Special Edition: My MAU Picks

MAU Vegas: May 20-22

Jacob Rushfinn

Apr 16, 2025

Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋

I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.

Every week I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.

One of my favorite conferences of the year is MAU Vegas.

I was pretty excited when they reached out and asked if I wanted to be a media partner.

I don’t think of myself as a media member, but I guess that’s what I am now.

The agenda for MAU is now live! (go check out the full agenda here ➡️ )

I wanted to highlight some of the sessions I’m most excited about.

And of course, I’m focusing on the retention and monetization sessions.

I picked out 3 sessions for you:

Great lifecycle marketing takes a lot of work.

If you’re looking to understand what the future of your lifecycle marketing program could look like, go listen to Robert Vaternam, Senior CRM Manager at Freeletics.

Cutting-Edge Personalization: The Future of Lifecycle Marketing

I quickly chatted with Robert to better understand what he would cover during his session.

What should people expect to learn from your talk, Robert?

We’ll explore how mobile marketers can build self-optimizing lifecycle systems that adapt in real-time.
Traditional lifecycle marketing often forces users through rigid funnels that prioritize business goals over individual needs.
But what if your user journeys could optimize themselves—guiding each user through the exact experience they need, when they need it?

You’ll see firsthand why many current approaches fail to engage users effectively and how AI-supported, autonomous journeys can unlock untapped growth potential.

You’ll learn:

1️⃣ How Relationship Management and Lifecycle Communication have evolved for users—but not for marketers.
2️⃣ Why and how autonomous journeys are easier to understand, analyze, and optimize.
3️⃣ Where the biggest market opportunities lie—and how to seize them.
4️⃣ How to define user needs, pain points, and solutions through fully automated, continuously improving journeys.

If you’re ready to take lifecycle marketing beyond static campaigns and into the future of personalization, this session is for you!

You’ve sold me! I’ll be there.

What else should you plan to attend?

Vahe Baghdasaryan is an expert in all things mobile growth and monetization. Right now he is the CRM and App Growth Manager at Flo Health. He also does consulting, so has a wealth of experience across many apps.

Advanced Monetization Strategies

This session will share advanced monetization strategies that brands like Flo Health, Strava, Calm, and many others use to enhance their revenue.

Vahe will provide actionable insights and proven techniques from firsthand experience at Flo Health and other leading brands.

What will you learn?

1️⃣ Subscription Revenue Retention: Discover practical strategies and real-life case studies on improving subscription revenue retention.

2️⃣ Win-Back Strategies: Learn strategies for implementing win-back offers to boost revenue and make them a key part of the revenue strategy.

3️⃣ User Activation: Get actionable methods to improve user activation and successfully guide users from Freemium to Premium.

Vahe will dive deep into advanced monetization strategies. Leave with practical knowledge and a clear action plan to apply these proven methods at your own company.

Last, but not least:

Another session that caught my eye is a case study. I love hearing about real world examples of experiments that worked (and didn’t work).

Thomas Siegl is an expert in activation, monetization, and experimentation for subscription products. He has his own agency, Kasva, which focuses on this type of work.

Optimizing Onboarding and Monetization at LingQ

For this session, Thomas is presenting with Mark Kaufmann, CEO & Co-Founder at LingQ.

What are you excited about sharing, Thomas?

There’s a lot of theory out there about activation and monetization, but not enough concrete examples. That’s why I’m excited to team up with Mark (co-founder of LingQ) to share real-world lessons from experiments we’ve run on activation, monetization, and retention.

Our goal: to give everyone in the audience at least one “that’s interesting” moment they can take back to their team

Love it.

This case study discussion will take a deep look at dozens of experiments focused on improving onboarding, monetization, and overall growth of the LingQ language learning apps. In this session, we’ll share our learnings including:

How UX design and user psychology played a major role in improving a users' onboarding journey, and made a difference on how a user activated.
Why you shouldn’t shy away from testing your monetization model.
How growth is a function across acquisition, activation, monetization, and retention. Improving one of these levers often helps improve another one.

Two other honorable mentions on the acquisition front:

The first is from Anthony Scarpaci on how he worked with GOHUNT to:

Reducing acquisition costs (CAC)
Boosting conversion rates
Elevating lifetime value (LTV)

Anthony is the former VP of Growth at Acorns and now runs his own consulting and advising practice, Tunomatic. It’s sure to be a good session.

The second is from Félix Boudreau. He is the VP, Marketing & Growth at Pok Pok and is sharing How to 10X Your Creative Testing Without Losing Your Mind.

If you have young kids, you should 100% check out Pok Pok.

I still reference Felix’s presentation from last year on pros and cons of hard paywalls, so I’m sure this one will be great as well.