To reveal some trends in User Acquisition for subscription apps we participated in the Growth Masterminds podcast from Singular.
In that podcast, we discussed the latest trends in subscription app user acquisition and how to maximize the ROI from your UA efforts. We also provided insights into what marketers should be doing to succeed in this area. The experts were examining the current landscape and sharing their advice on how to optimize your subscription app User Acquisition efforts in the coming year.
Podcast episode 'Subscription app User Acquisition' outline
1. User Acquisition campaigns optimization
A big challenge is optimizing your paid advertising campaigns the correct way. In Facebook and TikTok you can optimize for events or value-based optimization. It becomes an even bigger challenge if your mobile app has mixed in-app purchase offerings. You may have a paid subscription along with a free trial subscription on the same paywall. And you let your target audience choose between a paid subscription or a free trial. You may also have a non-consumable purchase, which is in most cases a single lifetime purchase. To deal with all three types of purchases in your UA strategy look at these optimization methods: optimization on the trial active event and optimization on the trial value.
2. ARPAS (Average Revenue Per Activated Subscriber) metrics
The ARPAS metric is useful for subscription apps with mixed in-app purchase types, as it allows for better bidding control. To calculate ARPAS, divide the total revenue generated by all activated subscribers by the number of activated subscribers.
ARPAS = sales or proceeds / (subscription started + non renewable purchase + trial started) users count
Let’s say you have an ad campaign with Purchase event optimization, you map both Free Trials and paid subscription events to this event. In this case, your CPA (Cost per Action) is a value that shows you how much a free trial or a paid subscription costs. So it’s a Cost per Activated Subscription.
In Apphud you can analyze ARPU, ARPPU, ARPAS for user cohorts to update the target metrics for the user acquisition channels and recalculate the unit economy by adjusting the CPA.
3. Apple Search Ads – advanced analysis using cohorts
Measuring Apple Search Ads campaigns in subscription-based is much easier than in other ad networks. Just because it works kind of outside of the ATT. You don’t have to wait 3 days to get the user’s purchase attributed to the right keyword. There is real-time attribution as it was in the old days.
In Apphud, we have 20+ charts with the full support of Apple Search Ads. It includes historical purchases, taxes, refunds, upgrades, etc. To find which product performs better we recommend using the Subscriber Retention and LTV Charts, segmented by ASA keyword or campaign. You can trust this data because we are focused on app revenue tracking accuracy among in-app subscriptions.
Watch the full episode on YouTube to learn more about how to improve your mobile app marketing and make data-driven decisions to acquire new users and improve conversion rates. Sign up for Apphud to implement all the mentioned tactics in your strategy.
