‘Making people famous has worked really well for us’: How to keep consumers exercising
A sense of community and making people ‘famous’ helps discourage users from abandoning their fitness programmes, the audience at Mumbrella’s Health & Wellness Marketing Summit were told today.
Co-founder of 12WBT and Voome.com.au, Amelia Phillips, was speaking on the ‘how wearables are changing the market landscape’ panel where she described some of the methods used to engage and encourage users.
“Making people famous has worked really really well for us, so we will do everything we can to call out individuals and give them a pat on the back for whatever that achievement is,” Phillips said. “So whether it’s achievement of the week or achievement of the month, it’s more achievable for everyday people.
“For us, who are trying to get really unfit people exercising and moving, we found that really valuable.”
Phillips: Making people famous has worked really well for us
Sam Canavan, managing director of Sport Heroes Group, also agreed that a sense of community is one of the most important ways to keep customers from abandoning fitness programmes.
He also stressed the importance of awarding badges within an app, adding their intangibility does nothing to rob them of their allure in the customer’s mind.
“I was sitting there nodding when you said ‘people love badges'”, he said. “For me I think that sounds ridiculous on the surface, it’s a badge, it’s not tangible, it’s not a discount – people love badges.
“We had people for City2Surf for example who missed one out of 12 and they were just emailing us incessantly, saying ‘please can you input a manual activity so I can close off my rings.”
Canavan: People love badges
Phillips agreed, adding: “If you were ever going to do something with badges, you should definitely have the board that has the greyed out badges where you can see all 12 of them there, because that really frustrates people when you’ve got 11 of the 12 badges.”
The panellists were keen to stress the importance of customisation when keeping customers engaged. Canavan said: “It always astounded me how anything that is slightly custom or difficult to obtain for the consumer is something people really want, even if it’s a cheaply manufactured t-shirt that you can’t get outside of that running group or by achieving that challenge.”
