How Freeletics is rising above the crowded fitness app industry with Eleanor Hughes

8 October 2024

Tech Podcast

Jeff Grang

Co-founder & CEO @ Purchasely

Eleanor Hughes, the Marketing director of Freeletics, shares insights into the strategies, challenges, and successes behind the recent marketing campaigns at the fitness app company. Joined by Olivier Destrebecq and Jeff Grang, the conversation delves deep into the intricacies of modern marketing, the role of technology, and the secrets behind a successful campaign.

Key topics discussed

#Marketing KPIs: The campaign had specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), focusing on reach and targeting a younger audience. Channel-level KPIs were also used, with impressive results such as 2.6 billion impressions across all channels.

#In-app events: Utilization of in-app events for the App Store saw a significant impact on installs. It resulted in the most installs Freeletics ever had off the back of an in-app event, with the second biggest impressions ever after Black Friday.

#Product enhancements: Base streak and streak challenges emphasizing providing a clear, visual representation of the commitment proved effective in encouraging user engagement and interaction.

#Onboarding improvements: Different campaigns benefited from improvements in onboarding, which were the outcome of several A/B tests and refinements over the past six months.

#Super bundle and contingent pricing: Freeletics launched a super bundle in response to Apple's recent announcement allowing contingent pricing. The Super bundle includes five app subscriptions for one price, offering more customer value at no added cost.

Fun facts from the episode

Fun fact #1: Freeletics' marketing campaign reached and exceeded its KPIs, with zero complaints.
Fun fact #2: There are 97,000 fitness apps.
Fun fact #3: Ellie has been a user of the Freeletics app for almost 10 years, I was already a user before joining the company

More about Eleanor

Eleanor Hughes is a marketing expert with 13 years of experience, having worked for some of the world’s biggest brands, including Sony PlayStation, Getty Images, Rockstar Games, Intel, and frog. As the Marketing Director at Freeletics, Ellie is currently responsible for global consumer marketing, including communication, creative content, social media, B2B, and brand and product reputation across all consumer touchpoints, managing a team of 20 people.

Subscription League Ep. 31 - Eleanor Hughes (Freeletics)

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On marketing KPIs:

"We did, but again, they're not super, super trackable. Things like we wanted specific reach, we wanted to target a certain audience, like a little bit of a younger audience, for example. There's quantitative and qualitative KPIs."

On in-app events:

"We also used in-app events really nicely for the App Store, so we actually saw a really big impact in terms of installs. We do a lot of these, and it was the most installs we've ever had off the back of an in-app event."

On product enhancements:

"What we did introduce for the campaign was the Base streak, so that idea of tying really nicely into the commitment, into the consistency."

On onboarding improvements:

"We'd actually been running for a long time—we're talking like six months plus—we'd been running some A/B tests for lots of different aspects around the onboarding for web and app. It just so happened...we'd taken all of the positive learnings out of these many, many AB tests, and we'd put them all together into one final major A/B test."

On the super bundle and contingent pricing:

"We're testing one super bundle where you get five app subscriptions but for one price, which means you pay the regular training and nutrition price for Freeletics, and you get the two subscriptions to the two apps, but you also get these three external app subscriptions for free on top."

On A/B/C testing:

"It's good to see that we are really, truly invested in testing things properly. I mean, we A/B test things all the time, but we don't really A/B/C test things very often."