Natal · B2C · pregnancy and postpartum fitness app
Build a new program for every client request
Biggest fail of the year: too many choices, users didn't start
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- last year
In their words
How Removing the Free Trial Grew Monthly Subs 2000% – Nancy Anderson, Natal
Nancy Anderson… a hypertonic pelvic floor, early postpartum, Ab Rehab, Ab Rehab Plus. So now there's five, six, seven programs centered around postpartum rehab where we were listening to the needs of everyone and building those things out. But I don't think we did a great job, like we talked about earlier with the onboarding piece of, like, "Okay, we're asking you these questions and now you need to start with this program," or wherever you need to go.
Nancy AndersonSo I think that was probably our biggest fail because it just creates decision fatigue.
David BarnardAnd complexity, and-
David BarnardVery cool.
Nancy AndersonMore content isn't always, I guess the answer.
David BarnardYeah, totally. So then what's your biggest win the last year, experiment, price change, anything that shifted the needle for you?
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More from this episode
- Sell a program as a monthly 30-day group challenge with before/after photos100 signups in month one, 125 in month two; kept growing
- Run paid social ads before Apple's tracking changeWorked well for a couple of years, then Apple's tracking change hurt it
- Post funny, relatable personal content, not just product postsStories get ~50K views; organic beats competitors' by 90%
- Reply to every DM, comment and email with a real expert within 24 hoursTrial-to-paid ~68% vs 38% typical; not isolated
- End posts with a soft 'learn more' instead of a sales pitch
- Turn down brand deals and affiliate links to keep audience trustGives up an estimated $0.5-1M/year; benefit not measurable
- Turn the questions people keep asking in DMs into your main programOver 1M users; still the top traffic driver
- Merge several niche apps into one app users keep across life stagesLess confusion and a lower price; ARR +20% in Q1 2026
- Narrow to pre- and postnatal fitness and rename the brand away from the founder
- Have your in-house expert coaches film the brand's videosFounder says it's working well; no numbers
- Ask 10-15 onboarding questions and show only content for the user's stage
- Offer a free posture check by a real expert that picks the first workout68-70% who finish it complete their first workout
- DM every new user personally and invite them to a coach-run community31% of community joiners return on day 2; no baseline
- Never give away free workouts or freebies
- Let people pay with their health savings account (HSA) at checkoutTens of thousands of dollars in two weeks, unpromoted
- Push 'spend your HSA dollars before they expire' at year end
- Drop the free trial on the monthly planMonthly subs up ~2,000%, annual +21% (founder's rough recall)
- Raise subscription pricesARR still grew 20% that quarter
- Pay influencers to post about the brand
Tags: too-many-programs, decision-fatigue