Sub Club by RevenueCat

Shreya Oswal and Keya Patel from Headspace discuss the evolution of their freemium model, the impact of gating content on engagement levels, the effectiveness of pricing tests, onboarding experiments, integrating life cycle decisions into the product team, and revamping the referral program.

On this episode: the one small tweak that increased revenue 5X, growing an app organically, and how hiring an ASO consultant actually tanked downloads.Top Takeaways💰 Not all problems can be solved with money, so see if you can fix your own problems internally — like team communication — before paying for external help.💡 Highly relevant ASO keywords with lower search volumes are a better bet for engaging audiences earlier and seeing snowballing success.🌅 Putting a paywall early enough in the onboarding process might just supercharge revenue and growth.📰 When you don’t have an advertising budget, start with local journalists and tie press releases to key events in the year.🌳 Organic referral mechanisms — ****like screen sharing success and milestones — can be very effective while enhancing user experience.About Ania Wysocka👨‍💻 Founder of Rootd.💡 “I‘m so obsessed with the user experience, that it's important to work with others who also are obsessed with user experience.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Check out Rootd‣ B2B with Rootd‣ Rootd on Instagram‣ Connect with Ania on LinkedIn‣ Connect with Ania on TwitterEpisode Highlights[1:31] Strong roots: Ania created Rootd not as a result of surveys or user research, but in response to her own personal need.[8:31] Contract buzzkill: Working with contractors can be a challenge — alignment of values is the key.[10:13] Fundraiser tales: If you haven’t hit a wall in development, it might not yet be time to seek investment. Fixing internal processes first can pay dividends later.[12:53] Early ASnOwball: Sticking with keywords that might initially yield lower volumes can ultimately drive traffic that helps your app snowball. Ania found contracting ASO counterproductive.[17:49] Dialing in the funnel: A paywall at the beginning of the onboarding process increased Rootd’s revenue by five times — with no negative feedback.[20:55] Get their attention: Local journalists love to promote local business stories, and tying stories to specific world events can work wonders when there’s no advertising budget.[25:03] Apple Editor’s Choice: Sometimes it pays to be as persistent as possible in submissions for getting featured.[28:20] Paid marketing experimentation: Don’t pay for marketing until you’re ready to experiment.

On this episode: the trap of building for existing subscribers, incentivizing word of mouth, and why paid marketing should be an accelerant, not the foundation of your growth strategy.Top Takeaways📱 Growth comes from focusing on product retention: Build a product users really want, creating an engaged customer base and fueling the growth loop down the line.🗣️ ‌Build a viral growth loop based on word-of-mouth. A product that exceeds user expectations is the ultimate way to drive word-of-mouth — even if your app isn’t naturally social.👥 Paid advertising is an accelerant to user acquisition (UA) — not your sole UA channel. It should come after product focus and word-of-mouth virality.😀 ‌Measure and improve retention by finding your minimum engagement milestone. Look to your ICP for clues.🙅‍♂️ Talk to your users who aren't subscribers. There's a tendency to focus user research on super-users, but they won't tell you much about why others aren't subscribing.About Jesse Venticinque👨‍💻 Co-founder and chief product officer of Fitbod, a fitness app offering workouts that improve as you do.💡 “There’s a trap of listen[ing] to super successful, engaged customers as a clue for what the unsuccessful customers are missing.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Check out Fitbod‣ Work with Fitbod (Currently hiring a Core Experience Lead PM!)‣ Jesse’s product approach‣ Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn‣ Connect with Jesse on TwitterEpisode Highlights[2:07] Solving a personal problem: The business has grown largely on revenue alone, thanks to what Jesse calls a “maniacal focus on product retention” and a goal of challenging the status quo.[5:56] Catching a big break: The key to scaling was pioneering a subscription model based on AI and machine learning, as well as having the right product-market fit by tapping into a “secret hiding in plain sight.”[8:26] Money in the bank: Although they found themselves in an underdog industry, the Fitbod team crucially found investors who aligned with their mission and values.[12:06] Viral growth loop: Word of mouth is still a major growth driver for Fitbod today — especially given that Fitbod isn’t a naturally social product. They’re also considering content as another growth loop, both blog-based and user-generated.[15:40] Hooking them in: The best consumer companies have discrete, repeatable actions to create a habit loop. Reward visibility and shareability are critical components of this.[17:58] Referral science: Offering free referrals is a way to understand and measure the growth loop. This approach also offers hard data, whereas word of mouth is more challenging to measure.[20:29] Everyday workout: Driving retention requires deep analysis of the metrics, like when users are canceling before the end of subscription periods and account dormancy.[26:27] Leverage = focus: When retention is good, focusing on conversion and activation is a viable way to drive mass adoption.[28:44] Contextualizing feature requests: Once you establish your ICP, scale and own the market for that audience. Then, build for the non-ICP.[31:32] Digging into activation: Jesse explains that user research is critical to avoid focusing too much on the most engaged users at the expense of less engaged ones.[35:09] The depth of need: Before building a feature, identify a participant pattern with (at least) medium confidence. Then you can develop a hypothesis.

