Saulo Marti
VP of Marketing at 8fit
Where to hear and read about Saulo Marti1 episode or test
Saulo Marti is VP of Marketing at 8fit, a subscription fitness app, and has also worked on subscription growth at a previous company. The lesson most worth learning from him: judge ads by the whole funnel, not CPI, and use yearly plans and a firm paywall to bring in high-LTV subscribers.
it screws up your entire funnel if you're just targeting the wrong people
How to Build a UA strategy for High-LTV Subscribers
Saulo Marti: the story and the lessons
1How Saulo Marti judges ads by the whole funnel
Marti measures each ad message on downstream conversion, not just clicks. At 8fit, the message changed the whole funnel. When a message resonated, user to subscriber rate, engagement and trial engagement all improved.
He says performance teams that only watch CPI and first-step metrics miss this. "The entire conversion funnel just completely improves" when the message lands.
Marti uses organic conversion as the benchmark for whether an ad resonates. 8fit's paid ads convert to subscription better than organic. Depending on the message, a campaign beats organic or falls below it.
Organic is a mix of referrals, campaign spillover and people who found the app by store search with no context. Ad viewers already clicked on a message that spoke to them.
Marti would split organic into referrals and social followers for a cleaner comparison. Those segments should convert better than blended organic, and blending them hides that gap.
He says this applies if your data lets you break organic apart.
2What 8fit learned from testing health messages
"Feel healthier" beat three other messages in 8fit's test. The four messages were improve your health, improve your shape, feel healthier and feel leaner. Feel healthier won, improve shape came second, and weight loss was about on par. Feel leaner did worst.
Only engagement data was in at the time, not retention.
Marti expects feel-better ads to burn out faster than broad ones. "Feel healthier" engages more but has a shorter shelf life than angles like lose weight or improve your shape.
His advice is to plan a steady refresh of creative for the narrower angle.
8fit refuses aggressive shame ads even though Marti thinks they convert. Competitors run ads such as a sad overweight drawing whose fat drops off as she smiles. 8fit won't copy them for brand reasons.
Its messaging says fitness is a journey, consistency beats occasional max effort, and "you're not gonna outwork a terrible diet".
3How Marti fixed a targeting problem hidden between teams
When subscriber rate dropped, Marti checked targeting before blaming the test. 8fit tested pushing users to pay upfront instead of a free trial, because iOS 13 could hurt trial-to-paid numbers. The test lost to the control, and re-releasing the control did even worse.
That pointed to messaging that was attracting the wrong people, not the test itself.
Marti got marketing and product sharing funnel data. Marketing sat downstairs watching CPI and a few key metrics while product and pricing sat upstairs, and the teams rarely talked. Bad targeting looked like a product problem and nobody fixed it.
Once the whole team shared information and watched the right metrics, results improved a lot.
4Why Marti pushes yearly plans and a hard paywall
Marti launched a yearly plan priced at half of twelve months. At a previous company the team feared conversion would drop about 3%, even though CAC was fine and payback took three months. It stayed at about 8% and upfront cash rose a lot.
He pushed for it because he expected higher LTV. "Everyone was going into shock" at the idea.
Marti says most subscription apps should lead with yearly plans. Most apps lose many users in the first three months, so a yearly plan means fighting for one renewal a year instead of every month. A 45 to 50 percent yearly retention rate is like about 85% monthly, which only Netflix and Spotify reach.
Only products with excellent monthly engagement should stay monthly, and then he would lower the price.
Marti moved from a soft paywall to email signup and a hard paywall. A soft paywall with free browsing converted very poorly. Requiring email, then a paywall with an X that fades in after three or four seconds, made conversion skyrocket.
Monthly plans saw a big drop-off from month 1 to 2, then stabilized.
Marti tests plan choice because users' preference may not help the business. 8fit wants people to pick the plan that feels right, but that is not always best for the company. A friend's design app saw double the conversions after offering only a yearly plan.
8fit has plan tests live but no clear results yet. Marti calls conversion optimization one of the most fun things to work on.
