Publishing platform Substack is now encouraging users to install its mobile app by offering gift subscriptions. While Substack itself is available on all platforms, including the web, if you want to take advantage of the free subscription offer, you can only do so after downloading the mobile app on your device. Free subscription offers are sent to Substack users via email with a subject line like "It's $6" or "It's $7" (or the value of the free month). 

However, when they click the link to claim their gift from their desktop, they'll see a popup that says "Redeem this gift in the Substack app." Users can do this by scanning a QR code or entering their email address and opening the link sent from their phone's email app. Feedback on this latest campaign has been mixed, with some users complaining that Substack doesn’t need the app or that it should offer these free subscriptions to everyone. Others, including marketers, of course, have hailed the app-specific campaign as a smart effort. 

Regardless of how users feel, the decision appears to be working: Downloads of the Substack app on iOS have skyrocketed, from 7,752 daily installs worldwide as of October 31 to 17,382 as of November 3, according to Appfigures. Over the past month, the app has been downloaded between 6,600 and 8,900 times per day, but the app's ranking has dropped from seventh to fourth in the iOS news category in the U.S. App Store -- a notable move considering it comes in the middle of election season, when more consumers are downloading news apps in droves. 

The company said the decision to target app installs comes in the wake of new data showing that the Substack mobile app has become the number one source of all subscriptions on its platform. In other words, Substack's mobile users are more engaged and more willing to pay for subscriptions to their favorite publishers, the company explained in a recent blog post. 

These numbers are somewhat surprising, considering that many publishers choose Substack for its recommendation engine's ability to drive subscriptions: Publishers on Substack can promote each other's newsletters to their audiences, a system that has generated more than 34 million subscriptions to date. Lenny Rachitsky, lead publisher for the business category at Substack, even called recommendations "one of the most impactful growth features in history."

While recommendations continue to grow, the mobile app has now surpassed recommendations as the biggest driver of subscriber and revenue growth, the company told , citing an earlier announcement. For example, recommendations drove 2 million subscriptions on the platform last month, compared to 3 million on the mobile app. Additionally, the company noted that discoveries on the Substack app now generate nearly as many subscriptions as all social media sources combined.

Moreover, mobile app users are not only more likely to subscribe than before they installed the application, but they are also more likely to share, like, comment, and “recreate” (repost) a publisher’s work. Substack said the app is still under active development, but the new data has the company exploring other ways to bring more people to its mobile app.