On the podcast we talk with Shaun about the power of community, the importance of testing your freemium strategy, and why you might not want to offer a free trial.Top Takeaways🎆 Understanding unintuitive power laws is the ticket to explaining — and benefiting from — explosive app growth.🪝 Deciding what goes behind the paywall is 90% of an app’s success — but developers typically only spend 10% of the time thinking about it.🆓 Beware the free trial, which could create negative experiences and conversion rates — and might not outperform a freemium model.🌍 Absorbing the cost of a freemium model comes down to creating an engaged, irreplaceable community, which is more likely to buy and lead to higher conversions.🫶 Don’t focus on rates and formulae at the expense of what matters: Where users are in their emotional journey and how the app fits into their lives.About Shaun Steingold👨‍💻 Founder and managing director of Momentum Labs and CEO of Healthi.💡 “I love opportunities where you have a business model that fundamentally disrupts an industry. Said another way: You and your business and products have a bigger margin than your competitors. That's been the thesis behind a lot of my career and what I've worked on.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Learn more about Momentum Labs‣ Check out the Healthi app‣ Look into iNavX, the “Google Maps for the Water”‣ Connect with Shaun on LinkedInEpisode Highlights[1:45] From HP to SVB to apps: App developers have access to a free global scale and distribution network that only a privileged few corporations had in the past — harking back to when Eric Crowley said the App Store was the biggest marketplace in human history. Mobile apps that replace tangible products continually win out thanks to convenience for consumers.[5:05] Proto-cyborgs: Apps have the power to augment physical activities — from fitness to physical hobbies — in a world where we still haven’t yet reached “peak app.”[6:57] Gaining momentum: ****Shaun realized that the App Store ranking moat meant buying was better than building. Riding the first wave of app-buying firms, Momentum Labs chose top apps at rank three or lower where growth potential is exponential compared to those with the top spot.[10:13] Buffett wisdom: “Great businesses for fair prices” seems like a good maxim. But right now, the market seems to be crazy prices for fair businesses because it’s not accounting for the unintuitive: that power laws still prevail, and people need to get wise to them.[14:53] Featherlight ASO: Momentum has a very light hand on the tiller when it comes to ASO — they frontload most of the work and then (almost) don’t touch it. Performance consistency and longevity matter more.[19:00] Never take our freemium: The initial backlash against subscription models needs to give way to understanding that software is a living, breathing thing. Freemium is about trying before you buy, and hooking with additional features — working out what these features are is 90% of an app’s strategy for success.[23:51] Trialing the free trial: Shaun’s never used free trials with his apps, because he’s found that they can create negative engagement — reflected in lower conversion rates.[28:34] Boundless, joyful experience: The key to not having a free trial is the freemium strategy. Freemium models done well entice without moments of pause or negative experiences — ultimately encouraging users to upgrade for more features and additional value.[35:32] Community values: The best business asset — for app lifecycles and moats — is community. Building engagement improves conversion. The strategy for Healthi highlights how additional value generates revenue and helps grow apps to full potential.[39:38] It’s a kind of magic: It’s easy to get caught up in rates and formulae at the expense of what really matters, which is how a product fits into someone’s life and emotional journey.

