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

0:00You have to figure out what matters. And what we did is sit down and say, you know, what factors into retention, it's getting results. So, you start working backwards from, okay, getting results. What does that mean? Well, in the fitness world, it's the consistency. And so, you start to boil that down. And four workouts is kind of where we started that number, but then we started to ratchet it down to three. And that was backed by science. And ultimately, our job then is to say, okay, how do we

0:24get three workouts to be consistent? Hello, I'm your host, David Bernard. Today's conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat's state of subscription apps report. Each episode in this series will explore one crucial topic and share actionable insights from top subscription app operators. With me today, Ben Gam, VP of product at Ladder. On the podcast, I talk with Ben about productdriven retention as the foundation for life cycle marketing, working backward from results to nail activation, and why talking to

0:57individual users can lead you astray. Hey Ben, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. Uh, thanks for having me. We've talked a ton on the podcast about the kind of blocking and tackling of retention, uh, you know, life cycle marketing, all all those kind of things, but what I feel like we maybe haven't talked enough about and why super excited to have you on the podcast is product as retention and finding those product levers that actually drive retention and that being kind of the foundation of everything else you build on top versus thinking that some, you know, life cycle

1:34marketing hack, the Perfect push notification is what's going to get you over the hump. And so yeah, let's let's dig into that. Let's start at a high level. Like what is your kind of philosophy around retention? The first thing is retention is king. It gives you permission to do everything else upstream. And I think the easiest part to start is like you know what is retention? And you know retention is if

1:53someone pays you, do they pay you again? Yeah. Kind of important. It's very important but it's not easy, right? The challenge is you know in the beginning it's very volatile. Then as you mature as a product and company, it sort of becomes like a rubber band ball where it's like all those rubber bands are are influences and factors into retention. So it's really hard to like understand what is, you know, going into it because it becomes very stubborn. And so what I think really you have to do to boil it down is you have to figure out you know what matters and I think you know with that you have to be able to

2:26speak the language to the user but also internally and you know what we did is sit down and say you know what factors into retention it's getting results we went through all the fivestar results all the people that were you know just hands up saying like this is really you know striking a chord and that was the underlying theme. So you know you start working backwards from okay getting results what does that mean? Well, it's in the fitness world, it's the consistency, right? And so, you start to boil that down and four four workouts is kind of where we started that number, but then we started to ratchet it down

2:57to three. And that was backed by science. And ultimately, our job then is to say, okay, how do we get three workouts to be consistent? And you know, our ethos became and still is today, don't make me think. Get that person in there, they press play, they do the workout, and if we can do that three times a week, that is really what ladders up to to retention. Yeah, that's a that's such a great way to think about it. And and you know, I think in some ways it's maybe more obvious for a fitness app that like the results that you want to get are are like physical

3:26results is like getting bigger, getting stronger, getting fitter. Uh and those are even maybe more objective to measure and see. But for a lot of apps, it still is about getting results. you know, if you download Photo Room to enhance the photos quality of your eBay listings, it's like you're there to get results. And so, I love that thinking. It's like, you know, why are your users downloading your app? And and like you said, it's a great place to mine those insights are those five star reviews. Like, why are people excited about your app? What are they telling other people? And then you work backward from there versus again

4:02thinking some like retention tactic is what's going to drive the loop. It's like, no, what's going to drive the loop is getting results. So, I know at ladder y'all have had a lot of very clear kind of product unlocks that that started driving that loop that were like clear retention level levers. So, tell me

4:19about some of those. Yeah, I think the first one that comes to mind is the journal, you know, and you kind of hit it where, you know, the the first question typically in onboarding is, you know, what is your primary goal? And you know for fitness it's a lot of times I want to get stronger I want to lose weight I want to tone body I want to like look good feel good so that's kind of you know getting the results but how do you measure it right and the journal is you know by definition if if you're not familiar with ladder basically we have a workout

4:44player and your ability to track your reps and weights even you know distance for cardio and you know things like that it is your ability to like you know put in data and you know I think it's one of those beautiful things that as a consumer the user, they're able to, you know, put in that data, but it's a reward because downstream, it serves as a flywheel for us, the business. You know, you input the data, then the next time you come in and like for that, you know, specific movement, let's call it, you know, an RDL or a bench press. And the recommended weights come back into

