Publishing platform Substack is currently encouraging users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. Substack itself is available on a variety of platforms, including the web, but if you want to take advantage of the free subscription offer, you can only do so after downloading the mobile app to your device.
Free subscription offers are emailed to Substack users with a subject line like “It's $6” or “It's $7” (or whatever the cost of the free month is). However, if you click on the link and receive the gift from your desktop, you'll see a pop-up that says, “Receive this gift in the Substack app.” Users can do this by scanning a QR code or entering their email address to open the link sent from their phone's email app.
Feedback on this latest campaign has been mixed, with some users complaining that Substack doesn't need an app or that it should offer these free subscriptions to everyone. Others, including marketers, of course, are praising app-specific campaigns as a smart move.
Regardless of user sentiment, the move seems to be working so far. Downloads of the Substack app on iOS jumped from 7,752 installs per day worldwide on October 31st to 17,382 installs per day as of November 3rd, according to data from Appfigures. Last month, the app recorded between 6,600 and 8,900 downloads daily, but mostly hovered in the low 8,000 range. The app's ranking rose from No. 7 to No. 4 in the U.S. App Store's iOS News category. It's a notable move, considering it comes amid an election season when more consumers are downloading news apps in droves.
The company said the decision to target app installs came in the wake of new data showing the Substack mobile app has become the No. 1 source for all subscriptions on its platform. In other words, Substack's mobile users are more engaged and more likely to pay to follow their favorite publishers, the company explained in a recent blog post.
These metrics are somewhat surprising considering that many publishers choose Substack because of the recommendation engine's ability to drive subscriptions. Publishers on Substack can promote each other's newsletters to their respective audiences. This system has generated over 34 million subscriptions to date. Lenny Rachitsky, a top Substack publisher in the business category, even called recommendations “one of the most impactful growth features of all time.”
While recommendations continue to grow, mobile apps have now surpassed recommendations as the biggest source of subscriber and revenue growth, the company told TechCrunch, referencing a previous announcement. For example, last month, recommendations generated 2 million subscriptions across platforms, compared to 3 million subscriptions on mobile apps. Additionally, the company says that discoveries on the Substack app currently generate nearly as many subscriptions as all social media sources combined.
Additionally, mobile app users are not only more likely to subscribe than they were before installing the app, but they are also more likely to share, like, comment on, and “repost” (repost) a publisher's work. It is also more likely that you will.
While Substack says its app is still under intense development, these new discoveries have led the company to look for other ways to bring more people to its mobile app.