Marti knows discounts work because a 40% off pop-up converted him. He had held free Calm accounts and passed on earlier discounts, then subscribed after a pop-up offering 40% off.
He only buys monthly plans himself because he knows he will cancel. "Promotions work discounts work."
How to Build a UA strategy for High-LTV Subscribers
Shows how to build user acquisition around high-LTV subscribers by testing ad messaging against the full funnel, aligning performance and product teams, and moving subscription apps to yearly plans. The payoff: at a previous company a yearly plan kept user to customer conversion flat at about 8% while bringing in much more upfront cash.
Marti measures each ad message on downstream conversion, not just clicks. At 8fit, the message changed the whole funnel. When a message resonated, user to subscriber rate, engagement and trial engagement all improved.
He says performance teams that only watch CPI and first-step metrics miss this. "The entire conversion funnel just completely improves" when the message lands.
Marti uses organic conversion as the benchmark for whether an ad resonates. 8fit's paid ads convert to subscription better than organic. Depending on the message, a campaign beats organic or falls below it.
Organic is a mix of referrals, campaign spillover and people who found the app by store search with no context. Ad viewers already clicked on a message that spoke to them.
Marti would split organic into referrals and social followers for a cleaner comparison. Those segments should convert better than blended organic, and blending them hides that gap.
He says this applies if your data lets you break organic apart.
"Feel healthier" beat three other messages in 8fit's test. The four messages were improve your health, improve your shape, feel healthier and feel leaner. Feel healthier won, improve shape came second, and weight loss was about on par. Feel leaner did worst.
Only engagement data was in at the time, not retention.
Marti expects feel-better ads to burn out faster than broad ones. "Feel healthier" engages more but has a shorter shelf life than angles like lose weight or improve your shape.
His advice is to plan a steady refresh of creative for the narrower angle.
8fit refuses aggressive shame ads even though Marti thinks they convert. Competitors run ads such as a sad overweight drawing whose fat drops off as she smiles. 8fit won't copy them for brand reasons.
Its messaging says fitness is a journey, consistency beats occasional max effort, and "you're not gonna outwork a terrible diet".
When subscriber rate dropped, Marti checked targeting before blaming the test. 8fit tested pushing users to pay upfront instead of a free trial, because iOS 13 could hurt trial-to-paid numbers. The test lost to the control, and re-releasing the control did even worse.
That pointed to messaging that was attracting the wrong people, not the test itself.
Marti got marketing and product sharing funnel data. Marketing sat downstairs watching CPI and a few key metrics while product and pricing sat upstairs, and the teams rarely talked. Bad targeting looked like a product problem and nobody fixed it.
Once the whole team shared information and watched the right metrics, results improved a lot.
Marti launched a yearly plan priced at half of twelve months. At a previous company the team feared conversion would drop about 3%, even though CAC was fine and payback took three months. It stayed at about 8% and upfront cash rose a lot.
He pushed for it because he expected higher LTV. "Everyone was going into shock" at the idea.
Marti says most subscription apps should lead with yearly plans. Most apps lose many users in the first three months, so a yearly plan means fighting for one renewal a year instead of every month. A 45 to 50 percent yearly retention rate is like about 85% monthly, which only Netflix and Spotify reach.
Only products with excellent monthly engagement should stay monthly, and then he would lower the price.
Marti moved from a soft paywall to email signup and a hard paywall. A soft paywall with free browsing converted very poorly. Requiring email, then a paywall with an X that fades in after three or four seconds, made conversion skyrocket.
Monthly plans saw a big drop-off from month 1 to 2, then stabilized.
Marti tests plan choice because users' preference may not help the business. 8fit wants people to pick the plan that feels right, but that is not always best for the company. A friend's design app saw double the conversions after offering only a yearly plan.
8fit has plan tests live but no clear results yet. Marti calls conversion optimization one of the most fun things to work on.
Marti knows discounts work because a 40% off pop-up converted him. He had held free Calm accounts and passed on earlier discounts, then subscribed after a pop-up offering 40% off.
He only buys monthly plans himself because he knows he will cancel. "Promotions work discounts work."