Substack gives Free Subscription for Mobile App Users

Substack is doing something different in promoting a free subscription for its app download. While the platform has always been available from the web, free subscription is only offered to a user who downloads the app.

This is sent to existing users through email and usually carries subject lines such as “Here’s $6” or “Here’s $7,” which shows the value of a free month of content. Users who try to take advantage of the offer from their desktop are instead asked to download the Substack app. When a user visits the intended application, they are prompted to scan a QR code or enter an email address that will be sent the link to complete the process.

While this created much buzz, reception towards the campaign has not all been encouraging. Some users maintain that Substack does not really need a dedicated application; the free subscription to a newsletter should be availed to all, independent of the platform. While a few marketers have given high praise for the new initiative as a clever means to ensure mobile app installations-the best shot at increasing engagements sometime in the future-all did not seem to be as unfazed by the strategy. Downloads of Substack’s mobile app on iOS have skyrocketed. On October 31, the app was seeing just 7,752 daily installs, but by November 3, that number had shot up to 17,382, according to Appfigures. In the two weeks leading up to the promotion, the daily downloads ranged from 6,600 to 8,900, with the app’s ranking shooting up from 7th to 4th in the U.S. News category on the App Store. This is at a time when lots of consumers are looking for news apps, driven more than ever by the elections.

Substack has been transparent about the reasons for its decision to focus on this push of mobile app installs. The company recently reported that data reflects that users of mobile apps were more engaged than those visiting its website, more likely to subscribe to paid newsletters. The mobile app now becomes the top channel by which people are subscribed on the platform, surpassing a widely successful recommendation engine that is what Substack is known for.

While recommendations are still the largest growth driver for Substack—helping publishers promote each other’s newsletters and generate millions of subscriptions—the mobile app now drives more subscribers and revenue than recommendations do. For example, last month, recommendations led to about 2 million subscriptions, but mobile app usage drove 3 million subscriptions. Discovery within the app also now generates roughly the same number of subscriptions as all social media platforms combined.

This has also educated Substack to a little. The firm has also discovered that people subscribing most to newsletters tend to do so via mobile applications but are more prone to activity with the content as well. Whether it’s a case of sharing, commenting, liking, or reposting (or “restacking”) articles, the tendency of users tends to demonstrate a much greater degree of engagement with the site among app users rather than with desktop users.

Using all this data, Substack is seeking to onboard more users through the mobile application. This could be a new product but still remains a developing application; hence such trends would further empower Substack to consider other approaches in reaching as many people as possible and thus getting more people onto the list of its growing publishers using the mobile platform. Substack believes to receive greater engagement and subsequently much more revenues from its numerous growing list of publishers by way of subscribers using the application.

Whereas to some, even till this time, the belief persists, that an application only in Substack should not see the light, things must be working accordingly, but if one considers his approach more seriously, as growth expansion now includes going mobile and growing first and then has been a real powerhouse into this goal achievement, perfecting the application should let more and more be driven about Substack up until they make it into the most extensive independent mobile publishing house.

source : Techcrunch