Substack is giving away free subscriptions to increase app installs.
Now this is an interesting growth hack.
Substack is incentivising users to install its mobile app by offering free subscriptions.
Users get emails with subject lines such as "Here's $7" (or however much the free month cosT).
If users click the link from a desktop, they're redirected to a pop-up which says: "Accept this gift in the Substack app".
It's working: Appfigures data shows that app downloads for the Substack app on iOS increased from 7,752 global daily installs on October 31 to 17,382 as of November 3.
This is a game changer imo
Every consumer app should have a free plan to encourage adoption and word of mouth marketing.
Great move by Substack! Incentivizing users with free subscriptions is a clever way to boost app installs and drive engagement.
What's 1 + 3 / 2?
What's the app for? I am kinda new here
It's just a newsletter as a service
They are probably desperate to differentiate themselves from Beehiiv.
I personally don't really like some of the marketing/sales techniques Substack is using lately. It feels like they are pivoting away from email newsletters into some kind of "Medium-like" content platform. This seems to be an example of what Corry Doctorow calls enshitification. Offer an awesome service and experience first and mess it up trying to monetize it.
I don't know their numbers, so it could be that they need to figure out new ways to make more money to survive.
Very interesting app
cool stat - would be interesting to look at the churn rate before and after