Even with that level of success, however, the brand knew it had its work cut out for it in terms of making an impression during the Black Friday shopping season. What’s more, they also knew that, just as the achievement of fitness goals is the sum total of a process of little exercise victories, Black Friday success can’t be spun out of whole cloth come Thanksgiving. Instead, it’s built through the development of effective promotional messaging over the course of the year.

In Braze, Freeletics found the right partner to enhance, test, and refine their messaging strategy so that it was fully actualized come Black Friday, resulting in what the fitness world would call serious gains.

Getting Messaging in Shape With Personalization and Testing

When it came time to take a look at their cross-channel messaging strategy, Freeletics put their energy into two main efforts: Personalization and testing. The app’s audience could be segmented by a number of factors, including free and premium subscription status as well as a spectrum of activity frequency and persistence indicators. Utilizing a combination of in-app messaging, push notifications, and email, the company was able to create different messaging flows depending on user behavior and engagement patterns. Both content and methodology were customized for the audience segment receiving them, resulting in tailored messaging that conveyed a respect for each user’s place in their personal journey with the app.

Once campaigns were conceived and executed, it was time to track engagement and dissect what was working and what needed to be tweaked. A/B testing was implemented through Canvas—the Braze platform’s customer journey management feature—to analyze the success of variable elements like subject lines, and data team members monitored performance daily and were able to dynamically take action if tactics like retargeting were necessary. Most importantly, this testing and analysis was implemented months before the holiday period, allowing Freeletics to achieve an understanding of what type of messaging and what kind of content yielded the greatest response and the highest conversion rate, so they could hit the ground running when it was time to launch Black Friday campaigns.

Freeletics Blows Out Black Friday

In fitness and nutrition, the establishment of good habits leads to the best long-term results. In the case of Freeletics’ promotional efforts, these personalization and testing efforts in earlier parts of the year set the stage for a successful Black Friday campaign. By consistently monitoring when the engagement and conversion rate was the best, they were able to hone in on which versions of elements like subject line content and which messaging timings were most effective.

Most importantly, Freeletics’ well-tuned Black Friday campaign yielded quantifiable results. The company saw an increase of 5% in email deliverability, which ran counter to expectations given the competitive nature of the field at that particular time of year. Even more impressive, there was an uplift of 200% in conversion rate from free to paid subscribers year over year.

Key Takeaway

Freeletics disrupted the fitness app industry by offering highly tailored exercise and nutrition solutions to their users. When it came time to launch a campaign for Black Friday, personalization and testing whipped the brand’s messaging into fighting shape so it could land with the greatest impact at the most critical part of the marketing year.

For more on how to make use of personalization, check out the Braze Personalization Guide.