Apple is adding a retention facility to the App Store, meaning if a user cancels their subscription to an app, its developer can try to talk them out of leaving with an offer.
Apple has been changing the App Store to meet EU demands, and still some developers want a completely free ride. But there is now a retention feature that is so necessary that it's surprising it hasn't always been part of the App Store.
It's more necessary for developers than it is for users, though. Apple has always been good at making it easy to cancel a subscription to an app, and that has benefited users.
Now, however, once they start that process of cancelling, they may be taken through an extra step. As detailed in Apple's , if a developer chooses to, they can prompt a user in one of four ways:
- Text-based message
- Text-based message plus an image
- Switch-plan message, suggesting a different subscription tier
- Promotional offer message with discounted price
This is what already happens in just about any other online business. But Apple is taking the simplest, clearest approach by offering this Retention Messaging API, as by 9to5Mac.
The message, again only if the developer chooses to use it, appears when the user taps on a Cancel Subscription button.
They can then be offered one of these messages by the developer. However, they will still always also get buttons for Confirm Cancellation, or Don't Cancel, as they do now.
There is one further option that developers can benefit from and which might be helpful to users. While Apple says that the four different types of retention messages should be uploaded in advance, ready for cancellation, it does allow for variations on those messages.
Instead of having one previously prepared prompt and promotion for the user, developers can upload a series of them. Then when the user goes to cancel the subscription, the developer can have a message displayed that reflects the user's location.
So international apps could have a special offer in Sterling or Euros, while still showing US dollars for users in the States.
Apple's introduction of a retention feature comes after the FTC failed to get its "Click to Cancel" rule made into law. That rule was aimed at firms implementing vastly more complex systems than Apple, though, in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible to cancel.
