Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
10 tactics from Hannah Parvaz
App Optimization Through Experimentation — Hannah Parvaz, Aperture App
Watch the full episode“to optimize any campaign or any adset you need to get 50 conversions a week in your first seven days of launching so that's your first hurdle can I get my 50 conversions in a week firstly.”
Scale Paid UA in Funnel Stages — Installs First, Then Push Deeper as Volume Allows
Hannah's framework for scaling performance marketing: start by optimizing for app installs only. The algorithm needs 50 conversions in the first 7 days to learn. Once install volume is stable, duplicate the campaign and optimize for sign-up, then trial, then a custom engagement event. Jumping to deep-funnel optimization before hitting volume thresholds means paying for learning you cannot use.
“if we're testing a messaging test we will have the exact same design but with four different messages on there against a control which one of these messages will be our control once we then find out which message works best we'll take that one message and put it into four different concepts.”
Test Message First, Then Test Format — One Variable at a Time
Hannah runs creative tests in two phases: first, take one design and test four different messages against a control to find the winning message. Then take that winning message and test it across four completely different creative formats (UGC, iMessage mock, notes-style, etc.). This isolates variables and prevents conflating message performance with format performance — a common mistake that wastes budget and produces ambiguous results.
“at the moment with some of our companies we're seeing 60% visibility or so in Facebook in mattera versus what we see in our MMP so we actually look at that as our source of Truth are we seeing the results that we need to see in our MMP.”
Use Your MMP as the Source of Truth — Platform-Reported Numbers Can Be 60% of Reality
Meta may report only 60% of the conversions that your mobile measurement partner (Appsflyer, Adjust, Singular) actually records. Hannah's rule: never use platform-reported data as ground truth for scaling decisions. Use your MMP numbers to judge campaign success and to set scaling thresholds. The platforms have incentives to show favorable numbers; your MMP has no dog in that fight.
“when you're running on Android at the moment there aren't these kind of rules... you don't have to get this 120 plus installs per day so if you have a lower budget it can actually be good to test on a platform like that.”
Test on Android First When Budget Is Low — No 120-Installs-Per-Day Constraint
iOS requires 120+ installs per day per campaign to generate reliable SKAdNetwork postbacks for post-install event optimization. Android has no equivalent constraint — just 50 conversions a week for Meta, or 10 per day for Google. For early-stage apps or those with limited budgets, starting creative and messaging tests on Android is a legitimate shortcut that preserves iOS budget for scaling once winners are found.
“we knew that someone had to listen to six stories to become hard activated what we did then was we gave everybody 10 free stories to make sure that they would get to that point so you don't just give six just in case some people might be a bit more or less because six is the average and the average is never the truth.”
Find Your Hard-Activation Threshold — Then Give Users 10 Free When the Number Is 6
Hannah identifies a 'hard activation' number — the minimum core actions that embed a product in a user's life. For a content app it was six listens; for others it might be three workouts or four restaurant check-ins. Once found, give users slightly more than the threshold for free (she gave 10 when the threshold was 6) because the average is never the truth and you don't want people to fall one action short of retention.
“people who completed actually six stories who hadn't taken out a trial would then take out a trial and convert 2x better to paid from that trial than people who hadn't for example.”
Users Who Hit the Core-Action Threshold Before Trial Convert 2x Better to Paid
Users who reached the hard-activation threshold (six stories) before or without starting a trial converted to paid subscribers at twice the rate of those who hadn't. The implication: your onboarding should prioritize getting users to their aha moment before — or alongside — the trial prompt, not instead of it. The trial prompt can coexist; the core value experience is what makes it stick.
“weekly active subscribers because we have a Cadence in there that someone is coming and doing this event... Cadence action Revenue so weekly active or this could be listening or this could be reading.”
North Star Metric = Weekly Active Subscribers — Cadence + Action + Revenue in One Number
Hannah's preferred North Star for subscription apps combines three signals: a time cadence (weekly/monthly), a core product action (listening, reading, booking), and a revenue gate (subscriber). Pure revenue metrics hide churn. Pure engagement metrics ignore monetization. Weekly active subscribers surfaces both — and tells you whether your hard-activated users are staying active enough to renew.
“how much are you spending on meta how much you spending on Tik Tok Google add all of that together and then look at how many people have done these kind of actions overall so how many installs have you got overall from every channel including organic.”
Measure Blended Cost Per Trial — Total Spend Divided by Total Trials Across All Channels
Post-ATT, per-channel ROAS is noisy at best and misleading at worst. Hannah's practical replacement: sum all paid channel spend, divide by total trials from every source including organic, and track that blended cost-per-trial over time. This captures the halo effect of ads on organic installs and prevents you from wrongly cutting a channel because its platform-reported numbers look bad.
“from literally November 1st until literally November 30th the performance is just terrible... December 1st will always be a really good day for us.”
November Is Always Terrible for Digital Ad Performance — Shift Budget to Brand Awareness
Every year, e-commerce advertisers flood the auction from November 1st through November 30th, driving CPMs up and direct-response performance down for digital subscription apps. Hannah's playbook: don't fight it. Shift November budget toward cheap-CPM brand awareness boosts ($1-2 CPM vs. $7-12 for direct response), wait for December 1st when e-commerce budgets exhaust, and double down December 15th through January — what Meta calls Q5.
“the place that it had the least impact on anything including conversion to paying including hard activation rate was on first launch so as soon as someone opens the app for the first time putting it straight there and just having them press and moving on from there which was shocking.”
ATT Prompt on First Launch Had the Least Impact on Conversion — Earlier Than Expected
Conventional wisdom says delay the ATT permission prompt until after users experience value, to maximize opt-in rates. Hannah's testing showed the opposite: showing the ATT prompt on first launch had the least negative impact on conversion-to-paying and hard activation of all placements tested. Users aren't making value judgments at launch — they haven't formed any yet. The earlier position also avoids interrupting a moment that actually matters.