Customer reviews in a free-to-paid upgrade email: about +1% lift
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding customer reviews to Dashlane's free-to-paid upgrade email lifted clickthrough and offer uptake by about 1%.
Dashlane ran the test itself, and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study.
The gain was small, but it came on an email that had already been optimized for months.
- Active users: clickthrough and offer uptake rose by about 1%.
- Inactive users: a small lift that the team described as essentially insignificant.
- Overall a modest win. The team valued it because it worked across user types on a very mature email.
The change
The variant adds customer reviews to the upgrade email.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Dashlane's long-standing upgrade email asked free users to move to the paid plan. The team had refined it over many versions, and it was hard to beat.
Variant
The same email with customer reviews added. Dashlane tested it first on inactive users, then on active users.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- The email had already been tuned for months, so there was little room left for any change to add much.
- The team first thought inactive users had stopped because of trust worries. The weak result there suggests trust was not the main reason they lapsed.
- Reviews still added a bit of reassurance at the moment of paying, which may explain the small gain among active users.
Caveats: The lift was about 1%, and the source does not say whether that is relative or in percentage points. No sample size or confidence level was shared, and the inactive-user result was not meaningful.
Who ran it
Dashlane ran this test and published the results (MarketingSherpa case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Dashlane →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we add customer reviews to our free-to-paid upgrade email, then more free users will upgrade because other users' praise reduces doubts about paying.
- Primary metric
- Upgrade rate from the email
- Guardrails
- Unsubscribe rate
- Email clickthrough rate
- Refund or cancellation rate on new paid plans
- Who should test it
- Freemium SaaS companies with a steady upgrade email and strong reviews. Expect small gains if the email is already well tuned, and don't count on reviews to win back lapsed users.
Questions
Do reviews help in upgrade emails?
They can add a small lift. Dashlane saw about 1% more clicks and upgrades among active users on an email that was already well optimized.
Will reviews re-engage inactive users?
Not in Dashlane's test. The lift among inactive users was close to nothing, which suggested trust was not why they stopped using the product.