In-app purchases, gamification rewards, live Q&A, and more
As we head into the final stretch of the year, it’s a good time to reflect on just how much we’ve accomplished together in the past few months.
From the launch of Circle 3.0 to the introduction of Marketing Hub and our Developer Platform, the last three months have been some of the most exciting in our history.
But here’s the best part: we’re not done yet. There are still more exciting releases in the pipeline as we wrap up the year, and October’s updates are just the beginning of the final stretch.
P.S. Here’s a photo of the team from our most recent offsite in Dublin 🇮🇪
Introducing in-app purchases for branded mobile apps
At Circle, we’re deeply committed to helping communities expand and diversify their revenue.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce in-app purchases for your branded mobile app with Circle Plus!
With in-app purchases, your members can now subscribe, make one-time purchases, or unlock access to premium areas right in your branded mobile app.
No forms to fill out, redirects, and extra steps. Just a one-tap, secure way for your members to pay for areas in your community, powered by native in-app purchases directly through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
You can offer in-app purchases in space lock screens, and very soon, in the mobile sign up experience for your community.
If you’re a Circle Plus customer, you can opt-in to in-app purchases by going to your paywalls dashboard and clicking the Get started button. You can also opt-in from Lock screen → Paywalls → Mobile app in the settings area of a space.
Examples
- Monthly membership access: A mental wellness community offers a recurring monthly subscription that provides members with exclusive access to weekly meditation sessions and a supportive mental health space. With one-tap sign-ups in a space lock screen, members can now join and access this content right away.
- Annual subscription for premium resources: A parenting network offers a yearly subscription to a library of age-specific guides and live Q&A sessions with experts, making it easy for parents to tap once to gain continuous, in-depth support throughout the year.
- One-time course purchase: A culinary community provides a specialized cooking course, like “Mastering French Pastries,” as one-time purchases. Members can instantly access these advanced courses with a single tap, expanding their skills without ever leaving the app.
Since in-app purchases are mobile native, your members use their device-linked payment methods to checkout with Apple Pay on iOS, or Google Pay on Android. Needless to say, conversions with in-app purchases have proven to be substantially higher than other forms of mobile checkout.
Boost in-app purchases with mobile push notifications
With Circle workflows, you can easily send mobile push notifications to promote in-app purchases.
To set this up, you can create an automated workflow with the Send push notification action after a member does something specific, or send them a one-time notification with a bulk action workflow.
Just link the notification to a space in your community, and members can jump right in to make a purchase from their mobile device.
Examples
- Push notifications for course upgrades: A professional development community sends targeted notifications to members who recently completed a free workshop, inviting them to upgrade to a paid certification course with one tap.
- Personalized content offers: A wellness community sends push notifications to members who have engaged with mental health content, guiding them to purchase an exclusive “Deep Dive into Mindfulness” series available only to premium subscribers.
- Upsell for exclusive plans: A fitness community sends targeted notifications to members who completed an introductory program, encouraging them to purchase a specialized “30-Day Strength Challenge” for advanced training.
Don’t have a branded mobile app yet?
Your world-class community deserves a premium member experience.
With Circle Plus, you can own and offer your own branded mobile app on iOS and Android to invest in your brand, drive engagement, and grow revenue.
Communities achieve meaningfully better results with Circle Plus, and typically see:
- 7x higher mobile adoption
- 3x the likelihood of achieving top decile engagement
- 1.5x membership growth within the first 8 months
- 6x more posts, 3x more comments
Chat with our team to see the engagement and revenue benefits of owning your own branded mobile app.
FAQ
For more information such as App Store fees, scroll to the bottom of this post to read the FAQ.
Gamification rewards with workflows
When we launched gamification back in July, we promised to keep improving the feature based on your feedback — and today, we’re excited to deliver one of the most requested updates: the ability to reward points using workflows!
With the new Reward points workflow action, you can automatically award points to your members when they complete a desired task, like posting, commenting, attending an event, or completing a course.
You’ll also be able to define the number of points and include a reason, so members clearly understand how their actions contributed to their points increase.
Members can track their points on the Rewards tab of their profile page. By default, the Rewards tab is visible to all members on their profile pages, but you can choose to hide it by navigating to Audience > Gamification in your settings.
Admins also have the ability to revoke points through the same tab, but points must be revoked in full—not partially. For example, if member A was awarded 20 points, you can only remove all 20, not 10.
Revoking points may cause a member to drop to a lower tier level, and to help you manage this, we’ve introduced the workflow triggers for Member leveled up and Member leveled down. When a member’s level changes, you can set up workflows to automatically adjust member access, send personalized DMs or emails, add or remove tags, and more.
Rollout begins today, and will be completed by the end of this week.
Learn more about gamification rewards →
Live Q&A
We’re excited to unveil a major improvement to live rooms and streams with Live Q&A!
If enabled in a live room or stream, participants can ask questions in one place, making it easier for hosts, moderators, and participants to see, review, and respond. It’s a simple way to make your live event more engaging while adding lightweight structure to your Q&A.
One of the best parts about Live Q&A is the Spotlight feature, which allows hosts to highlight selected questions on-screen so participants can follow along live as they’re being answered.
