--- title: "Trial Conversion — Conversion Growth Tactic" description: "Targets conversion offers at engaged trialists instead of blanketing the whole trial pool—the engaged convert at 28 percent against nine percent for the unengaged." canonical: "https://churnkey.co/growth/library/trial-conversion" category: "growth" related: - /growth/library/index.html.md - /growth/library/methodology.html.md - /feature/adaptive-offers.html.md - /tools/growth-rate-calculator.html.md last_updated: "2026-06-09" --- # Trial Conversion Targets conversion offers at engaged trialists instead of blanketing the whole trial pool—the engaged convert at 28 percent against nine percent for the unengaged. - **Stage:** Conversion - **Evidence grade:** strong (large, consistent correlation) - **Evidence:** 28 percent conversion for engaged trialists against 9 percent for the unengaged - **Trigger type:** Threshold - **Channels:** in-app, email ## What is it? A trial pool is two populations wearing one label. Engaged trialists convert at 28 percent, unengaged trialists at nine percent. Most trial-conversion programs blanket both with the same end-of-trial discount, which means most of the budget lands on subscribers the offer was never going to move. This tactic reads trial engagement and concentrates the effort where it pays: a targeted offer, timed to the engaged trialist’s moment of highest intent, instead of a calendar email to the whole list. ## When it fires The tactic scores trial engagement throughout the trial window. When a trialist’s engagement marks them as high-intent, the offer appears in-app at a moment of natural use, with email as the fallback channel near trial end. The unengaged are not abandoned—they are spared the pitch. A subscriber who never engaged with the trial has a product problem, not a pricing problem, and a discount does not fix a product problem. The tactic routes its spend to the group where an offer changes the decision. ## What the evidence shows The 28 percent versus nine percent gap, measured across 383,000 trial subscriptions, is the targeting case in two numbers: engagement during the trial separates likely converters from unlikely ones at roughly three to one. The supporting finding is what does not matter: trial length. Across 24 million trials, conversion holds flat at 10 to 13 percent whether the trial runs three days or 30. The lever is not more calendar time. It is what the trialist does with the time, and who gets the offer. ## How it runs In production, the tactic scores every active trialist daily, flags the engaged, and resolves the offer (terms, timing, placement) per trialist. Acceptance converts the trial in the billing provider. Trial end without engagement exits the trialist quietly. Guardrails keep the offer disciplined: one offer per trial, no stacking with other promotions, and suppression when a trialist has already started the paid checkout on their own. A subscriber converting unprompted should never be interrupted with a discount they did not need. ## Run it with the Churnkey MCP This tactic runs via the Churnkey MCP. Connect it to your favorite AI agent and it reads your own usage and billing data, then recommends and runs the plays most likely to move your LTV — starting with whether this one fits. **Trigger:** An active trialist’s engagement score crosses the high-intent threshold during the trial window. **Surface:** In-app offer at a moment of natural product use, then one email with identical terms near trial end if the in-app offer is not seen. **Guardrails:** - Rate limit: at most one conversion offer per trial. Never re-offer after an explicit decline within the same trial. - Targeting: offers go to trialists above the engagement threshold. Unengaged trialists are excluded rather than discounted. - Collision avoidance: suppress when the trialist has started checkout on their own, and never stack the offer with another active promotion. - Offer integrity: terms are resolved per trialist within operator-set bounds. The default offer is the lightest one that converts, not the deepest discount available. **Evidence:** Engaged trialists convert at 28 percent against nine percent for the unengaged, measured across 383,000 trial subscriptions. Trial length is not the lever: across 24 million trials, conversion holds flat at 10 to 13 percent regardless of duration. A strong observed gap that justifies targeting, not a causal estimate of any single offer. **How to run it:** 1. Score trial engagement daily for every active trialist from product usage data: session frequency, feature usage, and depth. 2. Set the high-intent threshold from past trials: the engagement level at which conversion odds separate from the base rate. 3. When a trialist crosses the threshold, resolve the offer terms within operator-set bounds and render it in-app at the next moment of natural use. 4. If the in-app offer is not seen, send one email with the same terms near trial end, then stop. 5. On acceptance, convert the trial in the billing provider. On decline or trial expiry, exit without further offers. 6. Track offer conversion against the untargeted baseline, plus 90-day retention of converted trialists, and tune the threshold against those outcomes. Install the MCP server: ```bash npm install -g @churnkey/mcp ``` The full reference is in the [Churnkey MCP docs](https://docs.churnkey.co/data-integrations/mcp). ## Related - [Growth Tactics Library](/growth/library/index.html.md) — The full register of graded growth plays. - [How Tactics Are Graded](/growth/library/methodology.html.md) — The four-grade evidence ladder behind this grade. - [Adaptive Offers](/feature/adaptive-offers.html.md) — The Churnkey feature this tactic maps to in production. - [Growth rate calculator](/tools/growth-rate-calculator.html.md) — Related calculator.