App Store introduces ‘Subscription Offer Codes.’ Why does it matter?
App Store introduced a powerful new tool for developers — Subscription Offer Codes. These codes could be distributed through various channels, including email, in order to acquire and reactivate users. This is a great opportunity for marketers to increase the number of subscribers (i.e. revenue) for their apps mainly through email marketing.
Over the past couple of years, the App Store has been ramping up its robust and flexible tools to equip developers with in-app subscription mechanisms. Developers now have more flexibility to offer more relevant and engaging offers for their apps.
Last night, I received an email from Apple, introducing Subscription Offer Codes.
At first, I didn’t see a big difference with an existing tool called “Promotional Offers” or “Introductory offers.” So I started digging deeper and discovered a whole world of new opportunities with which Apple has now equipped smart developers.
What are “Subscription Offer Codes” and how are they different from Introductory offers and Promotional offers?
Let’s take a look at the table Apple presents here
If you read this carefully, you can spot the largest difference of the first two Introductory Offers and Promotional Offers vs Offer Codes.
The Offer Codes could be used outside the app
This is the biggest and the most important difference from previous tools. In other words, you can create Offer Codes and distribute them through email marketing, social media, customer support, conferences and so on.
Offer Codes were created to focus on three main areas:
- Acquisition of new customers
- Reactivation of churned customers
- Upgrading and cross-selling
Acquisition of new customers
You now can send Offer Codes as links to all potential customers and offer them special conditions so they will thereby be more likely to subscribe. Apple offers flexible ways of giving these special deals in terms of price discounts, and flexible time periods of the offers.
We will be trying this out with our email marketing campaigns.
Reactivation of churned customers
Once a user has deleted the app, it’s almost impossible to get him/her back. Offer Codes could be sent via email or via retargeting in order to provide more incentives to customers to come back.
Upgrading and cross-selling
You can upgrade and cross-grade your existing customers to other tiers of your apps or service with favorable terms. And that could be done now not only inside the app but via other channels.
How does it work
All you have to do is simply generate those codes and send them out. Here’s a guide on how to create them https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/dev6a098e4b1
Please note that you can create up to 150,000 Offer Codes per app per quarter.
Once you have created these codes you can distribute them however you like (email, messengers, QR codes, etc). These codes are in the form of links that would allow people to download your app and instantly get an offer.
You can create Offer Codes for each subscription group and it only takes seconds.
Flexible payment options and trials
Apple offers three major ways on how we can use Subscription offers. They are self-explanatory and I’m curious to see how developers are using them. I will be making a separate blog post on the best ways to adopt optimal pricing and offers, based on context and customer intentions.
Free. A subscriber can access your subscription for free for a specific duration — for example, a one-month free offer for a subscription with a standard renewal price of $4.99 per month. Their subscription begins immediately, but they won’t be billed until the offer duration ends. This offer may be useful if you want to let users experience your subscription at no immediate cost to them.
Pay as you go. A subscriber pays a discounted price each billing period for a specific duration — for example, $1.99 per month for three months for a subscription with a standard renewal price of $9.99 per month. Once the duration is over, they’ll be billed at the standard renewal price. This option may be useful if you want to attract price-sensitive users with a recurring discount without having to offer that discount for the lifetime of the subscription.
Pay up front. A subscriber pays a one-time price for a specific duration — for example, $9.99 upfront for the first six months of a subscription with a standard renewal price of $39.99 per year. Once the duration is over, they’ll be billed at the standard renewal price. This offer may be useful if you want to offer an extended experience that gives users time to enjoy the subscription before the next renewal.
Practical implementation
I see this as an amazing tool to attract new users by providing them an easy way to get a special offer for your app.
This looks like a gift to Developers by Apple right before Black Friday. In the past, to run a Black Friday campaign, you (as a developer) had to spend a considerable amount of time creating a new subscription group, or an offer for your subscription, aligning the logic on where and how it should be shown to a user and implementing all that in the app through coding.
Now, you can create these Offer Codes and just send them out in an email. No app coding/ work is necessary.
I’m eager to see what developers will do with them. Some early thoughts on how to use these Offer Codes:
- Great for promo campaigns (Black Friday)
- Great to give away at conferences (hopefully the Vaccine will be working soon and we all can get back to normal life)
- Support cases — provide favorable or even free usage for one of your apps to your loyal users
- Cross-promotion — you can offer special conditions and cross-promote your apps
Since we are allowed only 150,000 codes per quarter, it’s not wise to send all of them away in an email campaign where you attach each code to a specific email (since you don’t know who will click on email and which email will remain unopened).
So the workaround I see is:
- Create an active database of these specific codes (links)
- Once someone clicks “get offer” in your email campaign, you will apply a specific Offer Code from the database provided that to the user
- This will help you give away codes only for the users who show interest
We will be testing things out and I plan to write a follow-up post on how it all went.
The real question would be the actual implementation and what offers would yield the best results, both for users and for the company.
What offer would you make?
- 3 months free, then the normal annual price
- 1 year free, then normal annual price
- 6 months with 50% off, then back to normal
- One year free, and then normal price
- Or any other combination
These are the questions we yet to discover and find out through vigorous research and testing.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and how these could be used.
