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features

App retention: Staying sticky

Bob Lawson explains how digital fitness platforms and apps can maximise retention and prevent churn

Published in Fit Tech 2021 issue 1

We talk to a lot of mobile app creators in the fitness space. Some of the world’s largest and most successful fitness, health and wellness apps are on the Kumulos platform.

Our stats show that fitness apps have found it relatively easy to collect new users – in some cases downloads are up by more than 60 per cent year on year.

The biggest challenge facing mobile fitness tech is keeping users once things return to ‘normal’.

Just a 1 per cent reduction in churn can deliver a 10-17 per cent increase in profitability for the app, especially if this is among your high value, highly engaged app user cohort. So getting the retention strategy right is critical to success.

Here are our top five ways to drive up user retention in fitness and health apps.

1. Get a holistic view of app users
The most successful fitness app suppliers think of app user data as a three point triangle: user behaviour, user experience and user sentiment. Each is equally important and interlinked.

Most have decent sight over the basic user behaviour analytics – downloads, engagement, retention and the rest. The temptation, because it’s easy, is to focus on just this, missing the other two sides of the triangle. The challenge with this is that user behaviour is a rear-view mirror for your app. Often, what users do is the effect of what’s happened elsewhere.

If the app becomes unstable then many users will give up on it and leave. Understanding the user experience by tracking trends in app crashes and getting alerts when things run slow means you know when problems are brewing.

Most successful fitness apps build customer sentiment into their KPIs. Poor ratings or bad reviews in app stores can put off new users and new customer acquisition rates fall.

2. Predictive churn
Every app drops users. It’s a fact of life. To really improve user retention, you need to be working proactively and catch fitness app users before they even think of churning. World-leading fitness apps use automatic predictive messaging to contact users when a behaviour change could signal churn.

Studying user cadence is important. When user cadence changes, apps should trigger a series of situational messages to engage users and draw them back into the app. This has driven up user retention from between 15-23 per cent in 12 months.

3. Perfecting situational messaging
For some apps, users might be happy to get four or more messages a day. But from another app, just one message a week might annoy.

If the message is relevant to my here-and-now, and if it’s information I want, then I’m happy to get the message. If not, it’s just noise and may actually encourage me to uninstall the app.

Relevance is especially true for fitness apps – the content needs to support my goals (the reason I downloaded the app in the first place) for it to be valuable to me.

4. Content is king
Rich media content messages drive substantially better results. We see up to 43 per cent greater message interaction from rich media messages compared to text only. Fitness apps are perfect for highly visual, rich media messaging.

You might want to embed video to promote new content or to coach technique. Send out a series of messages on technique optimisation to maximise users’ results. This is good for your highly engaged “super-users” as well as capturing those at risk of churn.

5. Intelligent timing
Lastly, time of day matters. Not everyone exercises at the same time of day. So, don’t send messages at 8am if a user’s routine is to exercise weekday evenings, after work.

Apps that know my routine and send me encouraging prompts at the time of day that I am most receptive, will get my attention. We see interaction rates rise by more than 38 per cent when messages are intelligently delivered at the time of day that fits the individual’s exercise patterns.

Bringing it all together
So to sum up, big successful apps capture users’ attention with contextual and situational rich media messages that keep super-users engaged.

They know when users’ cadence has changed, spot the signals of churn early and re-engage users before they have even considered deleting their app. And lastly they understand what each individual user is trying to achieve, and they communicate with them in language that supports their goals.

Bob Lawson is founder of user engagement platform, Kumulos

Sign up here to get Fit Tech's weekly ezine and every issue of Fit Tech magazine free on digital.
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features

App retention: Staying sticky

Bob Lawson explains how digital fitness platforms and apps can maximise retention and prevent churn

Published in Fit Tech 2021 issue 1

We talk to a lot of mobile app creators in the fitness space. Some of the world’s largest and most successful fitness, health and wellness apps are on the Kumulos platform.

Our stats show that fitness apps have found it relatively easy to collect new users – in some cases downloads are up by more than 60 per cent year on year.

The biggest challenge facing mobile fitness tech is keeping users once things return to ‘normal’.

Just a 1 per cent reduction in churn can deliver a 10-17 per cent increase in profitability for the app, especially if this is among your high value, highly engaged app user cohort. So getting the retention strategy right is critical to success.

Here are our top five ways to drive up user retention in fitness and health apps.

1. Get a holistic view of app users
The most successful fitness app suppliers think of app user data as a three point triangle: user behaviour, user experience and user sentiment. Each is equally important and interlinked.

Most have decent sight over the basic user behaviour analytics – downloads, engagement, retention and the rest. The temptation, because it’s easy, is to focus on just this, missing the other two sides of the triangle. The challenge with this is that user behaviour is a rear-view mirror for your app. Often, what users do is the effect of what’s happened elsewhere.

If the app becomes unstable then many users will give up on it and leave. Understanding the user experience by tracking trends in app crashes and getting alerts when things run slow means you know when problems are brewing.

Most successful fitness apps build customer sentiment into their KPIs. Poor ratings or bad reviews in app stores can put off new users and new customer acquisition rates fall.

