✦ Field note
Introductory offers that train buyers to wait
Introductory prices are easy to love in week one of a launch. Apple will even show the first-week number in a way that makes the real month look like a footnote. The trouble arrives when the same introductory week is still attached to the product ID six months later, and again on the screen you show to people who already cancelled.
In one language app we read, the lapse paywall offered the trial a second time. The cohort that converted once and left was the cohort that converted twice and left. Marketing called it a win-back. The renewal table called it a class.
A cleaner split, when the catalogue allows it:
- First-time buyers may see the week.
- Lapsed buyers see the monthly price they already knew.
- Family SKUs do not inherit the individual intro by accident.
None of that requires a new ‘offer engine’. It requires product IDs that do not share promotional offers they should not share, and a paywall that can tell a first purchase from a return. If your paywall cannot tell, say so in the briefing request; the renewal briefing spends most of its pages on that distinction.