5:16play because we've now personalized it by putting in that that existing weight. And then over time, you see the progress, right? And what's really key for strength training is that you're starting to lift more at least incrementally and it can be gradual but as you see that you see the progress you hit PRs and it's all those you know factors that you know really again go back to like what is the the core piece of this and that's getting results and that's I think the mental and the physical getting stronger part the

5:45ladder can deliver on. I love the way y'all integrated it into the product as well. So, I mean, you know, as as most podcast listeners would know, I'm a huge ladder fan at this point. Hit my six week streak of three workouts a week starting the year. So, that was one of my goals was to light up light up the little ladder chart, which

6:02we can talk about that more in a bit. And so, with the journal, after each workout, you do this little thing of like, hey, since you started, you've progressed this much. And just just the other day it was like 62% increase in my dumbbell bench press which you know a lot of that's form and my muscle connection and stuff like that but like it was super encouraging to see that and like to to get back to those like what do people want results? Well at the end of each workout I'm seeing the results and it's just such a powerful little

6:31flywheel there. So that's exactly right. It's really much like a snowball feature where you know the people are putting the data in and like that's the you know that's step one but then you start to build out the outer layers and that's the the reinforcement loops is saying like hey like you're hitting that progress at that level where you have that PR and it's not just you know that one movement it's all these other movements and so it keeps like going in that loop where you start to expand not only you know there within the workout but it goes outside of it where you have like the journal history and like you're

7:00able to see that into like your profile And that's building state. And that is where you start to become entrenched into a product because, you know, it sounds negative, but it it becomes like powerful because you become proud of like what you've done. And it's funny, I was listening to a a podcast over the past couple weeks and, you know, they were talking about the where AI is going to influence data and they mentioned, you know, there's going to be some products that are going to be sticky because they have hostages. And I don't like to think it about in that way because it feels, you know, a little bit

7:28negative, but you know, as you build state, it becomes sticky. And there's a reason why that that loop exists for a lot of companies and it's powerful. Yeah. I mean, I I could see as you all layer on AI to to better inform what your next, you know, weight should be and things like that, it's like you've have so much history from me now over a year of workouts that you can then layer on. And I don't want to lose that progress either. It's like I've got check marks and streaks and, you know, progress data and all that kind of stuff that you kind of lose if you move. So,

7:57so yeah, the the hostage term maybe is not the best, but it it really does kind of effectively work like that. The next thing I wanted to dive into was widgets and streaks and check marks. So, huge fan of the widget. It's right there on my home screen. It's where I I launch workouts from it and like I can see the little yellow boxes light up. So, it's a calendar and it and it it lights up the day when you've completed a workout. I mean, pretty typical kind of like a streak mechanism, but it's so powerful sitting on my home screen. So, so tell me about those and the impact it had on

8:28retention. Yeah, I think one of the the key parts of building out a product is you have to figure out like the the game that exists within the product and it has to be very very simple. And again, if you go back to you know the getting results and the consistency, it was all built around

8:43that northstar of like three workouts. And so these are what we call reinforcers, right? So you have the check mark is what gives you like for a completed workout that's you know you have to get three of those and three of those equal a streak for a week and then you know the widget is what takes that

8:59outside the app to again reinforce that. So, as you're scrolling your phone, subconsciously, you know, or consciously, you're seeing that, right? And it has a huge effect to say like, "Oh, I need I need to remember like to go do my third workout or there's that sense of pride." And, you know, I think one of the things that's underrated about the widget, too, is, you know, other people see that, right? It might not happen often, but there's times where like you're seeing as, you know, other people are swiping their phone, they see that widget and they're like, "What is that?" And that can drive conversation uh you know and referrals

9:32uh in a way as well. So do you have any sense for how many people install the widget and how that has impacted retention? Approximately I'd say a third of people have the the widget. It's one of those things that benchmarks are tough. You know I think every product has you know different ways of doing stuff. So whether you know a third is good or bad it seems positive right. We've definitely tried to increase that over time and you know I think it matters when you pop that you know it's it can't be the first thing that you show you know you haven't earned that trust but

9:59we've tried to like position it and and try to like you know build it out where you know again it looks cool you give them the instructions cuz it's not exactly intuitive for the majority of people I think the people listening to this podcast you know they they all know how to do it but the average person it's difficult but you know once you get it there again it's it's very very powerful

