# Upgrade offer in-app instead of push or email: about 10x the revenue

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Retention (App)
- Elements: Discounts
- Date shared: 2023-07
- Test run by: [Lose It!](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/lose-it/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/50-million-users-5-key-strategies-lessons-from-lose-it/
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/lose-it-in-app-message-offers/

Lose 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.

## Result

**About 10x more money**

- 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.

## 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)

- 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.

## How to run this test

- 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
- Guardrail: Session length and retention of users who see the message
- Guardrail: Discount share of new subscriptions
- Guardrail: Opt-out or complaint rate
- 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.

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Credit: Lose It! ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/lose-it-in-app-message-offers/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.