Second-chance paywall

Catch users on their second or third session with a limited-time discount before they uninstall — the mobile equivalent of cart abandonment.

Use this when first-session paywall conversion is your main funnel and dismissal is your biggest leak. Don't use this when your paywall is shown deep in the app and most users do not see one on session 1; the "second chance" framing does not apply.

Goal

A user sees your paywall on session 1, dismisses it, and leaves. The chance that they go open the iOS or Play settings, find your subscription, and sign up on their own is effectively zero. This recipe detects the returning free user on session 2 or 3 and shows a time-limited offer at app start — a 50%-off first month, or a one-time coupon. You are catching the user before uninstall and giving them a reason to reconsider.

Setup

In the dashboard

• Create a campaign second-chance-paywall.

• Trigger: session start.

• Conditions: subscription_status = "free" and session_count in [2, 3] and paywall_dismissed_count >= 1.

• Action: fire yourapp://paywall/second-chance — a dedicated screen with a countdown timer and the 50%-off product.

• Frequency: once per session, up to two total shows across sessions 2 and 3.

• After session 3, the user no longer matches. Do not keep hammering them — that is how you earn uninstalls.

In the app (engineering hand-off)

Note: session_count is not a built-in targeting attribute — the app must increment and set it as a custom property on each session start, e.g. amply.setCustomProperty("session_count", n).

• Track dismissals so the targeting condition works:

  amply.track("PaywallDismissed", properties: ["variant": "default"])
  amply.setCustomProperty(key: "paywall_dismissed_count", value: dismissedCount)

• Register yourapp://paywall/second-chance to the offer screen. The screen owns its countdown locally; the campaign only decides when to open it.

• Ensure the 50%-off SKU is approved and fetched on launch. A paywall with a broken price tag destroys trust immediately.

How it runs

1. Session 1: user opens the app, sees the default paywall, dismisses it. App fires PaywallDismissed and increments paywall_dismissed_count to 1.

2. User closes the app. Does not uninstall, yet.

3. Session 2, next day: app opens. Session starts. Conditions match — free, session 2, dismissed once. second-chance-paywall matches.

4. Amply fires yourapp://paywall/second-chance. The discounted offer appears before the home screen loads.

5. User either converts (app sets subscription_status = "pro", campaign stops matching) or dismisses again.

6. Session 3: last chance to match. After that, the campaign is silent. The user either returns organically, churns, or hits a different campaign later.

Metrics to watch

• Conversion on session 2 and session 3 compared to a hold-out group that only sees the default paywall.

• Uninstall rate in the 48 hours after session 2. A pushy second-chance paywall can accelerate the churn it is trying to prevent.

• Revenue per returning session versus the baseline.

• Downstream retention of second-chance converters at day 30 and 60. Discount-led subscribers usually retain worse; budget for it.

Related

• Paywall versioning — shipping and testing the second-chance screen itself

• Post-trial recovery — the trial-specific cousin of this recipe

• Feature-wall contextual paywall — a complementary pattern triggered on feature intent, not session count

• User attributes — modeling dismissal counts on the user

• Creating a campaign — building the session-count condition

• AI-assisted integration — describe this campaign in plain language and have your AI assistant build it