How StepSetGo Enriches Its Content and Builds Its In-App Community with Storyly

Challenges

StepSetGo is a fitness reward app that encourages users to stay fit and meet their step goals by converting steps into SSG Coins that can be spent in the in-app Bazaar. Users can get products, discounts, and services in the Bazaar without spending actual money. Since 2019, StepSetGo has been on a mission to make fitness accessible to anyone; today, they have over 1 million monthly active users in India, where healthy lifestyle awareness is on the rise.

StepSetGo marketers were aware that they needed an effective solution to increase their in-app engagement and to ramp up the way they communicate with their users. Without stories, SSG marketers were limited to push notifications and pop-up messages, both of which can be intrusive and only offer one-way communication and message delivery. These restrictions resulted in SSG marketers not being able to understand which type of content works best or understand customer needs. Seeing the merit in the addictive, mobile-born story format, the SSG team was already thinking about developing an in-house story feature that would assist them with overcoming these challenges.

But then they found Storyly! Once they understood the ease of Storyly’s integration, the smooth and seamless user experience it provides, and the vast variety of powerful features it offers, they did not hesitate, dropping in-house development and proceeding with the integration of Storyly. Since then they’ve never looked back and are delighted with the results!

Solutions

#1 Delivering Content Smarter By Feeling the Pulse of The Audience

StepSetGo positioned Storyly as the core channel of communication with its users. Storyly gives SSG marketers the ability to connect with their users more often, and with enriched content experiences. A wide range of people from different demographics and experience levels use the SSG app. With Storyly, SSG marketers can engage their users with relevant content. These might include educational videos about the health benefits of walking, or influencer content encouraging users to reach their goals. The addition of stories helps SSG fulfill their brand mission of making fitness more accessible, while dramatically improving their in-app engagement.

The non-intrusive and mobile native nature of full-screen stories makes it possible for SSG marketers to understand what content works best for their audience. Thanks to Storyly, SSG marketers are no longer limited in the frequency of audience communications by the need to minimize disruption. Instead, they can experiment with content styles and communication frequency without sacrificing user experience.

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#2 Improving Retention and App Stickiness Through Gamification and Community Building

Gamification is a popular brand strategy that actively engages userswhile improving retention rates. By using Storyly’s interactive features, SSG marketers create trivia experiences with rewards. They ask questions to their users, conduct quizzes, and, in return, give prizes to their users by using the custom parameter feature of Storyly. They track the answers of the users and send this data to the SSG app to give the users SSG coins based on their answers. The gamification experience that they create with Storyly creates a habit for their users to open the app on a daily basis, increasing app stickiness, brand investment, and user retention.

Besides creating its own content, SSG takes it one step further and uses Storyly as a social layer where stories from the community are shared. Without any effort spent on building complex social features, SSG achieves a hint of sociality by leveraging Storyly to build their community. For example, transformation and steppers of the week stories encourage users to stay active in their lives and in the app.

#3 Leveraging Storyly Impact Through Premium Brand Partnerships

Now that the SSG app has a lot more space to publish content, the team is able to monetize their stories with brand partnerships. Monetization with Storyly is a much more engaging ad experience with the vertical video format where users are more likely to take action. This contributes to the success of the sponsored content and improves the revenue that the SSG app earns from these partnerships. 

Since the story format is so successful on social apps and provides a rich canvas for brands to convey their messages, it is easy for SSG marketers to convince brands to place ads on stories. Advertisers gain the ability to reach their potential customers when they are most likely to engage with their content in an app they love, and SSG gets an excellent return on their investment. 

So far, the SSG app has monetized stories with top brands like Amazon Prime and CoinSwitch Kuber. The branded stories include videos as well as interactive components which elevates the ad experience for users. Storyly opens a world of possibilities for sponsored content and increasing app revenue.

Results

As soon as Storyly went live in the SSG app, their users started to consume and interact with stories. The engagement rate of stories is above 45% and the CTR of stories where users are guided to the Bazaar is around 20%, much higher than push notifications. Storyly is a perfect solution for the SSG marketing team to share relevant content with their users and guide them to the desired actions. For the brand partnerships where users were directed to the subscription page, the CTRs were above 20%. Ad experiences that are created with Storyly performed much better than traditional ad channels as brands could reach users at the right place at the right time with a compelling narrative.

SSG marketers love Storyly and their users love the in-app story experience! We bet new best practices are just around the corner with SSG.