A short Description of how I would grow Headspaces subscriber base from a product management point of view.

1. APM Growth Project
By Dhiren Patel

2. First Step
Analysis & Research to define key areas for
optimization

3. Questions to
Ask

4. How is the Product Growing?
● What demographic, region is growing the fastest and which is
slow?
● Total New Users?
● New users by source?
● Understand what is driving new users and what’s not
● Activated users - someone who actually signed up or performed an
action.
● What experiments have produced growth previously, are they
replicable?
● What Lifetime value do they produce?

5. Is the trial member to subscriber optimized?
● How can we convert more people?
● What’s missing?
● Reason’s users are not converting to paid subscribers from user
surveys or NPS score comments.
○ Customer Development to better understand user needs and pain points
● I looked at articles online for this since I don’t have user
access aside from myself being a user.
● From Friends and family
○ Price was the common issue, because they’ll eventually have to
subscribe after 10 days.

6. What are the
Pain Points?

7. Learnings from Design for Health Event
● Users want more guidance because they don’t know what to do
after trial pack.
● What pack to start with and why?
● Too many options - Paradox of Choice
● Time isn’t a problem, it’s building a health routine.
● Most users didn’t make it past a week and are new to meditation.

8. Price?
Majority of review articles and my Family use this as a barrier to
continuing using headspace or even starting.
“You must pay for the service after completing the trial: Headspace costs
$12.99 per month, about $95.85 per year (listed as $7.99 per month, but billed
once annually), or $399.99 for lifetime access. That's expensive when compared
to other monthly services, like Spotify ($9.99 per month) and Netflix (also
$9.99 per month)”
“And the free approaches can also be better than what you'll find on
Headspace. Meditation is a highly personal thing. It's far easier to
personalize your practice using free guided meditations rather than using
Headspace's highly generalized approach”

9. Usability?
“It’s too introductory and simplified for me”
● First, ten days were too basic.
● Expert Meditators don’t find it compelling.

10. Creating a Habit is hard
“It is also hard to remember to work it every day, even with the
notifications that the app will send you. For someone who does not
have a racing mind, this will be the perfect app for you”

11. Second
Decide What Metrics to Measure

12. Growth Metrics
● Trial conversion rate vs regular trial journey
● Customer Acquisition Cost
● Customer Loyalty & Retention vs regular trial journey
● LTV
● Revenue
● ROI
● Subscriber growth
● Churn Reduction

13. Third
Direct Competitors

15. Feature Table
Similar Features
● Sleep
● Meditate
● Stress
● Happiness
Unique Features
● Mindful Movements
● Music vs Headspaces Sounds(More
targeted for sleep)
● Different people creating the
content vs one(Andy)
● Sleep stories are narrated by
Celebrities.

16. Facts
● The homepage has twitter reviews to validate the product.
● Ranked No.1 in revenue by SensorTower in Q1 2018
○ $8 Million in revenue
● Looking at 14-day user retention for U.S. users, both Headspace
& Calm retain about 7% of new downloads past that point, leading
us to infer about 7% of all installs end up becoming paying
customers at least for a month
● Subscription price: $12.99 monthly / $59.99 annual / $299
lifetime

17. 10% Happier

18. Feature Table
Similar Features
● Sleep
● Meditate
● Managing Stress
● Beginners
● Happiness
● etc.
Unique Features
● Videos by expert teachers, not
just one person
● 10% Happier lets you start a
"conversation" with experienced
meditators who typically reply
in a day.

19. Facts
● 300+ Video Lessons
● 500+ Meditations
● Has increased its In APP Purchase revenue 179% YOY
● Subscription price: $11.99 monthly / $79.99 annual

20. Simple Habit

21. Feature Table
Similar Features
● Sleep
● Meditate
Unique Features
● Simple Habit has a list of
"featured teachers" and their
meditation sessions so users
can explore different styles
and personalities.

