Hitting 200k€ ARR after 18 months - what we learned

Hi guys,
It's been a while since I did any update on IH!
We've been busy indeed and as you all probably know it, it's always a rollercoaster technically and emotionally!

What did we do during this last year:

we went back and forth with a free trial
we launched a Youtube channel
we launched in English starting with UK 2 months ago.
we started a team:
we hired a UX consultant to help us redesign our platform
we hired an agency to help us with our FB/Insta ads
we had a consultant work on our analytics
we hired a young freelance to help us with our content marketing who is now working half time for us, doing many things.
we hired a social media consultant for the UK to help us with the content.
and... we took a mentor...
So, yeah... it has been a year!

The main lessons we learned:
FREE TRIAL OR NOT:
We experimented everything. We started with a free trial for 7 days, that we extended a month later to 14 days. We really got the impression that people on free trial weren't doing any effort to really test the platform and were churning any way... It was really frustrating.
After 4 months, we decided to get rid off the free trial and make them subscribe immediately with a 30 day guarantee. As our pricing is quite low (19€/month), this really worked well for us and helped us increase dramatically our revenue. BUT... it also caused a lot of churn during the 1st month.
After 8 months, we went back to a 7-day free trial with credit card. And we do feel there is a nice balance in this option. People feel engaged (because of the credit card) and it feels fair to let people try and see the platform before making them pay.
We are sticking to this option right now. But my general advice would be: test and pick the option that feels right for your business at this moment. Becaucse things can changed and I'm quit sure we will test again other options in the future.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
It's still a thing. We started it in september and have now 2'500 subscribers. It took us a while before the algorithm started to push our videos. It is a real job. We produce almost one video a week and I took the Part-Time Youtuber Academy from Ali Abdaal to get the proper knowledge. It is an investment and although it doesn't convert a lot directly. I really do think it plays a role in a lot of conversions. It shows our expertise and help us gain trust and get discovered.

THE TEAM:
We are 2 co-founders and we were starting to feel drained by everything we had to do. Getting help from people helped us to keep going and to stay focus on the right objectives. We didn't hire per say, we went to freelancers. It is a bit more expensive but it allows us to stay very flexible. We will probably really hire 2 of them before the end of the year.

ACQUISITION:
Most of our customers come from Facebook/Insta ads, since the very beginning. But, all the other channels help with the conversion process:

Blog & SEO (9.5k visits a month)
newsletter (12k subs)
Youtube channel (2.5k subs)
Instagram Account (19k followers)
Influencer marketing
We are now starting a link building campaign to improve our organic reach.
We work regularly on our landing page to keep a good conversion rate on people starting the subscription process. We use Optimize to test variations on the page.

CHURN & RETENTION:
Retention is always a big battle. Since our pricing is low, we lose 15% of our customers every month.
We work constantly to make this number lower but it is still very difficult.
What we tested:

working on attracting the right customers: we optimized our signup process to keep people that won't stay from subscribing.
we added a live group demo once per week so people have a chance to see the platform before signing up.
We added a live group demo for users that don't understand how it works.
we have an onboarding email sequence for new users
we have a FB group where people can get help from the community
we do monthly challenge that help users to overcome their difficulties
we have paying coaching sessions that users can buy to get their strategy right and better use the platform.
we are constantly improving the UX.
But let's face it... some month we lose as much customers than we recruit new ones.... So it's still a work in progress and it's very frustrating.
All that being said, it has been a nice year, full of adventures.
Tell me if you want to know more on some actions we did.