On the podcast, Ariel dives into the fundamentals of ASO and how to research and optimize keywords. He also explains why ratings matter much more than reviews, and why you should never, ever duplicate keywords.Top Takeaways:🔍 It’s not that it’s hard to get discovered with ASO — it’s that it’s hard to get discovered without doing enough ASO. Expect to spend more time exploring on the front-end, but this isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. ⭐ Make sure that you're optimizing for ratings: they are more impactful for discoverability than download numbers alone. 📛 When choosing an app name, make sure you put the most important keywords as early as possible. 📊 Don’t rely on intuition for your ASO strategy — always look at the data.🔑 Spend as much time using the keywords as you do on finding them — beyond just in your text meta.About Ariel Michaeli👨‍💻 Founder and CEO of Appfigures.💡 “If you only trust intuition, you probably won't see results.”👋  LinkedInLinks & Resources‣ Check out Appfigures‣ Appfigures’s Advanced ASO Secrets Guide‣ Join Appfigures (they’re hiring!)‣ Connect with Ariel on LinkedIn‣ Which Keywords are Your Competitors Targeting?Episode Highlights[1:48] The A to Z of ASO: Should I care? they ask. Usually, it’s because they don’t know what ASO is. But it’s harder and harder to get found in the App Store, so you can’t deny the benefits.[4:09] Black box optimization: ASO impacts both conversion and discovery, so how do you blend the two? Ariel suggests you forget about the algorithm, and focus on the people instead.[5:52] ASO vs. SEO: So what is the difference? It’s hard to explain briefly. But you have much less control over ASO than SEO — it’s about limitations. [9:16] Great expectations: It’s not hard to get discovered with ASO — it’s hard to get discovered without enough ASO. Understanding your app and core competitors is the foundation of changing how much impact your app makes.[12:46] Artificial boosting: Why should older apps get more traction? The good news for new apps is that Apple has now leveled the playing field.[18:10] ASO key factors: App name, subtitle and keywords all affect ASO. Get relevant, important keywords in as early as possible because that’s where the value is, says Ariel. Plus: Some live keyword help.[27:24] Capture their attention: People have to understand what they’re looking at before they download an app. With apps for everything now, how do you stand out? Screenshots and video previews are the answer.[31:35] Rate beats review: Apps with more ratings beat those with more downloads. Ratings feel more organic to users, so Apple — and its algorithm — factors this in.[35:35] The ultimate sin: Keyword duplication is the biggest no-no. But other common ASO mistakes include ignoring popularity scores, trusting your instincts, and failing to utilize app names for keywords. (Cleaner isn’t always better where it really matters: downloads.)[39:12] Competitive focus: With some niches, like games, up to two keywords matter. Category rookies and those in highly competitive environments should be focused. Those with more ratings and downloads should angle for other keyword combos.[43:59] Do your research: You need to look at the data to see what keywords really matter for your app. It helps to check competitor reviews.[49:32] Paid marketing: Number of ratings, especially on Google Play, really matters. When people don’t download, it signals no one wants it. Expect Apple to follow suit. [51:08] Secondary ASO localizations: Apple uses English localization for keywords, but — in the U.S. — Spanish too. Use both, and you’ve got twice the keywords. Russia and other countries are on the way too, which means you can duplicate between sets (even if not within them).

