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Subscription partners
Collaborating with other companies to expand Blinkist's reach to a wider audience.
Blinkist
web + app
B2B2C
growth
Where did this come from?
Blinkist had a fantastic opportunity to team up with other companies looking to include the Blinkist app in their offerings. This would allow the app to reach a broader audience as a bonus for a partner's subscription. The partner could be either a private business or a library.
The outcome
Via Library Ideas, millions of people with a library card are able to use Blinkist as a perk now. The latest addition is the National Library of Singapore. Now more and more Klarna Premium users join in as well. Blinkist earns a commission whenever a subscription partner user signs up.
How did we get there?
Problem/Opportunity
Blinkist's leadership team got in contact with 2 potential partners who wanted to integrate the Blinkist app into their offer catalogue, which would be a side revenue stream. Internally they looked for 2 people who could own this project. My colleague Carina Robinson (Fullstack Engineer) and me took over. The main question was how we could connect our signup process and database to the partners.
HOW MIGHT WE
enable distribution partners to sell Blinkist as part of their bundle or perk?
and how might we make this as pleasant as possible for potential users?
Metrics
This feature was launched recently, and we're focusing on the signup rate since Blinkist receives a commission for each user who subscribes through our partners. Right now, our signup rate stands at 61%.
Solution
When I first started the project, my colleague was still busy with another task. So, I teamed up with Langdock (Claude Sonnet) to establish the fundamentals for the partner subscription initiative. I discussed everything with the AI partner and asked how I could best assist my Engineering colleague when she was ready to join the project. I then created a Figjam file to serve as our foundation.
Talking the project through with Claude Sonnet: Outcome, overview and steps
This is the user flow I developed using Claude as a foundation for collaboration with the engineer. It allowed her to effectively discuss the technical infrastructure with another engineer who supported her.
I also added a 'Jobs to be done' overview to understand the user and their goals better.
Another screenshot from Figjam: User flow, tech considerations and system check + schema overview
Market research (as I own a Berlin library card, I was able to check all of their partners. With the help of a colleague I also had a look at some Canadian examples.)
I worked on visualizing the high-fidelity flow and finalized the UI, including all error messages and translations into German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Over the weeks, I assisted my engineering teammate with the implementation and managed communication with stakeholders.
Release
Library Ideas launched in the summer of 2025, with Klarna joining shortly after. It's great to see that signups for both services have picked up quickly, and we're currently looking at a signup rate of around 61%.
Iterations
Later on another challenging topic came up: Some customers wanted to hide specific categories inside the Blinkist app. How could this be done? The Blinkist Engineers are working on that right now.