Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
11 tactics from Greg Stewart
How to Use Segmentation to Maximize LTV — Greg Stewart, Ladder
Watch the full episode“LTV for us is a little too wishy-washy and too macro to make decisions on... we manage the day-to-day business on payback period which is a far cleaner very tangible metric that we can talk to the entire team about.”
Manage Day-to-Day Growth on Payback Period, Not LTV — It Is More Actionable
LTV requires years of cohort data to measure and changes as the product evolves, making it nearly useless for in-the-moment decisions. Ladder uses payback period — how much revenue is recouped at day 30, day 90, month 6, year 1 — as the operational metric. It is real-time, legible to the whole team, and directly connects spend decisions to cash flow dynamics.
“Fitness is easy where there's a natural retention metric which is workouts... everything that we build every feature that we contemplate inside the app is all aimed at incremental workout completions. High workouts equals high LTV so these things lead to LTV as an output metric.”
Pick a Behavioral North-Star Metric That Directly Predicts Revenue — For Ladder It Is Workout Completions
Instead of optimizing for LTV directly, Ladder found the single behavioral metric — workout completions — that is both within their control and highly predictive of retention and revenue. Every product decision runs through the filter of 'does this increase incremental workout completions?' Finding your app's equivalent (meditation sessions completed, recipes saved, journal streaks) makes product roadmaps self-prioritizing.
“We spent a lot of time defining at a very granular level who are the relevant personas for ladder... on one side of the spectrum we have Pilates influenced at home with a dumbbell with a lot of women who are newer to strength on the other side we have advanced gym goers full access to equipment.”
Define Granular Personas and Target Each One With Dedicated Creatives Before the Download
Ladder maps to two polar opposite personas — beginner home-workout women and advanced gym-goers — and creates distinct ad creatives, coaches, and team identities for each. This persona segmentation happens before the app download: the creative and quiz self-select users into the right program, so the product can immediately deliver on the promised experience rather than trying to serve everyone the same way.
“We have a 7-Day free trial we intentionally don't ask for a credit card upfront... let's use the product to move people through the funnel to do the selling to work people through one or two workouts then ultimately if that happens the likelihood to pay is very high.”
No Credit Card on Trial Forces the Product to Do the Selling — Not the Promise
Ladder launched without knowing a no-CC trial was unusual — they just reasoned that it was the better consumer experience. The result: the product has to earn the sale by delivering real value within the trial window. Greg's framing is precise: use the product to convince, don't get someone to pay and hope the product retains them. The no-CC trial removes the easy revenue shortcut and holds the team accountable to activation.
“Week one is an incredibly important kind of fork in the road for us you know we're solving for three workouts per week per member... if you're hitting that metric in the first week the odds of doing it again the second week are exponentially higher the odds of retaining at the end into one month if you're a monthly member are very high.”
Week-One Workout Completions Are a Highly Accurate Fork-in-the-Road Predictor
Ladder has quantified week-one behavior as a near-binary predictor of long-term retention. Three workouts in week one creates a compounding effect: high probability of week-two completion, high probability of month-one retention. This means Ladder concentrates most of its product iteration on that first seven days — getting users to their first and second workout as fast as possible is where the retention ROI is highest.
“For folks that complete zero workouts in trial we don't push annual... for those that have gotten through kind of key activation moments first workout second workout will introduce and socialize and lean into annual right before trial expires.”
Segment Annual vs Monthly Offers by Trial Activation — Zero Workouts Gets Monthly First
Ladder's paywall segmentation is elegantly simple: if a user completed at least one workout in trial, they understand the product's value proposition and are ready to commit to an annual plan. Zero-workout users don't yet understand why annual is worth it, so they are shown monthly first to lower the entry barrier. This one-dimensional segmentation (workout count) does the heavy lifting without complex ML.
“When we are close to the end of a trial for any user and you actually have completed a workout we'll first introduce the annual offer as a hey did you know you know there's a cheaper way on a monthly basis to purchase ladder you get a significant discount you get added features and you're committing yourself to a year which is good for motivation.”
Introduce Annual Plan Right Before Trial Expiry With Added Features, Not Just Lower Price
Timing and framing both matter for annual plan conversion. Ladder introduces the annual offer right before trial expiry — when the user has built habit and feels product value — and bundles it with added features plus a per-month price framing that makes the discount obvious. The commitment angle is also sold as a feature: committing to a year is good for your fitness motivation, not just your wallet.
“We correlated the number of cheers received to workout completions and long-term retention and so we realize the importance of this feature and people feeling like there are others that are doing it with them... we now use that to figure out how do we incentivize and increase the number of outbound cheers.”
Social Cheers Feature Correlates Directly With Workout Completions and Long-Term Retention
Ladder discovered that users who receive cheers from other members during workouts are significantly more likely to complete the workout and retain long-term. The mechanism is social accountability and belonging. Once identified, the team engineered an early-trial cheers boost — new users now receive more inbound cheers in their first days — to create the psychological connection before it forms naturally.
“If you stacked up all the time on iteration between activation in the product and using our product and levers that we know are correlated to workout completions versus iteration on deals it would probably be 90% product 10% deals.”
Spend 90% on Product Activation, 10% on Discounts — The Ratio Matters
Greg's team allocation ratio is a useful benchmark: 90% of iteration effort on product activation (increasing the percentage of users who complete their first and second workout) and only 10% on discount and coupon mechanics. Most teams invert this, mistaking conversion-rate lifts from price cuts for product-market fit. The activation-first approach builds durable retention; discount-first builds churn-prone cohorts.
“We program workouts on six week cycles we call them string series and they become like these great entry point moments into the product where you can tell a story about urgency saying you weren't here or it didn't make sense for you to join for the first string series but tomorrow is day one.”
Six-Week Program Cycles Create Natural "Day One" Urgency for Unconverted Leads
Ladder structures its workout content in six-week 'string series' cycles. When a new series starts, every unconverted lead in the database has a compelling, time-bound reason to join: it is genuinely day one, and starting alongside a cohort of other new members creates real momentum. This turns a content-production necessity into a recurring urgency-marketing mechanism that avoids manufactured scarcity.
“The $5 deal is a good example where folks who claim or take advantage of the $5 offer it's only about half of those that are retained in month two... that half clicks up to full price so they go five to $29.99 so the first month it's a really nice spike in user growth and in the second month it's growth in ARR.”
A $5 First-Month Intro Offer Retains About Half Into Month 2 at Full Price
Ladder's $5 introductory month offer targets the minority of unconverted trial users who never completed a workout — the highest-churn, lowest-context cohort. About 50% churn after month one, but those who stay step up to full price ($29.99), creating an ARR spike in month two even from a small subscriber cohort. The math works because the deal is reserved for a narrow segment, not applied broadly.