Sweat app icon

Sweat

Fitness fans reach goals.
Sweat increases lifetime value.

Sweat ad on the App Store
Designed by women for women, Sweat offers on-demand fitness content, personal training, and community support. With Apple Search Ads, the Australian app scaled subscriber growth to new markets while improving key postinstall results like lifetime value.

The Results

#1 ad platform for lifetime value for subscribers
over
24 months.
334% higher return on ad
spend (ROAS) than
other channels.
201% increase in downloads
in a year.
89% lower customer
acquisition cost.

The Challenge

In an increasingly crowded category, the team at Sweat wanted to evolve and optimize their acquisition strategy for their subscription business. A more sophisticated focus on postinstall metrics like trial-to-subscription rates and lifetime value would be critical to long-term success in the face of growing competition. To drive efficient expansion into new markets, they also needed to increase brand awareness, with potential subscribers showing high intent for fitness content on the App Store.

Apple Search Ads reaches users when they’re at the point of decision making. It’s a highly efficient way of gaining both new subscribers and reengaging those who
have lapsed.

Tysen Cole,

Head of Performance Marketing at Sweat

The Solution

Optimize subscriber life cycle with keyword insights.

To more effectively optimize Apple Search Ads campaign performance, the marketing team at Sweat partnered with their internal data analytics colleagues. Together, they tackled some of the attribution challenges of a long subscription life cycle by looking at Apple Search Ads performance, at the keyword level and by market, to better understand subscribers. With a real-time bidding strategy, the team drove the strongest postinstall performance. According to Sweat, Apple Search Ads drove a 16 percent higher trial-to-subscription rate compared to other platforms and was also the top acquisition platform for lifetime value. 

Drive installs with localized strategy.

To scale high-quality acquisition to new markets, the Sweat team created separate Apple Search Ads campaigns for every country or region. Discovery campaigns with Search Match helped find new, relevant keywords specific to each market. Brand campaigns capitalized on high-intent searches for their own brand terms. To drive additional reach, competitive and category campaigns helped increase awareness with fitness enthusiasts interested in similar apps.

 

“With Apple Search Ads, we can stay on top of what our target audience is searching for in the local language and quickly determine the potential search volume in new markets,” says Sweat’s Head of Performance Marketing Tysen Cole.

Invest to capitalize on seasonal interest.

Leading into the peak season for health and fitness, the team actively prepared for increased demand on the App Store, analyzing performance during previous years by market. With Apple Search Ads customized recommendations, the team was able to monitor fluctuations in impression share and search volume as well as apply product page optimizations to keywords, bids, and daily caps quickly.1 During unexpected spikes in interest for at-home workouts in 2020, the team reacted by increasing investment to maximize impressions, particularly in newer markets across Europe.

 

“Apple Search Ads helps us reach the right people right at the point of conversion, which has an invaluable impact on performance,” says Cole. “Additionally, it has broadened our app marketing approach and helped us gain insights from high-intent search behavior that influences how we make decisions across the business.”

Company Snapshot

  • Sweat
  • Health & Fitness category
  • Launched in 2015
  • Based in Parkside, Australia
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