Growth & Revenue
·
9 min read
4 min read

Boosting Tinder's Revenue with Spotify Premium Subscriptions

Overview

Tinder sought to increase premium subscriptions and user retention. By partnering with Spotify, we offered select Tinder subscribers a 3-4 month Spotify Premium trial, driving engagement and revenue growth.

Impact

 *Exact numbers ommited per NDA

· Increased Tinder Gold subscriptions by driving Spotify Premium trial conversions, boosting recurring revenue
· Campaign reached non-subscriber impressions
· 'Unique Code Distribution' capability would unlock future partnership opportunities that resonate with Gen Z

Role

Product Design Intern

Client

Tinder + Spotify

Team

Peter Cowen (Senior Product Designer)

Timeline

2 week sprint

Tools & Skills

  • Tools: Wireframing and visual design in Figma. Motion Design in After Effects
  • Design: Created wireframes and motion design assets to promote the Spotify Premium offer across Tinder’s core experience.
  • Stakeholder management: Design presentations, Strategic framing

Project Overview

Context
Spotify and Tinder - A Match Made in Heaven
During my Product Design Internship at Tinder, a business development opportunity between Tinder and Spotify began. As part of Spotify's partnership program, they provided Tinder with promo codes that we can give Tinder users free of charge.

The promo code is for 3-4 months (depending on the country) of free Spotify Premium and is applicable only for users who haven't previously been Spotify paid subscribers. It's interesting to note that Spotify has never partnered with a dating app before!
Goal
Determine optimal user flows and entry points for Spotify collaboration
We needed to figure out how might we present this promo code to the user where it can positively benefit Tinder’s brand perception and the user?

Through this partnership, we hoped to improve Tinder's brand perception amongst female users (primarily since women comprise 56% of Spotify's user base).
Success Metrics
1
Raise revenue metrics
monitor metrics to see whether some channels work better than others
2
Increase subscriptions sold
measuring Tinder Gold and Platinum subscriptions
3
Boost Brand Perception
measuring qualitative sentiment of Gen Z users
Challenges
Quick timeline means no time for user testing
Our team aimed to ship this collaboration as quickly as possible. Therefore, leveraging existing user behavior data and rapidly iterating based on stakeholder feedback would allow us to ship quickly.

We instead decided to monitor metrics with the help of our Data Analytics team to see if there’s an uplift and whether some channels work better than others.

Solutions

Solution
Tinder Gold X Spotify
After testing various potential entry points and flows in the app for the partnership, we decided to have the offer appear between profile cards while the user is swiping on profiles. This entry point allows for high visibility to Tinder users' primary action, which is swiping on user profiles.

Design Process

Discovery
"How about giving 3 months of free Spotify to Tinder users who selfie-verify?"
While ideating with our PM, we wanted to explore what this offer might look like during our selfie-verification process. Our hypothesis was that if we rewarded our users for verifying their identity with our selfie verification feature, we would improve the safety of our user ecosystem. However, this idea had various downsides...

Exploration of (super-long) selfie verification flows

Learnings
Selfie verification flow is too long and take the user out of their current experience
We explored a few entry points for selfie verification, including editing your profile during onboarding and messaging someone who has selected "only message with selfie-verified profiles" for the partnership.

When presenting these flows to our stakeholders, we all felt the user flows were way too long, distracting the user from their intended goals.
Turning Point
Going back to basics
I realized that it was time to go back to the previous sketches that I created at the start of the project to identify which entrypoint / user flows would have highly visibility while also creating a positive business impact for Tinder.
Testing Ideas
Settings page is too isolated
I decided to revist some early sketches of possible entry points. The first option being a link block in the setting page where other premium subscriptions lived.

The second option was to show the offer when the user clicks on to hear a potential match's Spotify Anthem.
✅
Settings Page - Pros

  1. User can revist settings page to claim offer

  2. Location aligns with other premium features

🚫
Settings Page - Cons

  1. Unexpected location would result in low visibility

Testing Ideas
We found our entry points!
The final decisions for the entrypoints would be to show them in two locations. First as an inbox message from the "Tinder Team".

The second option would be to show the offer while the user if swipping on profiles.
✅
Entry Point - Pros

  1. Inbox -  allows the user to come back to the claim the offer at anytime while using the app.

  2. Profile card - Highly visible and is intuitive to the main swiping experience on Tinder.

🚫
Entry Point - Cons

  1. Inbox - Users might ignore it to talk with matches.

  2. Profile card - Fast swipper could miss it

Final Designs

Turning Point
How might we increase our revenue metrics?
The team was brainstorming on how to monitize this partnership. Our referral program was an option, but having to wait for your friend to sign up to Tinder created too much friction to claim the offer.

I recommended that we offer the 3-month promo code to paying Tinder Gold subscribers. As Tinder Gold generates a large amount of revenue, we decided that we could increase our revenue metrics by offering the free Spotify Promo-Code to new and existing Tinder Gold subscribers.
Impact
Project Successes
📈
Increase
in Tinder Gold subscriptions sold
💸
Growth
in revenue uplift
🙋‍♀️
Improved
brand perception amongst female users

Key Learnings

📊

Be Resourceful With Existing Data

With our tight timeline for building designs and ample documented user insights, we could confidently base design decisions based on existing data and stakeholder feedback to create a project with a high revenue impact.

💍

Don't Get Married To The First Idea!

The initial idea of implementing the promotion with our selfie verification safety feature was a good one, as it intended to create more verified profiles on our platform. However, it had the con of removing the user from their originally intended flow and increasing the number of screens required to complete the verification flow.

📧

Let's build something impactful together!

Email me at
Contents

Project Overview

Solutions

Process

Final Designs

Lessons Learned

Copyright © 2024 Michael Elizarraraz · All Rights Reserved.
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