By Minal Bopaiah

When it comes to mobile app subscriptions, there are a lot of unknowns right now. How many people will actually buy a subscription within the app? What’s the best retention marketing for mobile? How much can you really charge?

Some of these questions are answered in our latest Members-Only Case Study on Astrology Zone, one of the highest grossing lifestyle apps on the iPhone, which recently introduced paid subscriptions.

But one of the most solid, indisputable marketing tactics we discovered after reviewing the app was its use of push notifications.

The app employs a freemium model, allowing free users to see a one or two sentence daily horoscope before being asked to subscribe to read the entire, 1,000-word forecast. That seems smart enough, but with most mobile app downloads becoming inactive after 30 to 90 days, it’s not enough to keep prospects engaged on a daily basis.

Therefore, Astrology Zone sends a push notification each morning at 7am EST that reminds free and paid users to check out the daily horoscope within the app:

This is brilliant, not only because it targets both free and paid subscribers, but because it helps with retention marketing (a serious problem in the Apple/iTunes environment).

We recommend any one looking to launch app subscriptions invest in push notifications as well. Just make them short and make sure they don’t go off in the middle of the night or inopportune times for engagement (rush hour, dinner, etc.).