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Marketing Automation for the OctaZone Mobile Training App
OctaZone is a fitness training app featuring professional advice from European and world martial arts champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov
Business scale.
500,000 customers in the database
Goals
Increase the number of OctaZone customers with paid subscriptions
Solutions
Motivate customers to pay for subscriptions through mobile push notifications and emails
IT stack.
iOS and Android mobile apps, landing page on Tilda, marketing automation platform
Time to value.
9 months
April 7, 2022
The following case study is from Mindbox, the original brand behind Maestra’s technology
OctaZone approached Mindbox when they couldn’t find a suitable marketing automation service for mobile apps. The team faced a number of challenges at the beginning of their implementation — including long negotiations, “crutch” solutions for data transmission, and the search for a CRM agency that would help configure communications.
However, OctaZone has now launched 55 triggered and 7 bulk mobile push campaigns. These notifications help sell paid subscriptions, retain customers, and, most importantly, they provide revenue growth.
In this case study, we’ll tell you more about which OctaZone segment is the most difficult to identify and why we need to send push notifications at 15-minute intervals.
Overall, we are satisfied: we were able to establish communication with customers. We didn’t have regular communications via mobile push and email channels, and now, thanks to the platform, we do. We see that our messages motivate customers to pay for subscriptions and continue training. We also see an increase in revenue.
We are now starting to create dashboards that can demonstrate the efficiency of our campaigns. Even now, not long after we launched push notifications and emails, we are able to see from indirect indicators that our customers have started to train more. This shows that they are using our product and will continue to use it in the future.
OctaZone’s Mindbox implementation and how the platform was adapted for the mobile app
Sending different communications from a single window. We were looking for a platform that would allow us to send mobile push notifications and emails from a single window. Mindbox gives us this opportunity.
Focus on e-commerce. Initially, we were searching for automation software designed specifically for mobile apps — however, it turned out that all platforms are focused on e-commerce. Mindbox is also geared toward working with orders, products, and categories. In other words, these are areas that we don’t work with.
Due to this, we have to come up with “crutch” solutions. For example, we need to transmit information to the platform about how many times a client trained during the previous week. This kind of entity doesn’t exist in e-commerce, so we had to invent something.
Cost. When it came to other platforms for e-commerce, we chose Mindbox due to its affordability.
Integration is not self-service. Unlike in Mailchimp, you can’t just sign up, quickly integrate your product with a single developer, and get started.
We spent a lot of time negotiating with Mindbox before integration. First, we talked with the Mindbox sales department, and then with the managers. On top of this, we were given introductory master classes and virtual tours of the platform. Consequently, this delayed the launch. What’s more, in a startup environment, deadlines are especially important — we could die at any moment, and we have very little time.
The interface isn’t intuitive. We usually sort out work with any service inside the company, but in the case of the platform, we couldn’t set up communications ourselves and hired the EMAILMATRIX CRM Marketing Agency.
Visualization of communication sequences. It’s convenient to see what the mailing workflows look like on the platform and in which order push notifications and emails are sent.
Personalized communications that depend on the needs of the audience
OctaZone divides its customers into three segments according to their needs, depending on whether they want to:
- lose excess weight
- train actively
- keep in shape
There is also another group: those who use workouts as a means of meditation to reduce stress and relax. However, these customers have not yet been allocated to a separate segment, as they are more difficult to identify.
We have implemented the platform for two key tasks: customer acquisition and retention.
At the stage of customer acquisition, we separate our advertising content, providing each audience with their own message and offer. Then all customers “land” in a common funnel. In the future, we plan to bring each audience to a separate page in the App Store. This will allow us to personalize communication even at the acquisition stage.
Customer acquisition
1. Creative ad campaigns on Facebook and Apple Search Ads meet the needs of each segment:
Creative ad posts for different audience segments
2. Messages are sent to those who have downloaded the app but have not yet purchased a subscription.
These messages are sent in two languages. When downloading the app, the customer is automatically placed in their language segment on the platform, depending on their location. Customers from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan are sorted into the Russian-speaking market. The rest are sorted into the English-speaking segment. Here’s an example of what these messages look like:
A chain of three push notifications with a discount on the subscription to the app. Push notifications are sent every 15 minutes
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Click rate4.9%
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Click rate1.7%
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Click rate6.5%
We tested which interval works best for sending push notifications. There is no significant difference between a small interval of about 15 minutes and a large one (for example, a day). Nevertheless, we noticed that the more frequently we contact the customer, the more effective (albeit only slightly) the communication becomes.
OctaZone chose this strategy because they believe that customers have a high motivation to train and they do not perceive these messages as spam.
Customer retention
OctaZone sends mobile push notifications and emails to those who have already bought a subscription. Here are some examples:
- Workout reports help to maintain the customer’s interest, motivating them to continue practicing.
Monthly report for English-speaking customers
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Click rate24.6%
- Push notification reminders regarding training sessions sent one day before, and on the day of the workout session.
It’s not exactly an abandoned cart message, but it looks like it. The idea is to get in touch with the customer, so that in a month they’re able to see the results of their training and choose to renew their subscription.
According to the metrics we’re seeing, reminders have a very high open rate. People open push notifications, which helps them use the product and achieve their sports goals.
Workout Reminder
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Click rate31.4%
- Collecting feedback in mobile push notifications and emails helps to understand how to improve the app.
Right now, we’re only collecting feedback in mobile push notifications, but we’re not processing it as we’re waiting for enough data to accumulate. We plan to divide all feedback into blocks, which will let us see what customers leave feedback about, how often and what they complain about, in order to come up with solutions and improve our app.
In addition, we ask customers for feedback through a standard Apple pop-up. We show this after three workouts. This helps to quickly respond to any problems in the app. For example, we sometimes receive information that a function doesn’t work on a particular phone model, or we’re asked to implement a new feature. We send these reviews to the backlog and correct them, and then inform the customer about it.
Collecting feedback among customers via mobile push notifications and emails
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Click rate29.4%
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Open rate30.3%
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Click rate3%
Configuring campaigns on the platform is convenient thanks to communication workflows. They are more flexible than triggers. For example, they allow you to create complex communication sequences with several mobile push notifications or emails on one screen.
Without workflows, it would take me around 4-5 times longer to set up campaigns.
Feedback collection workflow with mobile push notifications and emails
Future plans for developing direct communications:
- Start reactivating customers in the pre-churn segment. For instance, those who haven’t practiced for a week. We’ve already prepared the messages for this.
- Reactivate the churn segment, i.e., those who have canceled their app subscription. To do this, we need to make the integration of the app with the platform more complete. This will ensure that the data about the cancellation of the subscription is transmitted to the platform.