Apple Developers Will Soon Be Able to Offer Discounts to Their Existing and Lapsed Subscribers

Usually, when you sign up for a subscription service (which, we think, you rarely do), you aren’t that keen on paying that recurring cost, month after month. Right? Unless you have pals who believe in ‘sharing is caring,’ or get awesome discounts, you are most likely to cancel the subscription.  But that’s not what an Apple developer wants, obviously!

So how do they win you back? They would like to tempt the enticing lapsed subscribers with sweet discounts and cool freebies. And Apple is allowing precisely that.

In a ploy to keep subscribers paying for apps and lure former subscribers, Apple developers for iOS, macOS, and tvOS apps will offer discounted subscriptions to current and recent subscribers. Don’t believe it? See for yourself

According to the article published in Apple Store Connect, Apple will let developers choose from three categories of promotional offers to win back the lost subscribers. These are:

Free

Customers access subscriptions for free for a specific duration. For example, a 30-day trial for a subscription with a standard renewal price of $4.99 per month.

Pay As You Go

Customers pay a promotional price for each billing period for a selected duration. For example, $1.99 per month for three months for a subscription with a standard renewal price of $9.99 per month.

Pay Up Front

Customers pay a one-time promotional price for a specific duration — for example, $9.99 for the first six months of a subscription with a standard renewal price of $39.99 per year.”

According to the document, if a subscriber goes through the process of canceling their subscription (or turning off auto-renewal), the developer can offer these options to try and retain them.

Every Apple developer will get up to 10 different promotions at once to test things out. Unsurprisingly, once the promotional offer expires, the standard monthly subscription price will kick back in. Well, no good thing lasts forever!

This added feature will be available with the latest beta versions of iOS 12.2, macOS 10.14.4 and tvOS 12.2, using the StoreKit API. While it’s still in beta phase, it seems likely these changes will go live once these software updates are fully released.

Strategy-wise, it’s a step in the right direction because until now, developers could only offer freebies and introductory discounts to new users. And once those discounts got over, they had nothing to incentivize the lapsed subscribers to re-join their App Clan. But now, keeping subscribers hooked to apps will be easier for every Apple developer. And the best part is that this change will go over well with developers and users alike.