Free trials aren’t for everyone

‍

😎 Dropping free trial increased our subscription rate by 67%

This is the result of one of the amazing companies I work with, which has a great SAAS product for healthcare professionals.

‍

👀  Context:

• The product requires a subscription to be used and was offering a free 14-day trial for new users.
• It allows self-serve and is in good shape, however, it does require putting in the effort upfront to get the value out of it.
• The product pricing is very reasonable and with a monthly cancelable subscription, the barrier to entry is low.
• Conversion from registration to trial started is high.
• Conversion from trial started to Premium is low.
• Premium users' retention is high.

‍

🧪 Test:

We ran a very simple little test removing the free trial option and putting a hard paywall requiring upfront payment at the end of the onboarding funnel.

‍

🎉 Result:

• The conversion rate from registration to subscribers went up by 67%.
• MoM subscribers' retention stayed flat.

‍

👀 Conclusion:

A free trial is not always the best option.

‍

💡 Hypothesis:

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy:

• You need to put in effort to get the value, having to pay makes you more committed to putting in the effort, so you get better value.
• Whereas in a free trial, you haven't committed your money yet, so you may not feel the same need to put in the effort. Thus, you won’t get the value before the end of the trial, which makes you more likely to cancel.

‍

🤔 What else could we do?

Reduce the effort to a bare minimum:

• By automating what could be automated.
• Pushing to later down the funnel what’s not necessary for the first usage.
• Building a step-by-step onboarding to make the effort feel less overwhelming.
• Reducing the time it takes to get to the "value" for new users.
• Re-testing a longer trial period.

‍

What is Aperture?

Hello, you, reading this. Aperture is a growth agency that specialises in creative advertising and product optimisation. That means we can develop your creative strategy, run your ads, and optimise your product.

Some of the companies we've worked with are Memrise, TomTom, The Smurfs, Juno, and Mindful Mamas.

Led by Hannah Parvaz (App Marketer of the Year, 4x Head of Growth), Aperture is a team of experts assembled from the best companies such as Bumble, DICE, Busuu, Luno, Bauer Media to bring in-house knowledge to your team and help you find your focus.

Snapshot by Aperture

Snapshot is our newsletter. Once a fortnight, we'll tell you stories like how we reduced a Meta CPA by 94%, produced UGC with 92% thumbstop rates, and experimented our way to a 59% increase in MRR.

Come on then — take a look behind the scenes. You're invited.

‍

‍

‍

✍️ By Léa Samrani. Léa is a Product Growth Consultant at Aperture that specialises in subscription apps and product led growth. She has over a decade of experience growing top-grossing apps, such as Bumble, Badoo, Busuu and Uptime. Find her on LinkedIn here.

‍

‍