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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

📓 SKAN 4.0 is not a clean reset of conversion schemas

🧸 What is “fine conversion value”

☎️ 2 additional postbacks that are triggered 7 and 35 days after install

📯 Set coarse conversion values to reflect plans on subscription apps

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Today I want to share how SKAN 4.0 is very favorable to subscription apps(certainly much more so than for other genres) – because this could just open up possibilities for subscription apps to track conversion from trial to first payment, and from first payment to renewals. And I’ll share how subscription apps can prepare for SKAN 4.0

Let’s get into what changes in SKAN 4.0 – and how this favors subscription apps.

The first thing to note is that SKAN 4.0 is not a clean reset of your conversion schemas. The conversion value postbacks you’ve had in SKAN 3.0 do not go away.

Yep, that convoluted system of timers and conversion values that took all of us a crazy amount of time to wrap our heads around? Yep, it’s still there. It’s not going anywhere.

The conversion value just changed its name to ‘fine conversion value’ – and this is the first of the 3 postbacks under SKAN 4.0(as compared to ‘coarse conversion value’ which IS new – and which I’ll talk about shortly).

In essence, your fine conversion values keep getting incremented as long as a resettable timer is running – BUT only for a 48 hour period after install(unlike before, when you could keep incrementing this theoretically for up to 63 days after install).

So: if you have a conversion schema set up and running already, you do NOT have to change that.

As you’re perhaps aware, subscription apps were greatly advantaged by SKAN conversion schemas because the vast majority of free trials happen within 24 hours of an install – and that does not change at all.

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Great – that is the first postback under SKAN 4.0 – what about the 2 additional postbacks in SKAN 4.0 that are triggered 7 and 35 days after install?

It’s important to note these are not cohorted – so you cannot stitch together a user journey based on how a user completes postback 1, 2 and 3 in sequence. 

Plus, these postbacks will be just coarse conversion values – so you can only pick from low, medium and high – and the random delay makes it very hard to isolate cohorted data.

So yes, you’d have to look at your campaign’s downstream performance with postbacks 2 and 3 with a delay of over a month for it to be really helpful.

That said, the way the coarse conversion values are architected very much favors subscription apps – because subscription apps have a finite number of plans – and each of the coarse conversion values(low, medium, high) could reflect one of these plans. 

How? 

For your first coarse conversion value, you could set coarse values as follows:

And if you have just 2 plans – perhaps you can categorize ‘low’ as registered or onboarded(but not started trial).

For your second conversion postback, because this postback is finalized 7 days after install, this lines up perfectly with a 7 day trial period – as this is exactly the window when users convert to paid.

You could set the schema as follows: 

Again, for your third conversion postback, the 35 day window after which the postback is finalized lines up nicely with a monthly renewal period of 30 days(especially since you can ‘lock’ your third postback after 30 days rather than wait for the 35 days mandated by the SKAN.

So you can use the third postback to reflect the value of a renewal – 

Again, these aren’t cohorted – and there is a randomized time window after these postbacks – but over a long enough period of time(say with monthly data), it can be very powerful to get data for conversion of free trials into payers – and of payers into renewers.

**

While at this point of time the exact configuration of MMPs and platforms is still to be seen, the fact that many aspects of SKAN 4.0 are very subscription app friendly is very exciting – and this is something that we’re very much looking forward to testing and seeing.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!