156% More App Subscribers in Six Months! Here’s How We Did It

Summary

Perpetual Traffic Episode Summary

Episode Title: 156% More App Subscribers in Six Months! Here’s How We Did It
Podcast Host: Ralph Burns, Tier 11
Date: April 21, 2026

Overview

This episode dives deeply into the challenge of driving new customer acquisition and scaling membership app subscriptions for a niche recreation community—disguised playfully as “Dragon Boating.” The team at Tier 11 takes listeners behind the scenes of a campaign that achieved a 156% increase in app subscribers in just six months, revealing actionable strategies centered on data analysis, geographic and behavioral segmentation, and hyper-personalized marketing. The episode also explores how to avoid frustrating existing customers with redundant ads, and how granular targeting and creative localization can unlock new growth—even when you think you’ve “tapped out” your market.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Market Challenge—Perceived Saturation

• Initial Client Belief: Client believed they’d “conquered TAM” (total addressable market), unable to find new profitable customers at scale.
• Membership and Community Play: Their business centers around a nationwide niche recreation membership site, with a strong community and a dedicated app.
• High Gross Profits due to digital products, but growth was plateauing.
  • “We just got stuck and we can’t find new customers. That was the real problem.” – Tom [03:07]

2. Data Deficiency & Segmentation Issues

• Inability to Segment Effectively: The client couldn’t accurately distinguish between new and returning customers in platforms like Meta due to lack of advanced tracking/tools.
  • “Unless you actually have...CAPI imports or you have Tier 11 data suite, you really don’t know who your new customers are, who your returning customers are.” – Tom [02:15]
• Frustrated Existing Customers: Ads were being served repeatedly to current members, causing annoyance and wasted spend.
  • “Meta should not be shoveling down a product you already bought...I already bought it! Back off.” – Lauren [08:32]

3. NCAC (New Customer Acquisition Cost) Tracking and Granularity

• First Critical Fix: Establishing accurate NCAC (new customer acquisition cost) and analyzing it with state and regional specificity.
  • “Not every state is a target...People in Nebraska are not your customer unless they’re traveling [to the right states].” – Tom [09:40]
• Breakdown by Geography: Instead of thinking nationally, the agency drilled down to state and even local levels, identifying where real opportunity and profitability existed.
  • “They had never really broken down, like, which state is the most profitable or which state has the largest potential.” – Tom [11:11]
• Tools Used: NCAC calculators, Tier 11’s data suite with enhanced CAPI imports for better attribution.

4. Hyper-Localized Creative and Messaging

• Local Geography in Ads: By incorporating visual and linguistic cues relevant to specific locales into the ad creative, they boosted relevance and engagement.
  • “Shot footage of bodies of water specifically that are unique to that locale...” – Tom [13:15]
  • “Even in the ad copy...using some of the local lingo—this is next level targeting for the ideal customer profile.” – Tom [14:01]
  • “If you talk to everyone, no one is listening. And here we’re saying, I’m personalizing my campaign and making it relevant for the end user.” – Lauren [14:50]

5. Rediscovering Audience Headroom

• Market Untappedness: Comparison to other niche communities showed there was plenty of unexplored headroom, despite initial fears of market saturation.
  • “You guys are nowhere close to tapping out your market.” – Tom [16:58]
• Meta Audience Insights: Data analysis showed only a fraction of potential audience had been reached; personalization and CRM integrity were key to unlocking new segments.

6. Hook Optimization & Offer Usage

• Winning Ad Hooks: Problem-solution style hooks targeting unique pain points for each region and sub-niche performed best in attracting new signups.
  • “That hook—where to find X—was the big problem. We identified that as the ad type, with regional copywriting and dialect.” – Tom [17:34]
• Activation of Underused Resources: Leveraged a feature-rich app as a core offer to drive fresh engagement and subscriptions.

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Results & Measurable Impact

• App Subscribers: 156% increase within six months.
• Total Subscribers: 52.7% increase year-over-year.
• Web Subscribers: ~20% increase year-over-year (during a price increase).
• Active Subscribers: Grew from ~3,000 to nearly 10,000.
  • “You see active subscribers going from about 3,000 to nearing 10,000.” – Tom [20:46]
• Key Growth Levers: Data-driven audience segmentation, hyper-local creative, focusing on underutilized app as an entry point, and tighter CRM integration.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Granularity:
  “If you talk to everyone, no one is listening. And here we’re saying, I’m personalizing my campaign and making it relevant for the end user.” – Lauren [14:50]

• On New Customer Acquisition:
  “They didn’t know what was the cost to acquire a new customer...Let’s get that up as high as we possibly can that it still makes sense for you and you guys are profitable, including our fees.” – Tom [19:38]

• On Avoiding Customer Fatigue:
  “Meta should not be shoveling down a product you already bought...I already bought it! Back off.” – Lauren [08:32]

• On Untapped Potential:
  “You guys are nowhere close to tapping out your market.” – Tom [16:58]

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Key Timestamps

• [03:06] Challenge—Market Saturation & Cost to Acquire
• [07:12] Membership site model – all the “money models” behind it
• [09:20] Targeting by state and understanding local/regional opportunity
• [13:15] Hyper-local creative strategy (filming local bodies of water, using regional lingo)
• [17:34] Ad hook analysis; winning “where to find X” hooks with regional relevance
• [19:07] Year-over-year results: 52.7% total subs, 20% web, 156% app
• [20:46] Active subscribers jump from 3,000 to 10,000