10:20feature to serve as that billboard. Yeah. And not not every app is gonna have a way to create a meaningful widget where people would want to have it on their home screen, but boy, if you can crack that, it really can be so powerful. And a third of your users having a billboard on their home screen is it's pretty cool. And yeah, it's like I don't I don't know what a benchmark would be. I should ask more guests this over time and people I talk to in the industry, but yeah, if you can unlock a that kind of billboard on the home screen with a widget, it's it's

10:49powerful. Do you do you actually track and I meant to ask this with the ladder journal as well? Do you have any stats like were you able to track like people who have the widget on their home screen, you know, complete their streak at a higher rate or and then with the journal, you know, did you did you find specific stats of like when you introduced that, you did see a big bump in in longerterm retention? Yeah, you're able to see correlation. If you go back to the journal, you know, we're up upwards of, you know, around like 70 75% of users use the uh the journal for each

11:17workout. It didn't start there though, right? I mean like these are the things again you build it you build like the core layer and then you have to build out these amplifiers and that's where we went upstream and you know we have what's called a welcome workout and that's where the coaches are able to the voice over you know not only the instruction of like what are you doing why are you doing it but also layer in those pieces to say like hey you know pop open that journal swipe up input those weights here's why and it's the same thing with a widget you know able

11:43to to really you know start to build out make sure that people are using it and then make sure that it has good feedback and then you build out those peripherals to really drive engagement. Yeah, such a great point and and ladder is an interesting case and again I don't think every app is going to be able to replicate some of these specific things that ladder does to drive these retention loops and drive this kind of product based retention. But in ladder, the way it works is like you you have a real human coach that is like coaching you through the workout with these videos. And I mean, it's just part of

12:17what makes the product so fantastic. But what's so cool, and I hear it all the time when I'm working out, is how the coaches are just subtly dropping things in like, "Make sure you log this in the in the journal." You know, I'm I'm in Team Forged with Coach Corey, and like he'll say like, "You you should have a weight for this exercise from last week in the journal. check your journal. And so, you know, again, not every app is going to be able to, you know, have this like, you know, real human reinforcing these things in in those ways, but the foundation is the same is that like when

12:48you find those retention levers, find ways within the product to drive usage of those features, which then drives the retention. And this does get a little bit to the blocking and tackling like that may be a push notification, that may be an email helping people go deeper into a feature like but you need to build the loop first and then you build the tactical things around it to kind of

13:10reinforce those loops. Yeah, 100%. And I I'd also say that the one thing is that I found is like yes, you can build those outer pieces, the notifications and stuff and they are very effective, but you have to really layer these things in that the moment like you know as they're doing stuff. So again, that's where if you go back to just the the example with voiceovers, you know, you can write up, you know, FAQs and educational content about, you know, why the journal is important, all that stuff. But if you're able to communicate that while they're in the the motion of doing it, that is 10x more

13:40effective. And that is like one of those really powerful things that, you know, that's the human element that ladder brings that is able to really again drive a lot of the the engagement that correlates to the retention for ladder. Well, the last thing I wanted to touch on was user feedback and I know that's something that ladder takes very seriously. So, how do you think about feedback and integrating that into the

14:02broader product roadmap and decision-m? Yeah, I mean the first thing is feedback's a gift and I know a lot of people say that, but it it really is it makes our jobs a lot easier. We get to just really, you know, listen to people like what do they actually want? And the hard part is actually staying disciplined and following through with that. There's effectively three ways that I' I've bucketed how we think about feedback. There's one, there's like the acute pain and that usually comes through our Slack. There's feedback mechanisms throughout the app that they can just write out like, hey, I experienced this issue. It's typically,

14:35you know, built around that. The second is we do a lot of surveys. There's ad hoc, but there's recurring surveys, too. And as an example, we we do one at the end of the year. And, you know, we have an insanely productive community. There's 7,500 plus responses this past year. it takes over 45 minutes. Thank god for AI to be able to, you know, like be able to parse it out and understand what they what they want. And then the third is dog fooding. Uh, and it's really important. It's not a requirement, you know, if you work at ladder. But I think in order to like

15:02really, you know, test drive the product, but have that end toend mental model of what's happening, it really helps. And also like building it out and, you know, delivering that empathy for the user because you're experiencing it too. Do you all do individual user interviews and how how much weight do you put on those? It is a spicy take. I think they can be helpful, but I think the problem is especially in consumer, you have so many people that are very diverse. You know, they're all throughout the world and if you talk to, you know, five or 10 people, they might weigh in on a part

