💎 10 Gems on Monetization: prioritizing experiments, paywall, and pricing tests
Hi, fellow growth practitioner!
Today, I’m sharing 10 gems on monetization that I took out from the Vault.
Enjoy!
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If you work in growth, I’m pretty certain you’ve been frustrated with how long it can take to deploy what seems like a small experiment.
I know I have.
Engineering bandwidth and app release cycles are the death valley where great experiment ideas go to die…And the apps that win are the ones that have a higher experimentation velocity.
I met Aditya in SF back in September, and he showed me how Plotline can help you create customized app experiences such as Instagram-like stories, videos, nudges, and implement gamification mechanics like streaks and quizzes in minutes. Pretty cool!
Book a demo with them to see how they can help you increase your experiment velocity!
Now, onto the gems!
I also turned them into a PDF that you can download here. Don’t forget to give it some love on LinkedIn here, though!
💎 List all your growth experiments and categorize them: subscription price, discount, frequency of the paywall, onboarding survey first screen, onboarding survey questions, etc. Use this to understand which categories (and even subcategories) you’ve optimized the most so far, where you see diminishing returns, and define which categories you should target in the future.
(08:20) by Sviat Hnizdovskyi (CEO at OpenMinds) in Framework for subscription optimization on Purchasely’s Subscription League podcast.
More gems from Sviat in Growth Gems #80 and #92
💎 People who fit different use cases have different willingness to pay. So, before optimizing your paywall and prices, you need to understand your users' use case(s). Example: some Calm users want to sleep better, while others want to meditate.
(05:59) by Vahe Baghdasaryan (Growth, Monetization & Lifecycle Marketing at Flo) in Subscription Optimization & Pricing Strategy on the App Masters podcast
💎 You need to have a holistic view when running a/b tests and be aware of the traps of micro-optimization. Be mindful of the secondary consequences of re-shuffling onboarding screens (e.g., location permission) and playing around with paywall placement.
By Nikita Bier in Sub Club Podcast Live: Unconventional growth tactics for subscription apps
Get more insights from Nikita in Growth Gems #119
💎 Your install-to-trial conversion is a signal of how big the problem you’re solving is. Trial-to-paid conversion is how good your solution is.
(16:34) by Jake Mor (CEO at Superwall) in Mobile Paywall Optimization: How to Increase In-App Subscription on the App Masters podcast
I mined two other resources where Jake was a guest
💎 There are multiple things you should display during the paywall experience: a list of features/benefits, an explanation of how the free trial works, social proof, a comparison of basic vs. pro plan, etc. This can be done through a long scrollable screen or a multi-screen paywall. At Mimo, the multi-screen option led to a 60% increase in the trial opt-in rate and decreased cancellation rates.
(16:34) by Ekaterina Gamsriegler (Head of Marketing + Product Growth at Mimo) in How to use monetization experiments to drive dramatic LTV improvements for subscription apps on the Mobile User Acquisition Show
💎 For shorter lifecycle products, pull any lever possible to drive people to annual plans:
Enables higher max acquisition costs
Lowers churns
Simplifies payment processing
Activates better
(01:08) by Dan Layfield (Founder at Subscription Index) in Maximizing LTV with Annual Plans: Pricing, Tactics & Strategies
Get more insights from Dan in Growth Gems #112
💎 Get your users excited about your product by telling the whole story through the flows that present the paywall. Think about the user mindset when they open the app and the story you reveal to them through the onboarding so that when they see the paywall, it’s contextualized.
Darrell Stone (VP of Product at Fi) in Top 5 Considerations For Paywall Optimization on the Sub Club podcast
💎 Abandon cart communications is the way to tackle helping consumers finish transactions, and it’s super important. But if that’s all you’re doing, it’s not enough: you should be obsessing about customers not abandoning the cart in the first place.
Ken Houseman (VP Product Management at The New York Times) in Best Practices in Subscription Funnel Management
Get more insights from Ken in Growth Gems #110
💎 Display several paywalls: from something very generic that explains the whole subscription on the first session to something very specific as users access the paywall from different places of your application.
(04:55) by Jeff Grang (CEO at Purchasely) in Advanced techniques to improve the subscription funnel at App Growth Summit Berlin
💎 Create feature/quiz/report-specific paywalls, focusing on what the user could get based on what triggered the paywall. When they close this “specific” paywall, show a pop-up telling them about all the benefits they get with premium access. If they decline again, give them the option to access the initial feature through IAP. Example: Impulse with their ‘IQ test’ paywalls.
(17:30) by Jakub Remiar (Mobile F2P Games Consultant) in Impulse Brain Training games: A hyper scaling app masquerading as a brain training
That’s it for today, see you next time.
Stay curious!
⛏️ Sylvain