Upgrade offer in-app instead of push or email: about 10x the revenue
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsLose It!, a calorie tracking app, showed the same upgrade offer as an in-app message instead of sending it by push or email, and made about 10 times more money from it.
Paul Apollo of Lose It! described the result on the Sub Club podcast, and it was published on the RevenueCat blog.
- Revenue from the offer: about 10 times higher when shown in-app, per the team.
- Cost: the team also found in-app messages cheaper to run than push or email.
- No exact revenue, sample size or conversion figures were shared.
The change
The same offer moves from push and email into an in-app message.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
An upgrade offer sent to users by push notification or email.
Variant
Exactly the same offer, shown as a message inside the app while the user is using it.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Users inside the app are already engaged, so they are in a better frame of mind to upgrade.
- Push and email have to win attention first, and many are never opened.
- Lose It! targeted offers at users likely to convert, so in-app placement reached them at the moment of use.
Caveats: The 10x figure is a loose podcast quote, with no sample size, duration or exact metric shared. Users who open the app are more engaged than email recipients, so part of the gap may reflect audience, not format.
Who ran it
Lose It! ran this test. Source: RevenueCat blog (Sub Club podcast write-up). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
How to run this test on your app
- Hypothesis
- If we show our upgrade offer as an in-app message instead of push or email, then more users will buy because they see it while engaged with the app.
- Primary metric
- Revenue per targeted user
- Guardrails
- Who should test it
- Apps with frequent sessions and a free user base to upsell, like trackers and habit apps. It helps less if most target users rarely open the app, where push or email is the only way to reach them.
Questions
Should upgrade offers go in-app or by push?
Lose It! made about 10 times more money with in-app messages for the same offer.
Push and email still matter for users who stop opening the app.
Who should see in-app offers?
Lose It! looked for signals that a user was likely to convert and focused on new and reactivated users, who made up a large share of bookings.
Is the format or the timing doing the work?
Likely both. In-app messages reach users while they are engaged, which is hard to separate from the format itself.