Fender was founded in 1946 by Leo Fender, a radio repairman whose experiments with Hawaiian lap steel guitars grew into the world’s leading guitar manufacturer. Over 70-plus years, Fender has produced some of the most iconic guitars and amps in the history of American music: Princeton Reverb® amplifiers, the Telecaster®, the Precision Bass® and, of course, the Stratocaster®. These instruments have been played by legends like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and can be found on every festival and rock or jazz club stage.

Fender has inspired millions of people to learn to play guitar. However, for most aspiring players, the initial burst of inspiration fades quickly – 90% of first-time players quit within six months. This retention problem led Fender to begin investing in digital properties four years ago. The company now has three different mobile apps – Fender Play™, Fender Tune™ and Fender Tone™ – as well as a direct-to-consumer business and e-commerce platform; however, the majority of its business is done with local musical instruments dealers around the world.

Fender Play is a digital learning subscription app that helps people pick up skills and start a lifelong relationship with guitar, bass or ukulele; Fender Tune is an intuitive digital guitar tuner with several added features for pros/advanced players; and Fender Tone works hand-in-hand with the brand’s Mustang GT digital modelling amps to help players explore guitar tones from their favourite artists and create their own.

Fender wanted to own its relationships with customers and evolve how it thought about LTV to encompass instrument sales, app subscriptions and engagement and in-app purchases. The marketing team set out to map the customer journey and identify opportunities for engagement and potential drop-off points. By working with Iterable, Fender was able to consolidate all customer information across all digital sources into one unified customer profile. If a customer is watching a video in Fender Play or buying something on Fender.com or connected to their digital amplifier, the company can use that data to deliver a more personalised experience. Collectively, all these data points provide insight into a customer’s offline behaviour with their guitar, such as how often they play, and make it actionable, creating a feedback loop.

Fender uses Iterable as a growth marketing platform for email and mobile messaging. This enables Fender to deliver cross-channel campaigns that drive offline behaviour with online engagement. Take onboarding, for example. Fender uses Iterable’s Workflow Studio to onboard new customers in Fender Play. A customer comes in – either from iOS, Android or the web – and chooses to start a free trial. Then Fender activates their messaging workflow. Based on what instrument they’re playing, what genre they’re playing, how much they’re playing and what platform they’re on, Fender’s marketers make decisions around the types of messages to send them.

Fender has seen improvements in retention of a month-to-month paying user because of engagement with videos. 89% of users watch a video on their first day. Through a personalised onboarding experience, Fender has seen an increase in engagement, encouraging people to watch more videos, learn more guitar and then stick around as a paying member.