2. Predictive churn
Every app drops users. It’s a fact of life. To really improve user retention, you need to be working proactively and catch fitness app users before they even think of churning. World-leading fitness apps use automatic predictive messaging to contact users when a behaviour change could signal churn.

Studying user cadence is important. When user cadence changes, apps should trigger a series of situational messages to engage users and draw them back into the app. This has driven up user retention from between 15-23 per cent in 12 months.

3. Perfecting situational messaging
For some apps, users might be happy to get four or more messages a day. But from another app, just one message a week might annoy.

If the message is relevant to my here-and-now, and if it’s information I want, then I’m happy to get the message. If not, it’s just noise and may actually encourage me to uninstall the app.

Relevance is especially true for fitness apps – the content needs to support my goals (the reason I downloaded the app in the first place) for it to be valuable to me.

4. Content is king
Rich media content messages drive substantially better results. We see up to 43 per cent greater message interaction from rich media messages compared to text only. Fitness apps are perfect for highly visual, rich media messaging.

You might want to embed video to promote new content or to coach technique. Send out a series of messages on technique optimisation to maximise users’ results. This is good for your highly engaged “super-users” as well as capturing those at risk of churn.

5. Intelligent timing
Lastly, time of day matters. Not everyone exercises at the same time of day. So, don’t send messages at 8am if a user’s routine is to exercise weekday evenings, after work.

Apps that know my routine and send me encouraging prompts at the time of day that I am most receptive, will get my attention. We see interaction rates rise by more than 38 per cent when messages are intelligently delivered at the time of day that fits the individual’s exercise patterns.

Bringing it all together
So to sum up, big successful apps capture users’ attention with contextual and situational rich media messages that keep super-users engaged.

They know when users’ cadence has changed, spot the signals of churn early and re-engage users before they have even considered deleting their app. And lastly they understand what each individual user is trying to achieve, and they communicate with them in language that supports their goals.

Bob Lawson is founder of user engagement platform, Kumulos

Sign up here to get Fit Tech's weekly ezine and every issue of Fit Tech magazine free on digital.
Gallery
More features
Editor's letter

Into the fitaverse

Fitness is already among the top three markets in the metaverse, with new technology and partnerships driving real growth and consumer engagement that looks likely to spill over into health clubs, gyms and studios
Fit Tech people

Ali Jawad

Paralympic powerlifter and founder, Accessercise
Users can easily identify which facilities in the UK are accessible to the disabled community
Fit Tech people

Hannes Sjöblad

MD, DSruptive
We want to give our users an implantable tool that allows them to collect their health data at any time and in any setting
Fit Tech people

Jamie Buck

Co-founder, Active in Time
We created a solution called AiT Voice, which turns digital data into a spoken audio timetable that connects to phone systems
Profile

Fahad Alhagbani: reinventing fitness

Alexa can help you book classes, check trainers’ bios and schedules, find out opening times, and a host of other information
Opinion

Building on the blockchain

For small sports teams looking to compete with giants, blockchain can be a secret weapon explains Lars Rensing, CEO of Protokol
Innovation

Bold move

Our results showed a greater than 60 per cent reduction in falls for individuals who actively participated in Bold’s programme
App analysis

Check your form

Sency’s motion analysis technology is allowing users to check their technique as they exercise. Co-founder and CEO Gal Rotman explains how
Profile

New reality

Sam Cole, CEO of FitXR, talks to Fit Tech about taking digital workouts to the next level, with an immersive, virtual reality fitness club
Profile

Sohail Rashid

My vision was to create a platform that could improve the sport for lifters at all levels and attract more people, similar to how Strava, Peloton and Zwift have in other sports
Ageing

Reverse Ageing

Many apps help people track their health, but Humanity founders Peter Ward and Michael Geer have put the focus on ageing, to help users to see the direct repercussions of their habits. They talk to Steph Eaves
App analysis

Going hybrid

Workout Anytime created its app in partnership with Virtuagym. Workout Anytime’s Greg Maurer and Virtuagym’s Hugo Braam explain the process behind its creation
Research

Physical activity monitors boost activity levels

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have conducted a meta analysis of all relevant research and found that the body of evidence shows an impact
Editor's letter

Two-way coaching

Content providers have been hugely active in the fit tech market since the start of the pandemic. We expect the industry to move on from delivering these services on a ‘broadcast-only’ basis as two-way coaching becomes the new USP
Fit Tech People

Laurent Petit

Co-founder, Active Giving
The future of sports and fitness are dependent on the climate. Our goal is to positively influence the future of our planet by instilling a global vision of wellbeing and a sense of collective action
Fit Tech People

Adam Zeitsiff

CEO, Intelivideo
We don’t just create the technology and bail – we support our clients’ ongoing hybridisation efforts
Fit Tech People

Anantharaman Pattabiraman

CEO and co-founder, Auro
When you’re undertaking fitness activities, unless you’re on a stationary bike, in most cases it’s not safe or necessary to be tied to a screen, especially a small screen
Fit Tech People

Mike Hansen

Managing partner, Endorphinz
We noticed a big gap in the market – customers needed better insights but also recommendations on what to do, whether that be customer acquisition, content creation, marketing and more
More features