Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
9 tactics from Stephen (Babbel)
Marketing an Award-Winning Language App Through Offline Channels
Watch the full episode“It's a little bit of a different audience than you might get on some of your traditional app-based marketing channels the audience tends to skew a little bit older they actually tend to be a little bit non-technical when you're talking linear TV radio and for us it worked really well these people are usually high income and they buy.”
TV and Radio Reach Older High-Income Buyers That App Channels Systematically Miss
The audience reachable on linear TV and radio is structurally different from Meta and TikTok: older, less technical, and with higher willingness to pay. For subscription apps that struggle to monetize under-30 users, offline channels provide direct access to the cohort that actually converts. Stephen notes this is why so many app companies ignore it — they're measuring the wrong audience problem.
“It's actually pretty surprising I think most people would view offline channels as the more expensive channels to go after and when you buy a certain way you can actually achieve cpms that are probably much much cheaper than Facebook for example.”
Broad National Radio Buys Can Deliver CPMs Cheaper Than Facebook
The assumption that offline advertising is inherently expensive collapses when you buy broad. Babbel buys radio nationally at scale rather than paying a premium for host-specific reads. The resulting CPMs undercut Facebook. The trade-off is targeting precision, but for apps with broad audiences, this is a worthwhile swap — and one most app marketers never investigate because they assume the price is prohibitive.
“We don't really view ourselves as just being an app so we don't behold ourselves to the traditional app marketing channels like our users are everywhere and so we feel like our marketing should be everywhere and I think we found pretty early on as we were experimenting with different marketing channels that we had struck a on some offline channels.”
Stop Thinking of Your Business as "Just an App" — That Mental Shift Unlocks Every Marketing Channel
Babbel's offline marketing success started with a reframe: they're a language learning service, not an app company. This seemingly small distinction changes everything. If your users are everywhere, your marketing should be everywhere — not constrained to channels that happen to have an 'install' button. Stephen's advice: most subscription companies are trying to serve their customers beyond a download anyway, so the metrics and channels should reflect that broader mission.
“Instead of just like dumping you into our product and letting you figure it out we try to discover as much as we possibly can up front and that's through a registration and sign up experience that asks you a bunch of questions by the time you get to the end of that experience you feel already compelled to buy you don't need to actually test the app on your own.”
Discovery-Stage Onboarding Converts Without a Free Trial — Ask First, Then They Want to Buy
Babbel runs a hard paywall with a discovery-first onboarding: a registration quiz that uncovers the user's goals, gaps, and motivations before they ever touch the product. By the end, users have been sold through the discovery process itself — they feel understood, not evaluated. Stephen argues that dropping someone into a suboptimal free product (the freemium experience) often fails to convert people who would have bought if sold properly from the start.
“I couldn't tell you what our daily active user number is or our monthly active user number because it's not what drives our growth model we are very focused on helping our users achieve their goal which is to learn a language and so at Babel we do have a proprietary metric that we optimize for it's called learner success.”
Optimize for Your Customer's Goal Metric, Not DAU/MAU — Babbel Uses "Learner Success"
Babbel deliberately doesn't track DAU or MAU — not because they can't, but because it's not the customer's goal. The customer's goal is to learn a language, so Babbel invented a 'learner success' metric that measures that directly. Stephen's principle: every app should define a metric aligned with what customers actually want to achieve. Optimizing for a metric that isn't in the customer's best interest puts the business on the wrong path, regardless of how large the numbers get.
“When you're paying for an app already that you're going to stick with it a little bit more because you're paying for it there is a little bit difference between a free app and a paid app we see that a little bit I think we definitely see like the people that are committing to our most premium subscription offerings like they're sticking around for a lot longer mostly because they there's money on the line.”
Money on the Line Drives Retention — Paying Customers Stick Longer Than Free Users
Babbel's hard paywall creates an unintentional retention advantage: customers who pay are financially committed to getting value. Premium-tier subscribers retain best — 'mostly because there's money on the line.' This is the freemium paradox in reverse: the activation friction of payment creates the behavioral commitment that free onboarding can never manufacture. Financial skin-in-the-game is itself a product retention mechanism.
“If someone sees a TV ad it's a 50/50 chance that they're going to visit you on your app or on the web we can't figure out how to change that it's hit or miss so yeah we've optimized both for the App Stores and the app experience as well for a web experience.”
TV Ads Drive 50/50 App vs. Web Visits — You Cannot Control It, So Optimize Both
Babbel's data shows that TV ad viewers split evenly between downloading the app and visiting the website — and there's no way to influence that split. Rather than fighting the behavior, Babbel built full funnels for both paths. The web path has a data advantage: no download barrier means earlier conversation and better attribution. Any app running offline ads needs both funnels operating at parity — ignoring web means throwing away half the traffic.
“For digital you're generally you know measuring an ad click and offline we're leveraging how did you hear responses it's just another data point that we get to better tell the story of what is happening and where everyone's coming from and some of those people are saying that they heard about us through TV or radio.”
"How Did You Hear?" Survey Data Fills the Attribution Gap for Offline Channels
Offline attribution can't rely on click data. Babbel's approach combines web analytics, MMP click data, incrementality tests, media mix modeling, spike attribution (measuring traffic lifts when TV spots air), and 'how did you hear' survey responses from all new users. No single signal is sufficient — the goal is triangulation, not precision. Stephen's framing: attribution was always messy; offline just makes you accept that reality earlier and build a multi-signal model sooner.
“Freemium is not the only option for an app and it really might not work for everyone you look at a few companies that have done it really well and you think that that applies for all apps and I really don't think it does.”
Freemium Is Not the Only Model — A Hard Paywall With Discovery Onboarding Can Outperform It
The subscription app default is freemium, but Babbel has run a hard paywall for years and grown successfully. The key insight: freemium drops users into a degraded product experience and hopes they self-discover value. Babbel's alternative is a pre-purchase discovery quiz that sells users before they ever touch the product. Stephen's test for freemium validity: are free users generating business value through ads, referrals, or network effects? If not, a hard paywall may convert better and attract higher-quality customers.