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Strava: Facebook for Athletes & Fitness Enthusiasts

The phrase, "If it's not on Strava, it didn't happen" is prolific in cycle and running communities and over two thirds of the Tour de France cyclists regularly track stage results on it! Labelled as "Facebook for Athletes", provides a fitness tracking tool that doubles as a sports and fitness-focused social network, empowering users to record and share their workouts, connect with others, and engage in friendly competition. Users can track various activities like running, cycling, swimming, and more while analyzing detailed performance data to monitor progress and set new goals. Strava's user interface and features have made it popular among those seeking motivation, accountability, and a sense of community in their fitness journey. Strava also helps users to find new jogging routes and exercise regiments, connect and compete with other users, and publish their training with titles, captions, and photos.

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What sets Strava apart from the competition?

• Range of Categories:
• • Strava offers over 50 different sport categories for tracking fitness, emphasizing its attempt to appeal to a broad range of fitness enthusiasts.
• Data!
• • Strava's core feature is activity tracking. The app displays maps and statistics like duration, pace, calories, and elevation for every activity. Strava analyzes the data to provide detailed performance metrics, personal records, and segment leaderboards, which show who beat each user in the same segment. Strava's 'monthly stats visualization' is quite famous among its users as it helps them keep a track of their fitness journey, and set new goals accordingly.
• Brand-agnostic Integrations:
• • Using Strava on fitness trackers or smart watches is super easy. All the major brands are compatible - which elevates the experience, allows you to go phone-free, and can add more metrics for a full picture of your workout intensity. For users using such devices, Strava's interface allows users to start recording their activity in two/three (depending on the paired device) clicks on the paired device.
• Route Planning:
• • Strava provides a database of road and trail routes crowdsourced from eight billion logged activities. Users can discover popular routes, plan new ones, and access recent photos showing current trail conditions.
  • Heatmaps, personal and global, provide visual representations of a user's cumulative experience and showcase publicly available user activity within the last year.
  • Strava Beacon allows users to share their real-time location with family and friends when recording activities using the Strava mobile app. This is especially useful for females and their engagement on the app. (more on this later!)
• Social Features:
• • Strava has a social component where users can follow friends, join clubs, share photos and stories, and give "Kudos" to others' activities which appear in a social media-style feed. A "Groups" feature allows athletes to start group challenges and meet other users. Strava aims to provide a competitive motivational network with workout analytics, fitness data, achievements, and leaderboards.
  • A new messaging feature recently launched allows users to chat one-on-one or in groups and easily share activities and routes. Privacy controls require users to opt-in and choose whether anyone or only existing followers can message them. The goal of the messaging feature is to reduce context switching between other apps when planning group fitness activities (driving engagement, again!)
  • Strava, with its extensive user base of 120Mn, has now become a new social networking platform to brag (about one's fitness journey). This brag-worthiness of the platform has led to a hilarious concept of "Strava Mules or Surrogates" - who are paid to complete activities on behalf of others to help them obtain recognition without actually doing the activity themselves. These "Mules" are sent out with a paying customer's Strava account logged into their phone and paid to run in their place. While this is an unintended use of Strava's social reward features, it is an indication of the value that users attach to recognition on Strava.
• Challenges:
• • To drive user engagement, Strava regularly launches virtual challenges where athletes earn digital badges or real-world prizes from brands for completing certain goals. Some companies (e.g., Adidas, Oneplus, etc.) sponsor challenges with rewards, while others are simply personal goals to keep athletes motivated. Personal goal-setting is prominent with features to set weekly or annual targets.

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While Strava's competition may offer one or two features on their platform, none offer all-in-one solution like Strava. If there was a leaderboard (like in Strava Challenges), Strava would come at the top among its competitors in terms of features offered, user interface, integrations, and AI.

HOWEVER, when it comes to retention and subscription fee - Strava trips down the leaderboard; driving engagement by urging its users to:

Customer Segmentation

Understanding Current User Engagement on Strava

• Strava's focus on the social aspect of fitness has played a pivotal role in its ability to engage users beyond traditional workout hours. The app's community-building features, allowing users to connect with friends and take part in challenges, have fostered a sense of camaraderie among users. This community-driven approach has transformed Strava into more than just an app—it's a platform where fitness enthusiasts unite, inspire each other, and celebrate achievements.
• User session counts reveal that Strava users engage with the app at a frequency far surpassing users of rival apps. On average, Strava users open the app over 35 times every month, compared to its competitors, which average under 15, a remarkable achievement that is likely driven by the app’s careful emphasis of social features.

