News

Apple to Allow Developers to Offer Discounted App Subscriptions to Previous Subscribers

Apple has announced that it will soon allow developers to offer discounted subscriptions to win back previous subscribers to their iOS, tvOS, and macOS apps.

Apps with auto-renewable subscriptions will soon be able to provide a discounted price for a specific duration for existing or previously subscribed customers. You can use subscription offers to help win back subscribers who have canceled their subscriptions or promote an upgrade to another subscription at a special price. Customers can accept the offer even if they’ve already completed an introductory offer.

Similar to introductory offers for new subscribers, three categories of promos will be available to entice previous subscribers:

Free 
Customers access your subscription 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.

Developers will be allowed to offer up to 10 different promotions at once to test the waters. The offers ca also be presented to existing subscribers, allowing developers to also retain subscribers.

Developers will be able to identify subscribers who have turned off auto-renewal so they can quickly make a promotional offer to entice them to renew before their current subscription period ends.

The new feature will be available to developers in iOS 12.2, macOS Mojave 10.14.4, and tvOS 12.2 and later.

Once developers have created offers in App Store Connect, they can download the Xcode 10.2 beta and implement the new StoreKit APIs to allow these offers to be accepted by the customer. Then, they can test using the latest beta version of iOS 12.2, macOS 10.14.4, and tvOS 12.2. Sales and Trends reports for subscription offers will be available once this feature is publicly available.

More information is available on the Apple Developer website.

Chris Hauk

Chris is a Senior Editor at Mactrast. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America, and yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.