On the podcast, we talk with Alice Muir about how best to onboard premium users, what lifecycle optimization looks like both tactically and strategically, and how to spot users before they churn. She shares insight into why focusing on CRMs for win-back strategies is only part of the story, and the best campaigns to entice users to stick with their subscriptions.Top Takeaways:📧 Email is good for two things: drip campaigns — offering a staggered, increasing discount to entice signups — and long-form content to keep premium users engaged.📲 Consider using in-app messaging as proxy testing for paywalls if you don’t have access to A/B testing tools or are working with different regional pricing.🎁 Using CRM for quick win-backs is a band-aid for churn — instead, you need to consistently add value to people’s lives.🤔 Tap into human psychology and increase retention by reminding people of what they’re going to lose by unsubscribing.💸 Balance discounts with the need to entice more high-intent users back into the app, because at some point discounts mean you’re losing money.About Alice Muir👨‍💻 She’s the Senior Growth Consultant at Phiture.💡“In my experience, the low-hanging fruit is the strategy and strategic lifecycle targeting, because you would be surprised at how many apps … have absolutely nothing in place for people that have started a trial or are already subscribers.”👋 LinkedInLinks & Resources‣ Check out Phiture‣ Phiture’s Subscription Stack‣ Connect with Alice on LinkedIn to guest write for Phiture‣ The 4 Foundational Frameworks of Consumer SaaS — Robbie Kellman Baxter, Peninsula StrategiesFollow us on Twitter ‣ David Barnard ‣ Jacob Eiting ‣ RevenueCat ‣ Sub ClubEpisode Highlights[2:09] Top app learnings: Alice has worked with — and learned from — a number of subscription apps.[3:17] Subscription onboarding strategy: Many top apps in the App Store don’t have a strategy focusing on those already subscribed or who’ve started a trial. Sometimes a simple message is all that’s needed.[7:36] Feature highlight: Premium experience onboarding must emphasize additional features — not just what the free experience offers. Asking users what they like best in each experience never hurts.[9:59] Channel blending: Email is great for drip campaigns — offering a staggered increased discount — as well as long-form content to keep premium users engaged. Push has limitations however, so it’s better to use for win-back scenarios.[12:54] In-app messaging: Using full-screen in-app messages that look like native paywalls can be used as a proxy for testing the latter, Alice explains — with caveats.[19:25] Next-step growth: For big apps with a lot of data, correlation analysis is a huge area of opportunity. The same can’t be said for startup apps, which lack this data. But what does it look like?[24:50] From correlation to causation: Alice explains her strategy for driving value from correlation and funnel analysis for drop-offs.[27:10] Churn prevention strategy: A holistic approach to long-term success harmonizes with Robbie Kellman Baxter’s view. A cost-of-living crisis is causing people to scrutinize their costs like never before, so apps need continual content for real added value.[32:05] Spotting the churn: Alice suggests segmenting already-disengaged users, dissecting the reason, and re-onboarding them if necessary.[37:19] Winning win-back campaigns: Reminding people of lost benefits, creating a sense of urgency, celebrating membership, and implementing screenshot capture functionality for premium features are all possible tactics for reinforcing the value proposition.[39:32] Making discounts work: Discounts can seem attractive, but might encourage long-term loss — the key is to balance discounts with attracting high-intent app users. Reminding people what’s coming can be highly effective.

