GTM Sauce

Ladder · B2C · strength training app

Add nutrition tracking to a workout app after users asked for it in the survey

Early read: users doing both convert and stay much more; no numbers yet

Workedfeature-developmentretentionupsell-expansion

What they did

Nutrition was the clearest signal in the end-of-2024 survey. Researched from first principles what methods work and what users use today; built over ~a year (started early last year) and launched. Because 100 days is too short for retention, they judge it with compressed indicators: week 2/3/4 retention and whether users log consistently on day 1 and day 2. They segment 'hybrid users' who use both workouts and nutrition.

What happened

~100 days in, hybrid users convert at a much higher rate when new and are much more retentive.
Effort
Roughly a year-long build, bigger than usual projects

In their words

The Art of Driving Retention Through Product – Ben Gammon, Ladder

Play the episode

David BarnardYeah. How are things going with that? I mean, it's a funny thing too, and I talked about this in one of the other minisodes for the state of subscription apps report is that sometimes users are saying like, "We really want this, we really want this, we really want this," and then they don't actually use it. So, how have things been going with nutrition?

Ben GammonYeah, it's been going very well. I mean, that's where, to your point, there are times where people say stuff that doesn't map to reality, right? And this is one, it's basically crossed a hundred days since we launched. And so, when you're starting to map things to retention, it's pretty tough. So, you have to really compress it. So, what is week two, week three, week four retention? And we're starting to get really in the weeds of, okay, if you can go upstream, if you just think about nutrition as a standalone product, how do they log? Do they log consistently in day one, day two? Those are like those indicators. And I think thus far we've had a lot of really good signal that not only has it been effective for people who are tracking macros.

Ben GammonBut if you think about how it works throughout the entire Ladder ecosystem or the platform, we call them hybrid users. Those who are using both the workouts and nutrition, they're driving conversion if they're new, right? So, the percentage of those who are converting are much higher, they're using both. And then those who are using both as well are also much more retentive. They're staying on the platform. So, those two are true early on, 100 days in, but it's super exciting for us as a business after such a long journey and big bet.

David BarnardYeah. When you invest so much into something, it's great to see it paying off. And something we talk about a ton on the podcast is finding and unlocking that kind of secondary product market fit. And again, of course, strength training and nutrition, like they go so hand in hand and it's hard for a lot of apps to find that secondary product market fit, but when you do, it's that whole new lever of retention. And so, it can be such a powerful …

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Tags: second-product, nutrition, leading-indicators