in the company's nameTeams wanted to pay regardless of price; no results given
- 8fit: Send Taboola and Outbrain ads straight to the App StoreStore install rate stayed very low; web funnels worked better
- Run web and app-install ads side by side on Meta to reach more peopleTotal reach significantly higher than either alone; app-only can plateau at 2M of 20M
- Buy Google Search and YouTube ads to your website to control keywords and channelsReaches a different audience than App campaigns; no numbers
- Bid more for new high-end Android phones, less for older devicesPremium Android converts close to iPhone; older versions convert worse
- Sell on the Amazon Appstore to reach Amazon tablet ownersNot as big as the App Store but a significant revenue source
- Put a simple landing page between the ad and the storeWorked for one game; the same setup failed for several of the guest's apps
- Change the first-day experience so it shows within 24 hours who will payGame companies did this to survive the 24-hour SKAdNetwork window; no numbers
- Charge some users on the web and send others to in-app purchaseFinds new revenue highs per segment; no numbers