On the podcast we talk with Jason about some of Strava’s big growth wins, the importance of feature education, and whether or not all product teams should actually be growth teams.Top Takeaways🛠 The shift in mindset that comes with "growth engineering" — it's about a greater focus on the user and a willingness to go a little faster than usual...🌀 While chaos in an app business may be unavoidable, the secret is learning to embrace "managed chaos"🔬 How the key to growth is testing — and creating a safe space where it's possible to test every idea👩‍🏫 Why having employees who use the app every day is both a blessing and a curse (hint: it's connected to the new user experience and feature education)About Jason van der Merwe👨‍💻 Director of Growth Engineering at Strava💡 “Make it easy enough to test any and every idea.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Check out Strava‣ Work with Strava‣ Check out Jason’s site and musings on growth and more Follow us on Twitter‣ David Barnard‣ Jacob Eiting‣ RevenueCat‣ Sub ClubEpisode Highlights[1:58] Growing as an engineer: Jason explains what the role of a growth engineer entails — most importantly, thinking like a product manager.[4:10] If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen: Growth by word-of-mouth is the holy grail. How Strava grew before Jason joined looked different to how it grew once he joined.[10:31] Flying blind: The board said that top companies have growth teams and to make it happen. Jason’s team had no idea what they were doing at first — it all started with tinkering and analyzing the metrics.[16:26] From 0 to 100: Jason talks about how Strava’s growth team grew from nothing into five multidisciplinary teams with 70 people.[20:37] Conflicts and scaling: Smaller meetings are more successful, but can be a challenge for creating a more overarching narrative.[26:26] Core values: Strava has different teams focusing on different values, but all teams are platforms.[28:13] Feature education: Developers can miss fundamentals — Jason explains how Strava factors this into development. Perfect observability remains a problem, but Jason says it’s important to move forward and make decisions in spite of that.[31:31] Test churning: Because he was close to the problem, Jason could test nonstop. But now his role has changed, he needs to trust his teams and help them do their jobs well — illustrating the importance of engineers thinking like product managers.[34:39] Stay focused: When debate about what to do becomes time-consuming and you’re not moving fast, you know it’s time to test more. Metrics like measured (not modeled) outcomes are key at Strava.[40:09] Black box: No app developer has control of the App Store. App store optimization (ASO) might ease the pressure, but at the expense of the novelty effect. The best advice? Don’t depend on it.[45:30] The power of copy: Visual design can be distracting for users, as well as powerful. But copy — no matter where it is — always has a huge impact.

On the podcast I talk with Ryan about the TikTokification of video ads, how partnerships help increase the value of premium subscription tiers, and why you should be thinking about retention, not just downloads, when working with influencers.Top Takeaways🗣️ User acquisition can be more challenging for apps with niche audiences, which is why you should focus on channels where you can target by interest and search.🎯 SEO feeds the retargeting funnel more than it drives direct conversions — but keyword data is valuable for product positioning.🤗 Influencer marketing is extremely effective across the whole marketing funnel — from acquisition to retention — helping to build trust and authenticity.🦾 Marketing automation is essential for educating users how the product will improve their life once they've gotten into it — especially for more complex products.🖥️ Apps make more money from web subscriptions, so retarget users to drive them to sign up on the web rather than mobile.About Ryan Watson👨‍💻 Director of Growth Marketing at onX💡 “Our motto is: ‘We want to awaken the adventurer in everyone.’ It’s very focused on the experience that they're having, and not just how the tool operates.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Work at onX‣ onX on LinkedIn‣ onX on Twitter‣ onX on YouTubeFollow us on Twitter‣ David Barnard‣ Jacob Eiting‣ RevenueCat‣ Sub ClubEpisode Highlights[1:47] Hunting origins: Ryan takes listeners through the background of onXmaps, Inc., the market-dominating subscription app you might not have heard of if you’re not a hunter.[7:03] Find the product fit: If you’re looking to build a business, look at underserved niches.[13:34] Easy and hard: Narrow niches come with their own challenges.[18:00] Channel selection: Targeting via interest is crucial to marketing to a niche audience.[19:34] SEOperation: SEO does convert, but more importantly feeds the retargeting funnel.[21:18] Secret channels: Ryan shares some of the more successful channels that might not be considered at first.[22:41] TikTokification: Short form video is on the rise — how do you leverage that “escape-style content”? There’s still a market for long form podcasting too.[27:08] Influencer culture: Working with a large number of the right influencers is important for authenticity, but sometimes in-house video works better. What’s crucial is a constant flow of video.[29:17] Retention: People don’t think about retention as much as they should, Ryan says. Ads can actually be a retention strategy.[31:39] Howdy, partner: Elite members get special deals. For onX, it’s about “provid[ing] true value of what matters to your audience,” Ryan explains.[36:23] End-to-end: It’s all about figuring out your creative door-opener for getting people interested in your product.[40:03] Personnel balance: Having a strong in-house creative team versus hiring from outside is a personal preference, and depends on the product.[40:44] MMP: Ryan talks all things experimentation on ATT, SKAdNetwork, organic lift, and directing traffic between the web and the app stores.[45:13] Bundling: onX believes in specific concept-based apps for specific users. Sometimes there’s cross-conversion.

