Blinkist

Blinkist is a leading book-summarizing subscription service based in Berlin with 22 million subscribers, providing 15-minute explainers of the most memorable insights from non-fiction books and podcasts. The secret behind Blinkist's success is a growth strategy focused on transparency and continuous app optimization through A/B testing. Blinkist operates a freemium model with monthly and yearly plans, and the yearly plan offers a free 7-day trial.

Disaster-driven development

Blinkist's journey wasn't all plain sailing; there were times the Berlin startup came dangerously close to collapse and was unaccepted by its home market for years. The brand grew out of that phase with a "disaster-driven development" approach, making big bets and extensive A/B tests, focusing on the riskiest ideas first.

Examples of Blinkist's experiments: hard vs. soft paywall (landing on a soft paywall that lets users explore before starting a 7-day free trial, after first betting on a hard paywall requiring card details upfront); trial period (moving from 3 days of free access with no card info to a 7-day trial with obligatory signup for a yearly plan); betting on new content (launching the Shortcasts format based on faith in a new vision rather than A/B testing); and reshaping onboarding (after two years of experimentation, removing upfront signup so users could experience the app before seeing the subscription screen).

Coping with subscription anxiety

Users can easily sign up but also easily leave; countless apps see users canceling trials on the first day or minutes after subscribing, often due to fear of accidental charges. The proven way to cope with this subscription anxiety is transparency: being open about how much and when a user will be charged, when the trial ends, where they are in the journey, and what the subscription's benefits are. Blinkist's conversion and retention dramatically increased after implementing targeted, personalized, and transparent messaging.

The famous Blinkist paywalls

The beautifully designed, informative subscription paywalls empowered users with information, bringing a 23% increase in conversion to trial, a 4% increase in conversion to paid, an increase in push notification opt-in from 6% to 74%, and a 55% decrease in customer complaints. Blinkist's transparency approach also contributed to its reputation, with over 10,000 five-star reviews and recognition from organizations including the United Nations and Apple's Tim Cook.

Episode 5 sneak peek

• On A/B testing: "I just love A/B testing because it really helped us and enabled us to really crack basically the conversion problem for us. There are definitely limitations to A/B testing. What I always say is A/B testing is great for optimizing, but never for really big bets for big innovation."
• On onboarding: "We decided to remove our sign up step. Before, to enter the app, you really had to create an account. We removed that and suddenly onboarding worked, because we had this space to really convey our value propositions to the users before they even see the subscription screen."
• On subscription anxiety: "We saw the exact same behavior, users that do start the trial, cancel on the very first day, just a few minutes actually, after subscribing. But there's also a lot of users that never even start the trial, just because they have so much anxiety about being charged accidentally."
• On transparency: "What we always knew that we wanted to do is basically, be fair and be transparent. It's like one of our company values too. We're actually making more money because we are transparent with the users."

More about Eveline Moczko

Eveline Moczko is Head of Product Management at Blinkist, the leading destination for lifelong learners, and has been responsible for maximizing conversion and optimizing subscription funnels, playing a key role in growing the app's user base to 20 million. Prior to joining Blinkist, Eveline launched and managed products in the e-commerce and food delivery space.