15:34that, you know, gives you a little bit of insight, but the problem is you can't overindex to that, right? Because they still only represent N of five or n of 10. So these surveys are really effective because we do them so often. They're very, you know, there's a huge population set and I think that's a really to be honest like just a much better way to kind of work backwards from like that large amount of people as long as you can construct those surveys and ask questions, you know, in the right manner that are not, you know, too biased or leading them, you know,

16:03towards an answer. Yeah, that's that's so powerful. And I mean, you know, again, y'all have such an engaged community. It's probably going to be hard for the average app to get that many responses, especially to that um extensive of a survey. But again, finding ways to get that larger breadth of feedback versus kind of

16:20overlying on any individual feedback. And it's so hard like you you get one bad review in the app store that harps on one, you know, missing product feature and you're like, "Oh, I got to build that and it's going to unlock everything." But then a lot of times it's like, "No, it's like that user cared about that." But don't like don't overfocus on that like one piece of bad feedback versus what everybody else is telling you. And one of the cool things y'all built this year was nutrition. So you have the kind of core strength training app and then you layered on a nutrition piece where if you're going to

16:51get results even increasing strength like you got to have your your diet and food dialed in. But from what I understand that was like direct like users were screaming for I mean you know not literally of course but in the feedback it just felt like that was such a strong thing. How did that come about? Yeah I mean that comes directly from that that annual survey. So I guess it was end of 2024 you know we asked probably 80 90 questions and again they're multiple choice there's open-ended but you know what came through very clearly you know signal from noises. They wanted nutrition and they wanted something that again, you

17:26know, maps to results because if you're doing the workout, you have a dialed in nutrition. You know, it's just again a multiplier to get there faster and hopefully be sustainable. So that came through and that's something that, you know, we looked at and from first principles try to understand, okay, what are the most effective methods? You know, what exactly are they using today and can we do this? And that was a long, you know, project, longer than the usual ones, but it's a big bet, right, that we started beginning of last year and launched, you know, a few months ago,

17:57which has been very exciting for us. Yeah. How are things going with that? I mean, it's a funny thing, too, and I I talked about this in one of the other minis for the state of subscription apps report is that sometimes users are saying like, you know, 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? Yeah, it's been going very well. I mean, that's where, you know, to your point, there are times where people say stuff that doesn't map to reality, right? And this is one, you know, it's basically crossed 100 days

18:28since we launched. And so, when you're starting to like map things to retention, it's pretty tough. So, you have to like really compress it, you know? So, what is like week 2, week three, week four retention? And we're starting to get really, you know, in the weeds of okay, if you can go upstream, like if you just think about nutrition as a standalone product, how do they log? Do they log consistently 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 is has it been effective for people who are tracking macros, but if you

18:58think 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 have come, you know, are true early on 100 days in. But it's super exciting for us as a business, you know, after such a a long journey in big bet. Yeah. When you invest much into something, it's great to see it paying off. And you know,

19:30something we talk about a ton on the podcast is finding and unlocking that kind of secondary product market fit. And again, like it, you know, of course, strength training, nutrition, like they go so handinand and it's hard to 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 it can be such a powerful thing. As we wrap up, was there anything else that you wanted to share

19:53or any jobs you wanted to shout out? I'll just say uh I think I have the best job in the world. I get to work along people that are fantastic, really good at what they do. we get to solve hard problems and you know be positive for others in in their lives uh which is you know very meaningful. So we're looking to hire anyone who's um a crack or you know a builder by nature uh product design specifically would be great and then also any engineers so iOS backend front end uh reach out on LinkedIn and you know if that's not you know your world then would love for you to try out

20:26Ladder and tell us what you think. Awesome. And ladder is such a fun team and I visited your office several times because it's right up the road from me in Austin and really cool team, really cool people, fun headquarters. You are hiring remote though too, right? So not every job has to be in the Austin office. That's correct. We have HQ in Austin, but we're hiring remote and uh yeah, we just have, you know, a lot of momentum and a lot of good people and it it's fun. So yeah, you've seen it firsthand and uh you know, we're looking for more, which is it's rare, too, by

20:54the way. We do not hire often. So, um, again, if you fit that profile, please reach out. We'd love to talk to you. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me, Ben. This was great. Yeah, thank you so much, David. Cheers. Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com

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