Taking the pulse on Consumer Apps
Issue 68 l Eka’s Weekly Roundup (29 March 2024)
A few weeks ago, Revenue Cat published its annual State of Subscription Apps report. The report covers 30k+ subscription apps, generating $7b of tracked revenue, and touching 290m+ subscribers.
We pick out five charts from the Health & Fitness sections to illustrate trends in 1) pricing, 2) plan duration, 3) lifetime value, 4) retention rates, and 5) reactivation rates.
Deep diving on Health & Fitness app performance 🗞️
1. Health & Fitness price points are mid-range compared to other app categories
On average, categories have standardized pricing around $4.99 per week, $9.99 per month, and $29.99 for an annual subscription. Health & Fitness (H&F) apps are on average marginally higher than this, but not by much.
The median is actually quite close to the average (not shown in the image below but included in the report, linked above).
2. Health & Fitness plans over-index to yearly formats
Close to 70% of H&F plans are yearly, compared to other categories like gaming which have 70% of apps falling under one-week plan durations.
One reason for the longer H&F plan duration could be that fitness goals are longer-term in nature compared to other app categories.
3. These apps have by far the highest realised lifetime value
Health & Fitness tops this chart by a mile. They have close to 6x more RLTV (realised lifetime value) after D14 and D60 compared to the average, and by x3 compared to the second highest category.
Interestingly, the category also has higher than average refund rates (second only to Education). It is unclear if LTV relates below to revenue pre or post refunds but we assume that the trend holds directionally.
4. Yearly retention rates struggle compare to generalist app categories
This is a tricky chart to unpack, but essentially: the left bucket is 1 week plans (P1W), the middle bucket is 1 month plans (P1M), and the top bucket closest to the right hand side is 1 year plans (P1Y).
We can see a significant change between bottom quartile and top quartile performance for H&F: 21% compared to 4% year 1 retention.
Additionally, H&F 1 year apps perform slightly worse compared to all categories which may be because of the (1) higher spend on these apps, (2) potentially lower engagement towards the tail end of the plan, or (3) higher levels of competition in the H&F category.
5. Reactivation is a tough hurdle for Health & Fitness
On almost all plan durations, Health & Fitness apps struggle to reactivate consumers compared to the benchmark by a few percentage points.
Week in Impact Articles ✍🏽
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Thursday: Are solid-state batteries finally ready to live up to the hype?
Friday: Clearer and faster: 5-minute MRI on the horizon
3 Key Charts 📊
1. The top 10 EV companies make up 65% of the overall market
2. CleanTech tracker shows high commitments to SAFs and clean hydrogen production (source for the geeks)
3. Only a matter of time: Novice founders take twice as long to attract first funding round compared to serial founders
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Estia, this is incredibly helpful insight into Health & Fitness apps. Great stuff! Thank you.