On the podcast I talk with Sylvain about the top subscription app insights you should be thinking about, how important cohorting is when looking at growth metrics, and why good advice can turn bad if you apply it at the wrong stage.Top Takeaways💎 In an early stage, engagement is more important than growth💎 When looking at retention for your subscription apps, segment your users based on their subscription status💎 Launching only a monthly plan first can help you improve the product💎 Gifting is a great way to increase the spend ceiling💎 You need to ask for the annual upgrade beyond sign upAbout Sylvain Gauchet👨‍💻 Director of Revenue Strategy at Babbel and founder of Growth Gems💡 “Whether your onboarding is going to be short — because you get people to experience the background removal — or it's long because you need to sell them on the idea, it's still about convincing them. It’s for you to figure out what’s the best way to convince them.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Learn a language at Babbel‣ Sign up for the Growth Gems newsletter‣ Gabor-Granger Pricing Model Explanation and Survey Template‣ Check out Gabor-Granger on YouTube‣ How To Price Your Product: A Guide To The Van Westendorp Pricing Model‣ Check out Van Westendorp on YouTubeFollow us on Twitter‣ David Barnard‣ Jacob Eiting‣ RevenueCat‣ Sub ClubEpisode Highlights[2:11] The curator: On top of working a full-time job, content consumer extraordinaire Sylvain “mines” the best growth insights to share in a biweekly newsletter.[3:13] Top Gems: Strategy[3:17] Get out and explore: Andy Carvell, co-founder at Phiture, preaches big swings for big results in place of sophisticated measuring and A/B testing. The stage you’re in shapes the tactics you use.[7:05] Clash of priorities: On top of revenue, the CAC/LTV ratio considers health and growth instead of one or the other, says Michael Berliner, former principal product manager at MasterClass.[13:02] Engage all systems: Without engagement, growth is meaningless, according to bestselling author Nir Eyal. Don’t scale until you’ve nailed engagement and know that people are willing to pay.[15:29] Avoiding extremes: Eric Seufert, analyst and strategy consultant at Heracles Media, says that if you’re blowing up, you should spend on paid acquisition much earlier than you think — even before onboarding and perfecting the product. Just don’t focus too much on a specific channel — extremes aren’t good.[20:22] Engineering success: Testing velocity is critical. Canva head of revenue and product growth David Burson knows you have to get comfortable with just enough engineering and moving fast. Growth and product engineering aren’t the same — you’re going to fail sometimes.[23:32] Ease the tension: Monetization, engagement, and virality need balance, says independent mobile growth consultant Thomas Petit. Doubling the price for double the short-term revenue sometimes works, but at what cost for long-term retention?[26:35] Top Gems: Retention[26:40] Segment, re-engage: You can’t look at everything in aggregate, Sylvain says — if you do, you won’t understand the story behind user behavior. But as Thomas Petit also highlights, segmenting on a subscription basis helps you to target appropriately through re-engagement.[29:27] Month by month: For cash flow, annual plans reign supreme. But monthly plans offer incremental improvement opportunities, says PhotoRoom co-founder and CEO Matthieu Rouif.[33:30] Winning by proxy: It’s very difficult to impact the tail end of retention. Finding earlier patterns and indicators helps you to optimize for the proxy — and provides the only way to do so, says RBI head of digital marketing Anja Obermüller.[36:41] Talking tactics: Strategy matters, but the technicalities of involuntary churn could be the key to increasing retention. Patrick Campbell, CEO of ProfitWell, advises looking at the Tactical Retention Zone as well as the Strategic Retention ends of the value spectrum.[39:35] Top Gems: Onboarding & Activation[39:40] Seeing is believing: Thomas recommends not A/B testing in the early stages — make the change directly instead. If it matters, you’ll know when you’ve made the desired impact. You don’t have to mimic mature, late-stage companies like DuoLingo that religiously A/B test everything.[42:59] Onboarding is separate: Darius Mora, formerly the CMO of Reflectly, knows how important onboarding optimization is — to the point that you should view onboarding as a separate product.