Building a freemium product or service is only the first step . Once you’ve done the work to build and launch a freemium product, you will have to collect initial market reactions and see how the funnel behaves at each touch point. You will then have to decide whether to optimize the freemium experience, keep it the way it is currently or remove the funnel altogether. Each funnel has a set of metrics: Acquisition. Activation. Retention and engagement. Monetization. Expansion. There are many ways to improve each step so you must consciously reevaluate your strategy to avoid over-investing. There may be situations where unit economics are not yet working, but the increase in conversion required to break even is very small. You may learn that new users find it difficult to activate and move to a paid tier. Or you may find that your users are excited about the free tier and see no reason to upgrade. What to optimize? Enabling freemium, especially for established products, can bring organizational and operational challenges even if it adds value to the business. As described above, you need to analyze how your freemium funnel performs to understand where the biggest problems are. […]