How subscription apps can decrease churn with Prediсtive AI tools

Monitoring and improving churn rates is especially important for subscription apps since your revenue directly depends on how many users re-subscribe and continue using your app. Simply put, the lower your churn rate, the more potential revenue you will get from subscriptions.

Predictive analytics is a strong instrument in monitoring, forecasting and preventing user churn. As if by magic, tools like AppMetrica’s Churn Predictions allow you to forecast which users have a high probability of quitting your app in the future so you could take timely action and retain them before it’s too late.

But first, before taking any action, you will need to segment users based on their churn probabilities. AppMetrica’s Churn Predictions feature forms a clear report, marking users with churn probabilities from 50% to 100% so you can prioritize your retention efforts.

How to segment users based on Churn probability in AppMetrica

1. Choose any report — for example, the Audience report.
2. Select «Segment by users + »
3. Choose the event tag «Event_CHURN...» and the churn probability you want to see
4. EVENT_CHURN_0.95_1.0 shows users with churn probability >95%
5. EVENT_CHURN_0.75_0.95 shows users with churn probability 75-95%
6. EVENT_CHURN_0.5_0.75 shows users with churn probability 50-75%
7. EVENT_CHURN_0_0.5 shows users with churn probability 0-50%

Retention strategies for subscription apps

A subscription-based monetization model implies an ad-less user experience, which means app owners need to focus on their app’s usability and user interactions. Your retention efforts will influence your subscription revenue: the more users you retain, the more subscriptions you’ll have on file.

To help you focus on your app’s growth instead of the nitty-gritty tech settings, you can use subscription management tools like Apphud. Apphud covers every aspect when it comes to in-app subscriptions from integration to analytics on iOS and Android. Moreover, Apphud integrates with popular mobile analytics platforms, including AppMetrica, so you can amplify your in-app subscription and user retention efforts.

When choosing which users you want to retain, consider which churn probability implies that the user can be retained at all. For instance, users with a 100% churn probability will quit your app sooner or later, so you can save your resources and focus on users who haven’t reached the point of no return yet.

Strategy #1: Re-engage inactive users with personalized push notifications

If you want to re-engage inactive users and prevent them from churning forever, the easiest step you can take is to send them a reminder via a push notification. In fact, you can study the users’ activity in the app, make educated guesses about their interests, and personalize the push notification text to the max.

To set up and send a push notification via AppMetrica:

1. Integrate AppMetrica’s SDK and Apphud into your app, if you haven’t done so yet.
2. Double check that you’ve integrated AppMetrica with Apphud for seamless in-app subscription data and subscriber info sharing.
3. Segment users with a high probability of churn via AppMetrica as described above.
4. Set up a Push campaign according to Step 6 in this guide.

And voilà, your push campaign for lowering churn is launched!

Strategy #2: Launch a retargeting campaign to promote re-subscriptions

Another approach for lowering churn rates is by actively promoting re-subscriptions via a retargeting campaign. Retargeted ads will work in a similar way as your usual UA campaigns for first-time leads, but instead target current app users with a high probability of churn. Simply put, these users will see ads inviting them to return to your app and/or re-subscribe.

It’s important to note that in order for a retargeting campaign to be most effective, the ad content must be personalized specifically for churning users. Consider their user journey and what might influence them to return to your app. Are they missing out on some fresh content? Will they get a discount on the next subscription period?

The retargeting campaign for churning users scenario will look like this:

1. Integrate AppMetrica and Apphud’s SDKs into your app.
2. Double check that you’ve connected AppMetrica with Apphud to seamlessly load detailed in-app subscription data from Apphud into AppMetrica.
3. Launch a retargeting campaign in your ad network/partner.
4. Segment users with a high probability of churn via AppMetrica based on this guide (Step 5).
5. Setup postbacks to optimize your retargeting campaigns to target users with a specific churn rate as described here.

As you take action to decrease your churn rate, your potential for revenue growth will grow, too. You can monitor revenue and in-app subscription data in AppMetrica and Apphud.

Now optimize your user acquisition with predictive analytics

With user churn taken care of, you can now focus on improving your user acquisition campaigns using your expansive subscription data and predictive analytics. Both AppMetrica and Apphud have LTV Predictions, but using them together as complementing solutions will be most effective.

LTV Predictions is an AI-based feature that evaluates each user within 24 hours of them joining the app and forms an LTV prediction for the next 28 days. Based on these forecasts, you can send postbacks into your ad network directly from AppMetrica and optimize campaigns for similar topLTV users, thus maximizing your best-performing channels from Day 1 of your campaign.

So, you can maximize your optimization efforts by combining expansive subscription data from Apphud with AppMetrica’s LTV Predictions in several steps:

1. Integrate AppMetrica’s SDK and Apphud into your app, if you haven’t done so yet.
2. Double check that you’ve connected AppMetrica with Apphud to seamlessly load detailed in-app subscription data from Apphud into AppMetrica.
3. Choose any report — for example, the Audience report.
4. Select «Segment by users + »
5. Choose the event tag «EVENT_LTV_...» and then include the LTV range:
6. EVENT_LTV_0_5 — top 5% of paying users
7. EVENT_LTV_0_20 — top 20% of paying users
8. EVENT_LTV_0_50 — top 50% of paying users
9. EVENT_LTV_50_100 — bottom 50% of paying users.
10. Select the date of the event: it corresponds to the date following the installation date.

From these reports, you can also determine the profit that each user cohort with a specific lifetime value brings to your app.

Then, you can optimize your ad campaigns to target similar users with high LTV scores by sending postback signals to your ad networks directly from AppMetrica.

If you use AppMetrica as your primary MMP, you can follow the postback setup instruments in this How-to-Guide.

To help you get the most out of your app, Apphud and AppMetrica have teamed up with a special offer. Fill out the form below to get a free trial of AppMetrica’s LTV and Churn Predictions (a pro-level feature), as well as 10% off Apphud for the first 3 payments of any paid subscription plan. 

After completing the form, feel free to sign up for Apphud, contact its support team with the promo code APPMETRICA and get your 10% discount for the next 3 payments.