When three friends joined forces in 2017 with a mission of making the world’s best fitness classes accessible to everyone, it’s doubtful they could foresee the massive shift the fitness industry would experience in 2020. As the world shuttered physical gyms and boutique fitness studios, Fiit.tv was uniquely positioned to step in and fill the void for fitness enthusiasts and newbies alike. 

As a U.K.-based subscription fitness app, available in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, Fiit provides on-demand classes, group workouts and tailored training plans to support every stage of the fitness journey. 

While Fiit had seen healthy year-over-year (YoY) growth, nothing could have prepared them for the massive influx of new users trading in-person workouts for virtual, resulting in 300% YoY growth in 2020. 

To effectively capitalize on their expanded addressable market and deliver an experience that would retain those users for the long haul, the Fiit team began testing their cross-channel onboarding sequence to optimize for conversions and retention.

Getting Smarter About Onboarding

In early 2020, Fiit introduced a 14-day free trial for all new user sign-ups. The trial period provided a finite runway for Fiit to educate new users on the various features within the app, and prove enough value to encourage a conversion from free trial to paid subscription. 

Fiit’s existing onboarding sequence lacked clear objectives and left new users unclear on how to best get started. 

“Fiit is quite a complex business, and frankly we were giving too much information to our users upfront. We included information on how to take classes, how to get started in the app, and we also included upsell information on our wearable technology,” said Jimmy Davis, Head of Retention.  

With too much information and not enough clear direction, trial-to-paid conversion rates dropped to just over 56% from a previous average of 60%. Given their influx of new users, Fiit knew even incremental gains in conversion would have long-term implications for their business. 

But before they started testing their onboarding journey, the Fiit team did extensive research to identify trends in their customer base and clearly define the steps a user needed to take within the trial period to increase the likelihood of converting to a paid subscription. What they found were two actionable insights. 

First, users who complete a class within the first five days of the trial have a higher propensity to convert to a paid subscription. Second, Fiit was being introduced to a new type of customer they had previously struggled to capture. This new persona, “Alli,” saw fitness as part of their lifestyle, held memberships to boutique gyms, and had discretionary income to spend on fitness. 

Knowing the optimal timeframe to engage with new users, and having a better understanding of the personas they were seeking to engage with, gave Fiit the direction they needed to experiment with their onboarding journey.

Optimizing for Peak Performance

The Fiit team already knew that Iterable’s email and push notifications were the right channels to employ during onboarding, leaning on in-app messaging to engage with users once they are active in the app. Leveraging Iterable Experiments, Fiit tested both content and timing of touchpoints to determine what drove users to complete their first class within the first five days, and ultimately provide the highest trial-to-paid conversion performance. 

First, Fiit A/B tested sending new users a single, recommended class against encouraging them to join a more structured training program. They hypothesized that encouraging users to join a training program would result in lower engagement rates, but initial results actually indicated slightly higher engagement—63% activation within the first five days, compared to 60% activation from users who were sent a single-class recommendation. 

Second, Fiit tested increasing the number of touchpoints (both email and push) on the very first day a user joins. They were concerned that the number of communications might increase unsubscribes and churn, but by capitalizing on user intent, which is highest when a user first downloads the app, Fiit saw first-day activations jump from 58% to 70%. 

In addition to experimenting with content and timing, Fiit added a number of filters to the journey to identify key customer personas and ensure each user received the most relevant content. By checking the number of classes a user has completed, whether they’ve purchased a Fiit health monitor, what their referral source was, and more, Fiit personalized every step of the onboarding experience.

Building Strength for the Long Haul

Having the right tech stack in place enabled Fiit to optimize their new user onboarding experience and capitalize on an astounding year of growth. 

Prior to leveraging Iterable’s cross-channel Experiments and Studio to improve new user onboarding, Fiit’s overall trial-to-paid conversion rate hovered around 56%. After testing and optimization, trial-to-paid conversions increased to 65%.

As the Fiit team looks to the future, they’re focused on establishing their platform not as a replacement for in-person fitness, but a complement to it. 

“There’s an interactivity between physical spaces and community that will be critical for us to tap into in order to retain this wave of new users. Fiit really is a platform we see being used everywhere—whether you’re in a gym, at home or outdoors.”