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• In fact, Strava sees a rise in time spent on the app during the evening - indicating that many Strava users log in during this time not only for the purpose of physical activities, but also to engage with the Strava community, keep tabs on friends’ progress, and partake in challenges. In contrast, competing apps' usage patterns closely align with traditional workout hours, implying that users of these platforms are primarily focused on their physical routine.

• Activity-wise engagement:
  Strava's 2023 Report here

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• Who is engaging more - Gen Z, Millennials, or Boomers?
  Gen Z logged the fastest median run & ride pace on Strava. But they also logged the shortest rides.

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• What motivates users to keep going?
• Sex & Age Distribution:
  
  70% of users are Male;
  12% are Gen Z, 48% are Millennials, and ~10% are Boomers.

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ICPs:

Persona-based:

Usage-Based:

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Defining Core EnR Metrics

Activated User & Active User:

• Activated User: Has logged in an activity in the first 3 days/72 hours since installation AND has followed at least 1 other user
• • Rationale:
  • • Both logging in an activity & following another user are the core value prop of Strava
    • 72 hours because of the 'active user' defined below
      
• Active User: Logs in >=3 activities/week AND Opens the app >=6 times/week AND Engages (i.e., gives Kudos) with their followers/following >=7times/week

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Engagement Framework:

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Engagement Campaigns

Campaign-1: Casual to Core

Strava - Campaign 1 - Casual Users.pdf

Campaign-2: Casual to Core

Strava - Campaign 2 - Casual Users.pdf

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Campaign-3: Core Users to Power Users

Strava - Campaign 3 - Core Users.pdf

Campaign-4: Core & Power Users

Strava - Campaign 4 - Core & Power Users.pdf

Campaign-5: Core Users to Power Users

Strava - Campaign 5 - All Users.pdf

Campaign-6: Female Users

Strava - Campaign - Female Users.pdf

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Retention Design

In a 2021 Benchmark Report, Alchemer, a market research company, reported that for Fitness apps, the average 90-day retention is 31% and annual retention is 19%.

However, according to Apptiopia, Strava sees a 30-day retention rate of just 16 percent on iOS and eight percent on Android. Strava has significantly lower retention rates than the industry average.

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(These numbers are from 2021, and i could not find any recent retention data for strava. It will be fair to assume that retention will have, in the BEST case scenario, reached the average retention. It'll still be lower for a company with Strava's valuation)

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Churn: Voluntary

• Challenges' recommendation engine is broken. I could see the same challenges as a new user and as an old user. Both said, "Recommended for you, based on your activity"
• • I could see (and join!) august challenges on 31st August
• Group recommendation engine is also broken and is sorted by # of members in it. I can see February & January Marathon groups at the top, still. Not to mention clubs from 2020 & 2019 are at the 3rd and 4th position.

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• While onboarding, the first screen i could see after entering all the details was a full-screen pop-up asking me to join Strava Premium (with no 30 day free trial!)
• All the fan-favorite features are now for premium users - Monthly Performance Reports, Routes, Relevant Groups, etc.
• Premium pricing is high, and was recently increased in 2023. Many users believe that competitors (especially Garmin Connect) offer better services at a better price point. Strava claims to have consistent pricing across countries:
• • United States: $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year, plus taxes 
  • United Kingdom: £8.99 per month or £54.99 per year 
  • Italy, Ireland, and Spain: €7.99 per month 
  • France: €9.99 per month
  • India: ₹350/month or ₹2500/year
• It's difficult to find your friends who are on Strava - you'd have to ask them for their username. Third-party integration with facebook (already in-place) should help recommend "people you might know".
• • Onboarding could only be done through email - if mobile number were added, one could import contacts and add their friends
  • Considering the social element is one part of the core value prop, this should really be considered for
• No CRM set for challenges. Unless one is a power user (who works out regularly), one would definitely forget about streak challenges or X days in {Month} challenges. This is where Strava could drive engagement better.
• Lack of "new" challenges. I could only see the same-old challenges i've been seeing on this app for 10 months now (freemium user). Nothing exciting stands-out to me as casual user.
• Personal Fitness Target Achieved

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Churn: Involuntary

• Physical Injury
• Travelling
• New Job / No work-life balance
• Other personal circumstances that may arise
• Mental Health issues (seasonal / recurring)

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Resurrection Campaigns

Strava - Churn Campaigns.pdf

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