Learn how you can Unlock Limitless Customer Lifetime Value with CleverTap’s All-in-One Customer Engagement Platform.
The modern fitness industry is an ecosystem where fitness apps, streaming channels, and other digital products and services enhance the physical world of health clubs and in-person fitness classes. Within that ecosystem, questions arise for fitness marketers: How do you personalize the app experience to keep users engaged throughout their fitness journey? And how can an app foster a sense of community that motivates users to attend gyms and classes?
To hear about the latest innovations in digital fitness marketing, we interviewed Kim Adams, director of marketing for Muuv Labs, on the Mobile Presence podcast. Adams has an extensive background in health, psychology, and human kinetics; at Muuv Labs she focuses on digital marketing and messaging for consumer-facing fitness apps and platforms.
Muuv Labs—which recently merged with Vi Labs, a provider of AI for digital health enterprises—partners with health and wellness companies to develop next-generation digital products. Its newest consumer-facing app, Vi-Muuv, offers a high degree of personalization to help keep users active and engaged.
In this episode with host Peggy Anne Salz, Adams discusses how Muuv Labs uses personalization, recommendations, and well-timed notifications to build a loyal audience. She also explains how Muuv Labs relies on CleverTap for analytics, campaigns, and journeys—helping to move users from registration, to activation, to engagement.
Adams says that when many gyms closed during the pandemic, fitness-minded consumers had no choice but to work out at home. That made it imperative for fitness apps to offer expert, personalized workout tips and suggestions. “The pandemic brought a new focus to recommendations and how you can save [people] that brainpower—they’re stressed out enough,” she notes. “‘Just tell me what to do and I’ll go do it.’”
For the free Vi-Muuv app, the personalization even extends to a user’s workout soundtrack. The app offers individualized experiences through audio coaching and music. “We have a partnership with iHeartRadio where, when you’re in the Muuv app, you can listen to music or listen to a podcast,” explains Adams. “We can make recommendations to people about what kind of music or podcasts to listen to while they’re working out based on preferences that they’ve given us or other things we know about them.”
Adams says that users are given an opportunity to share information about their workout circumstances in order to get the most out of the app. One example: “We can make this a better experience for you if you let us know what kind of at-home fitness equipment you have or equipment you have access to. Then, when you’re going to build your workout, you can say, ‘Today I want to use my medicine ball,’ or something like that.” Personalized experiences like these, she adds, offer “the next step in the funnel for them to make it [the] robust experience that it can be.”
As part of its relationship with CleverTap, Muuv Labs is deepening user engagement through a strategy called intent-based segmentation. “We’re trying to get people to [engage in] certain behaviors,” says Adams, whether that means completing a digital workout within the Vi-Muuv app, or working out at a gym operated by a Muuv partner client. CleverTap can “look at our users, and based on their past behavior, say, ‘This group is pretty likely to do that behavior again; this group is kind of likely; this group is not.’ That allows us to tailor our message accordingly.”
Intent-based segmentation helps Muuv reach the “movable middle”—members who just need a nudge to increase engagement—using motivation based on findings from power users. For example, says Adams, “we know that when users work out in the Muuv app to music, [they are] more likely to come back. We can take that middle group and maybe hit them with a message like, ‘Did you know that if you put on some music while you’re moving in the Muuv app, it’ll help you make this a habit?’”
To hear more from Kim Adams about what it takes to get customer retention efforts into shape, tune into the entire interview.
