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9 tactics from Mark Kennedy & Jeff Bailey
Building a Community that Demands an App — Mark Kennedy & Jeff Bailey
Watch the full episode“You built an email list, you built a community, you built demand for a product that didn't yet exist to the point where people were begging you to build an app. That's such a different mindset than a lot of developers who start with the app as the end all.”
Build the Community Before the App — Demand Pulls Better Than Acquisition Pushes
Mark Kennedy spent years building the None to Run blog, email list (20K subscribers), and Facebook group before a developer approached him to build an app. The result: 1,000 paying subscribers in the first month, an 89% trial conversion rate from that launch cohort, and steady organic growth ever since — with zero paid acquisition at launch. Community-first flips the unit economics of an app launch.
“There was one blog post I wrote that really struck a chord with people and it continues to do so — 'The Three Flaws in Couch to 5K.' Over time it just organically seemed to show up quite high when you search for couch to 5k.”
One Cornerstone Post Can Be a Whole Business — None to Run Was Built on a Single Article
Mark Kennedy's entire community was seeded by a single blog post critiquing Couch to 5K's ramp-up rate. It ranked for high-intent search queries, captured email subscribers via a free PDF offer, and to this day drives most None to Run discovery. The lesson: one deeply resonant piece of content targeting a specific frustration can outperform years of broad content publishing.
“We're driving traffic to that one article because it would have a higher impact. They'll read this article and it's either going to highly resonate with them or not — and if it does they're going to dig deeper and check out the community and then go to the app with super high intent.”
Send Paid Traffic to the Blog Post, Not the App Store — High-Intent Converts Better
None to Run's paid Google spend goes to the cornerstone blog post, not directly to the App Store listing. The logic: a reader who finishes the article and then downloads the app is pre-sold. That intent difference is why they have a 20% trial start rate and 80% trial conversion — funnel quality at the top creates outsized results all the way down.
“The number one fear blinkist would get was that they were afraid they were going to forget to cancel their free trial. So they redesigned their paywall around the free trial itself — the timeline, and notifying the user two days before it ends. We got about a 23–25 percent increase in starts and it really did not seem to have a significant impact on conversion.”
Transparency Paywall Lifted Trial Starts 25% With No Drop in Conversion Rate
Blinkist redesigned its paywall to lead with how the free trial works — not the product features — and added a reminder two days before charge. None to Run copied the pattern and saw a 23–25% lift in trial starts with no meaningful drop in conversion rate. The lesson: users who fear being accidentally charged either skip the trial or cancel on day one; removing that fear increases both top-of-funnel and long-term LTV.
“Instead of 'start your free trial' it's 'redeem your free week.' For an app that delivers value you really are giving them value — it costs us every time somebody opens the app. It's not just a free trial, it really is a value exchange.”
"Redeem Your Free Week" Out-Performs "Start Free Trial" — Framing Matters
Curtis Herbert (Slopes) introduced the 'redeem your free week' reframe, and None to Run adopted it. Combined with a quick-subscribe button that bypasses the full paywall screen and directly triggers the Apple IAP flow, the framing change drove nearly 100 new subscriptions in two weeks. The shift from 'start a trial' to 'redeem value' changes the psychological transaction from risky commitment to deserved reward.
“Before our mix of yearly and monthly subscriptions was 56 yearly and after changing that blinkist style paywall to show the yearly by default and adding the quick subscribe our yearly subscriptions are now 76 versus 56 — and we have better long-term value for yearly subscriptions.”
Default-Annual Paywall Moved Annual Mix From 56% to 76% in Weeks
Two simultaneous changes — defaulting the paywall to the annual plan with a 'see all plans' link, plus a quick-subscribe card in main tabs — shifted None to Run's subscription mix from 56% annual to 76% annual within weeks. Yearly subscribers have better LTV than monthly despite half the per-cycle price, because retention is higher. Guiding users toward annual is both better for the business and better for the user.
“We got a 10 percent lift from the new screenshots. You put the old screenshots to 50, the new screenshots to 50, it runs until it gives you a high confidence rate and it tells you what percent better the new screenshots are as far as impressions to app downloads.”
App Store Screenshot A/B Test Delivered 10% Lift With Apple's Built-In Tool
None to Run used Apple's native A/B testing in App Store Connect to compare old developer-designed screenshots against a professionally redesigned set. The test ran until statistical confidence was reached and showed a clean 10% lift in impression-to-download rate. It's a reminder that App Store creative is a lever most indie developers leave untouched — and the test infrastructure to measure it is now free and built in.
“A lot of that material is inside the app so I think where people go into the community more and more and some of them just eventually get sick and tired of seeing the share cards and not being involved in the app — they're like I might as well use the app because I'm not in the cool club.”
Give Away Value Outside the App — Community FOMO Converts Non-Subscribers Passively
None to Run makes most of its content freely available outside the app (PDFs, audio files, blog posts), while locking only the structured in-app workout experience. Community members who see subscribers sharing run stats and progress cards in the group naturally develop FOMO and convert — without any explicit sales pitch. Giving away the 'what' and selling access to the 'how' is a freemium model that doesn't require touching the app's onboarding.
“You don't need thousands or tens of thousands of downloads a day to build a real business. If you are hitting the right audience with the right intent and have the rest of the funnel really dialed in — that's where you end up with a 20 percent trial start rate and 80 percent trial conversion.”
Hundreds of High-Intent Downloads Beat Thousands of Low-Intent Ones
None to Run generates only hundreds of downloads per day — a number many developers would dismiss as insufficient — yet has built a growing 9,000-subscriber business. The insight: trial start rate and trial conversion rate matter more than raw download volume. Community-primed users who already trust the brand arrive with intent that no paid acquisition campaign can replicate at scale, making funnel efficiency a strategic substitute for volume.