(not so) Simple Emails

Simple: Weight Loss Coach ($300k MRR and likely much more)

Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋

I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.

Every week I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.

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15+ different types of emails to activate and monetize your users

Simple is not a massive app, but I believe they’re doing quite well.

When we look at their app store revenue, they show about $200k MRR, but I’d bet they’re doing quite a bit more (and another ~$80k MRR on Android).

They have on average 100k downloads per month.

From Appfigures

As we’ll see, they quite aggressively push users to web subscriptions, which of course can’t be tracked (or estimated) with app store analytics tools

I’m not going to go through their whole onboarding funnel today.

I’ll share screenshots and recordings so you can check it out yourself, and maybe I’ll review it all in a future newsletter.

Simple starts with emails that drive towards a core product action.

They send a few similar emails that all have the same CTA of “Add food”

I’m a free user and not paid, so the goal here for me is to engage and they know people who complete this early action see and experience value and ultimately, have a stronger likelihood of paying and retaining.

See their first welcome email below.

Simple also mentions building a habit around tracking and adding food daily.

• If open on desktop, it sends me to the home page to start their “onboarding quiz”

• If I open on mobile, this deep links into the food tracking module in the app

For the first 4-5 days, they send different variants of this same email with the same CTA.

Then, their strategy changes. Simple no longer tries to get you into the app and now is all focusing on driving you to their web to app onboarding funnel!

Even if I’m on mobile!!

If I’m in mobile, the deep link opens the app, but then immediately redirects to mobile web to go through a quiz flow which ends in a subscription purchase.

And there is no context, no prompt, just an instant web page that opens from the app.

This is quite counterintuitive to what is normally considered best practice. If someone is already in your app, don’t send them out into mobile web!

Now, we’re all aware that this recently become a much more viable strategy for apps operating in the US.

New rules: WTF does it all mean?

Did Simple recently implement this redirect so all email deep links now go to web?

I’m not sure. I only recently saw and discovered this behavior.

Today, I’ll show all the different types of unique emails they use.

This can serve as solid reference for ideas you can refer back to

1. Welcome email that drives toward core product action

   

2. “Take the test” email that helps users answers a question about themselves

   1. “Why can’t I lose weight?” ← this links towards a web onboarding funnel

   

3. Social proof email that leads to quiz flow

   1. “Lori lost x pound, Katie lost y pound, Owen lost Z pounds…”

   

4. Choose what plan is right for you

   1. Do you have different types of plans or content? Give users the choice on where they want to start

   2. Simple has different intermittent fasting timeframes to choose from

   

5. Get your personal plan

   1. “Take our quiz” → leads to web onboarding quiz flow that creates a “personalized” plan for you

   

6. Get something additional for free (and let users choose)

   1. “Get our fasting plan and get a free activity plan”

   

   

7. GIF with an animated progress bar to show progress or potential

   

   

   

8. “We’ve calculated you’re a 95% match for our personalized plan”

   1. As you can see, this also part of the above email, but you can think of these as two separate tactics

   2. This can repurposed to other messages like “Based on the data we have, we think you’re a good fit because x,y,z’

9. “We’ve reserved your plan for the next 48 hours”

   1. Or “We’ve reserved your custom plan and price for the next 48 hours.

   

10. Controversial: “We made a mistake in our last email”

    1. This will 100% get people opening your email - will it drive action? TBD. But I’ve seen brands send purposeful “mistake” emails

    

11. “Science-backed”

    1. This is of course is not relevant for all app types. It’s probably more relevant for health and fitness or education apps that try to usually have some science foundation

    

12. “Your updated plan is ready”

    1. People like new, can you send a message that shares what’s available to them is new or different?

    

13. Happy birthday email

    1. Not innovative, but always good to send if you have someone's birthday

    

14. Text based versions of all these emails

    1. Simple sends some emails that are well designed with images and HTML, but then they’ll send a simple email that has super basic HTML like a CTA and footer, but 99% is plain text with some emojis and formatting

    2. If you send well designed emails, you can 2x the variations of your email by turning those into similar simplified text versions

15. Last chance discount

    1. Almost all of Simple’s emails include a promo code anyway, but have specific discount emails that emphasize the sense of urgency is usually effective

So many emails!!

The main take away for me is that you can have way more diversity in your emails to try to monetize and convert users.

And for some apps driving towards the core product action first makes more sense, but after that, these users need an offer or a discount to really get started.

Check out the Whimsical board here to see all of Simple’s emails and their full web onboarding funnel

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