Once a question has been answered, hosts can click on the checkmark to mark it as answered, and Spotlight will jump to the next one automatically, making it a breeze to run the Q&A.
Hosts and moderators can also reply to questions via a text response, pin replies, and create a queue by spotlighting multiple questions.
To enable live Q&A, event hosts can click the Q&A icon next to the chat icon in the live stream or room settings bar. Once selected, a sidebar menu with more options to help tailor the feature to your event’s needs:
- Allow anonymous questions: Let participants can ask questions without displaying their names.
- Enable question moderation: Allow participants to flag questions for review by hosts and moderators.
- Participants toggles:
- Comment: Participants are able to add comments to questions.
- Upvote: Participants can upvote questions that they’d like answers to, helping prioritize the most popular or relevant ones.
- View all questions: Participants can see all questions asked during the event.
Automatic calendar updates
We’ve improved the event invitation and calendar app integration flow for RSVPs.
When you create a new event and add attendees, their RSVP status will now default to Invited instead of Going. Once the event is published, all Invited attendees will receive an email invitation. Clicking on the Accept Invite button in the email will direct attendees to the event details page in your community where they can RSVP.
Members who RSVP as Going will receive a confirmation email, which will automatically add the event to their Google Calendar (if using Gmail), or to other calendar/email apps if they accept the invite.
Members who RSVP as Going will also receive the confirmation email and have the event automatically added to their calendar.
And last but not the least: we’re happy to share that any changes to the event’s date, time or status — such as cancellations — will sync directly to the attendees’ calendar apps!
Moderation improvements
Moderating your community just got even easier. Admins and moderators can now review flagged content directly within their community’s feed, allowing for quick approvals or rejections without needing to navigate elsewhere.
Posts and comments flagged for review will feature a new banner at the top, indicating that the content has been reported and how many reports were received.
We’ve also revamped the Reports section in the moderation modal to provide more clarity into each report. You can now easily view all user reports, understand the reasons behind them, and see whether flagged content is currently visible to members or hidden pending approval.
And lastly: notifications about flagged content now take you straight to the reported post or comment—saving you time and effort.
We are continually working to make community moderation as effortless as possible. In the coming months, we’ll be releasing:
- Workflow bulk actions for moderation tasks
- The ability to add or remove admins from moderation emails
- A dedicated page where flagged members are listed with options to unflag them
Learn more about our latest moderation improvements →
Auto-apply coupons at checkout
Admins can now streamline the checkout process by enabling coupons to be automatically applied at checkout
To set this up for your community, simply toggle on Auto-apply coupon when editing a paywall and select the desired coupon to apply. The checkout URL will automatically update to include the selected coupon. When customers use the URL, the discount will be applied to their purchase.
For coupons that fully cover the cost of a subscription, customers can complete their checkout without needing to enter their payment details.
Other updates
Typing indicator in DMs, chat spaces, and live streams: When participants are typing in chats, DMs, or live events, [Name] is typing will display below the text box.
Manage member payment methods: Admins can now add or edit payment methods on behalf of their members.
Enable or disable Stripe Link payments: Admins can choose to enable or disabled Stripe Link payments under Paywalls > Settings.
New workflow entry rule events: You can now trigger workflows whenever a member passes or fails a quiz or when a quiz is submitted using the Quiz passed, Quiz failed, or Quiz submitted events.
Update to Marketing Hub content editor: To prevent loss of unsaved content in the email editor, we’ve added a new popup to warn users to save their content before navigating away
iOS improvements
We also shipped a few improvements to Circle’s iOS app:
- Support for Invited RSVP status
- Visual updates
- Member directory improvements
- Media playback improvements
- Performance, reliability, and UI/UX improvements
Android improvements
Plus, here are some improvements on Circle’s Android and Circle Plus branded apps:
- Support for draft messages
- Support for Invited RSVP status
- Support for multi-day events
- Topics on course directory
- Filters on member directory
- Performance, reliability, and UI/UX improvements
FAQ for in-app purchases
Who can use in-app purchases?
In-app purchases are available exclusively to Circle Plus customers through branded mobile apps. They’re entirely optional to set up.
What are Apple and Google’s App Store commissions?
In-app purchases are offered through Apple and Google’s App Store payments systems, and by-pass Stripe entirely.
Here’s a breakdown of their App Store commissions:
Are there additional fees from Circle?
Nope — no extra fees from Circle.
How do I monitor my in-app purchases?
You can see a history of your in-app purchases from the Subscriptions tab in Paywalls admin, or from the transaction areas in Google and Apple’s App Store dashboard.
Will in-app purchases connect to my Stripe account?
No. In-app purchases bypass Stripe, and are processed directly through Apple and Google’s App Store systems. Payouts are sent directly from them to the App Store account you have set up with each platform.
Can existing iOS or Android subscriptions be migrated to Circle’s branded mobile app?
Yes, with some constraints. Communities must replace their existing app with Circle’s branded app under the same developer account, and need access to specific identifiers (e.g., Apple “Receipt IDs” or Google “Purchase Tokens”). Reach out to Circle support for more information.