22. Facts
● Only an app
● Recently raised a Series A - $10Million
● Ranks 4th on highest revenue according to SensorTower
● 3rd most popular Meditation App behind Calm and Headspace
● The website has no info outside of downloading the App
● Subscription price: $11.99 monthly / $96 annual / $299 lifetime

23. Fourth
Draw out reasonable assumptions from analysis and
research

24. Price seems to
be the biggest
issue

25. Potential Solutions
● Offer lower priced subscription for the holidays as a 3-month
fee to get them over the hump and get a sense of the full
product features.
● Cheaper price if a buddy refers you.
● Can be A/B tested vs normal offering
● Can eventually see if the LTV of the user is worth the limited
time deal.
● Is it driving new users?
● Are they activated users?
● Talk to finance and management about which of these solutions
are doable.
● Some competitors have similar price, so lower prices could drive
users to Headspace

26. Seasoned
Meditators
find the intro
pack to basic.

27. Run a test
Can do a quick survey to get real data points to validate this
through an email or an alert in-app asking users to whether they are
beginners, intermediate, or advanced mediators when they sign up.
● Do those that more intermediate and advanced decide not to
subscribe after ten days?

28. Validate with data
● Does your research validate people finding it to basic.
● If you find this assumption to be true - run a growth
experiment by:
● Segmenting those that have intermediate and advanced experience
and A/B test those users by providing different experiences and
see who is more likely to convert to a subscription.
○ A - regular customer journey through 10-day trial
○ B - Access to more advanced packs in the 10 - day trial

29. Potential
Solutions for
seasoned
users

30. Auto Generate certain packs for each group.
Can ask them during their journey what level they are and suggest
some packs for them:
● For example, can use the Level 1-2 course for the Intermediate
group and 3-4 for the advanced.
○ Since some packs are 30 days long, they might be incentivized to
subscribe so they finish all 30-days of the pack they chose

31. Sample
Wireframe

32. User
Guidance
Solution

33. Help user get more guidance by asking them questions
● Create an alert that asks the user about how they are feeling
after they initially subscribe
○ To help them figure out which pack, to begin with after the intro
pack.
● Based on their answer guide them to a few suggestions
● EX. I'm feeling anxious
○ Managing Anxiety pack
○ Letting go of Stress
○ SoS - Feeling overwhelmed
● Can look like the wireframe.
● Can A/B test doing this every ten days or every 2 weeks because
people drop off after that period.

34. Fifth
How we Can Market the New features

35. Holiday Pricing
Run and Email Campaign to users that did not convert to trial with
the new Holiday offering. - A/B test different content
● Black Friday
● Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali
Social Media
● Similar to the Thanksgiving campaign for talking with fam.
● AdWords/FB ads campaign to target new users that have shown
interest in meditation or mental health.

36. Seasoned Users Campaign
Level your meditation practice with Headspace
● If you’re able to segment old users based on why they quit using
the app or didn’t convert the trial based on it being to basic
for seasoned users.
○ Target those people with an Email campaign about having a
customizable headspace experience for your level.
○ How headspace helps you keep the habit.
○ Advertise Headspace Pro Levels to them and Meditation Essentials
sections.
● Social Media campaign about how Headspace is more customizable
for the intermediate to expert meditators.

37. User Guidance
Social Media Campaign
● “For those looking for more guidance on meditation, we’ve…”
● Quick video of feature suggesting packs or singles based on how
user is feeling.
Email Campaign
● User’s that didn’t convert showing the feature
○ Can A/B test a few ideas to see what drives the most growth

38. Sixth
ROI on Projects

39. Worth the time?
● Talk to engineers, management, design, research, and science to
the team to really dig into whether it's a good idea and how
much time and MVP of this feature would take.
○ Where does it fall on the priority list?
○ How much ENG time and design time will it take?
○ How much time away from research and product will it take away?
○ Is the ROI worth it is our estimations?
● Asses how much time this will take from Marketing & Analytics
teams and if it’s a good use of their time.
● Ultimately how much money will be spent on making each of these.

40. Bonus Ideas
Woo!

41. Buddy pat on the Back
A really cool feature to have in-app would be a notification that
tells your buddy reached a milestone with the ability to
congratulate them! This would keep the user more engaged by
positively reinforcing the behavior of meditating! You can also,
send an email asking users to congratulate their buddy on their
milestone as well.

42. Influencer Favorites/Albums
I use Apple Music and they have albums by Celebrities and Athletes
like Lebron’s Unbreakable Playlist. Something similar could be used
as a growth experiment to leverage influencers like Serena Williams,
Kevin Love, or Jeff Wiener to create custom “Album” of their
favorite packs they use to help prepare them for the challenges they
face.
Can help new users overcome the guidance issue.

43. The End
Thank you!