[45:06] The art of persuasion: Don’t bother with a how-to tutorial, says Leon Sasson, co-founder and CTO of Rise Science. Instead, educate and convince: Demonstrate how the product affects users’ lives and why they should care.[50:14] Collateral damage: Leon also emphasizes a classic mistake with funnel optimization: Making moves in one direction hurting elsewhere — say, increasing trials negatively affecting long-term retention. Use counter-metrics to avoid these pitfalls, which don’t have to be that sophisticated.[52:06] Countdown to experimentation: Growth trainer and coach Ethan Garr is keen to stress that you don’t jump into tactics — you experiment instead. Just because something works for someone doesn’t mean it’ll work for you, so avoid copying tests.[54:32] Realignment: What happens before is as important as what comes after, Sylvain says. Phitur senior designer Marissa Hsu clarifies the importance of setting the right expectations during onboarding for ensuring user acquisition continuity.[59:26] Top Gems: Monetization[59:31] Surveying the landscape: Giancarlo Musetti, growth product manager at Burner, strongly recommends surveying to understand the best ways to deploy paywalls. Especially if you’re in the early stages, talk to users.[1:03:16] It’s all about the percentages: You can’t ignore the percentage of users who see the paywall. Monitor it, because many apps make it difficult for people to actually pay for them. Of the peopl...

On the podcast we talk with Lexi about data.ai’s State of Mobile report, the countries subscription apps should focus on for growth, and why things still look bright for apps despite a decline in overall spend.Top Takeaways🕹️ Mobile app spend is down, but that may not be a bad thing🤳 Non-gaming apps see additional growth with resilient spend✍️ The subscription model underpins growth for non-gaming apps📈 Look to non-U.S. markets for new opportunities💝 The most successful apps will offer frictionless, personalized experiencesAbout Lexi Sydow👨‍💻 Head of Insights at data.ai, a unified data AI company that combines consumer and market data with artificial intelligence to offer insights into trends.💡 “We’ve gotten to a place where it’s become very native behavior — not just in the app store sense, but even mobile commerce. … It’s those habitual things that we do that reinforce our habits.”👋  LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Get the State of Mobile 2023 report‣ Work at data.ai (remote and hiring!)Follow us on Twitter‣ David Barnard‣ Jacob Eiting‣ RevenueCat‣ Sub ClubEpisode Highlights[2:16] History report: From starting as “The Retrospective” to including more forward-thinking pieces, publishing the Annual State of Mobile report has been a decade of fun for data.ai — and a valuable resource for app developers.[4:54] More reports: Lexi outlines data.ai’s various other reports that help separate real trends from massaged data.[7:48] An evolutionary thing: Most changes to data.ai’s reports have been organic, largely thanks to a maturation of the industry, analysis, and the team’s understanding. [11:54] It’s data, it’s AI, it’s data.ai: data.ai’s sophisticated team collects data based on their own products, utilizing AI in the process. This helps them make their own accurate estimates, and they’re proud of that.[18:39] M.E.T.H.O.D.: Lexi dives into the hows of data collection in the age of privacy, including data.ai’s growing categorization of apps.[21:53] Marquee landmark year: For the first time ever, spend is down. Lexi details the data and what it tells us.[28:03] Concentrate: The top three countries for app spend have their own chart in the report. But it’s not all dominated by China, the U.S., and Japan.[30:21] GDP transformed: While China is three or four times the size of the U.S., China’s spend is only marginally greater than the latter. There’s still a lot of headroom for China to move.[39:30] Top app categories: In many categories, subscription apps take the top spot. Usually in the top 10, storage subscription app Google One jumped straight to number one in consumer spending this year.[42:36] What is a phone?: It’s becoming — if it hasn’t already become — native behavior to use phones to do everything. Meaningful personalized experiences convert to subscriptions and in-app purchases.