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Takeaways for Marketers & Growth Leaders

• Get hyper-granular in your targeting: State- and region-level breakdowns can reveal untapped segments and more efficient ad spend.
• Leverage creative localization: Use language, imagery, and references authentic to each micro-community.
• Solve real problems in your hooks: Regional relevance amplifies conversion rates.
• Don’t rely solely on national targeting: Even in “saturated” markets, plenty of headroom remains with better segmentation and messaging.
• Audit unused features: The app was underused, but turned into a powerful lead driver when repositioned and promoted correctly.
• Integrate your CRM and ad tracking: Accurate attribution and exclusion of existing customers is key to avoiding wasted spend and customer fatigue.

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Pro Tip:
“If you don’t know your numbers, you have no numbers to know...it doesn’t make—you don’t have a business if you don’t know your own numbers.” – Lauren [12:07]

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Listen to the full episode for graphs, deeper walkthroughs, and bonus campaign teardowns at perpetualtraffic.com!

Transcript

[Tom]

Hey, real quick. Before we dive in, if you've got

[Alex]

a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. So head on over to perpetualtraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show.

[Lauren]

How might we acquire new customers without pissing our existing ones off?

[Tom]

Unless you actually have this thing that we call CAPI imports or you have tier 11 data suite, you really don't know who your new customers are, who your returning customers are. So we're going to show you some graphs inside their membership platform. So the first thing that we did is. You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hey, real quick.

[Alex]

If you're looking to get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2. Get in front of a quarter of a million marketers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetualtraffic.com for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply.

[Tom]

If you have a great product or something in a space like these guys do, where there is a starving crowd, as Harmozi says, you should create some kind of community and monetize it in one way, shape or form into a continuity program. So the problem with these folks were that they had a high market saturation penetration, or so they thought.

[Lauren]

Okay.

[Tom]

They were nationwide. They sell these products, they sell this membership site in this recreation niche. Okay. Rabid, you know, fans of this particular recreational activity. Specific.

[Lauren]

You're a fan. I'm like, it's like we're just gonna pretend it's Dragon Boating. Right. Like if you're the Dragon boating community, you're like, you know this space.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Lauren]

If you're not in the Dragon boating community, you have no idea that there's 20 people competing plus a drummer. Unless you watch that aura farming like 10 year old. Right.

[Tom]

So drag. Well, Dragon Boating continuity. See, there you go.

[Lauren]

There are, there are memberships of Dragon Boating continuity plans. There totally are. It's a huge part. Like there's more people that watch the Duanmu Festival than people that watch the Super Bowl. It's just we're isolated to the United States and our Monacoma space. It's like how no one thinks about singles day being like the biggest, biggest sales day of the year while the US we just think about Black Friday. Anyways, it's okay. We live in our world, a bubble of this alleged Dragon Boating recreational membership community again. What you're saying, though, is that this is set up for. When you're in the space, you have a place to geek out with other rabid fans. Because not everyone gets Dragon Boating.

[Tom]

Not everyone does. But know, maybe this could be in the Dragon Boating space. So problem that they have here is, like I said, high market saturation penetration. So they felt when they came to us, like, we think we've got everybody. We've targeted everybody in the US who could buy our stuff. We're like, so they've.

[Lauren]

They've conquered tam. There is.

[Tom]

They thought that they had. They're like, we've sort of reached. We got to this great level. It's great business, but we just got stuck and we can't find new customers. So that is the. That was the real problem. So not being able to acquire new customers at a cost. That made sense as soon as they scaled, all of a sudden their NCAC or their. We actually had to figure out their ncac. They didn't really know their NCAC to start off, which is fine cost to acquire a new customer. So we determined that. We went through sort of a very deep level analysis for that, figured out what that number would be. And with a membership site, you know, you're selling digital products, so your gross profit is pretty high.

[Lauren]

Yeah. Your labor is not as intense, so you're able to scale faster. I mean, you do increase your staff when you're managing, you know, every 50 or 5,000 members, you need to bring on additional customer service. Individual. But yeah, your cogs are pretty healthy at scale.

[Tom]

Yeah. The basis of this is there's actually, I forgot to mention, there's a software in this to help these users, you know, in their pursuit of that recreational activity, which is a tremendous software which.

[Lauren]

Like an app.

[Tom]

Yep. We use in their ads to sort of attract people into the community. But they get the community.

[Lauren]

Yeah. And also Dragon Boating paddle app. Like, you can see how many strokes you get in a minute and you can track how often you do it. I got it. The Strava of paddleboarding.

[Tom]

Yeah. So and then you got on the back end, you've got E Commerce. Like we're sending or we're selling them more paddles. I don't know.

[Alex]

Different paddles.

[Lauren]

You need a knee pad for those that don't know. There's a difference between rowing and paddling.

[Tom]

Is there?

[Lauren]

Row. You go backwards. When you paddle, you face the direction that you're entering. Your Device into the water.

[Tom]

Yeah, just watch out. Don't like, you know, destroy your mic. Clang. Anyway, you have to be. So

[Lauren]

you know the word obfigious.

[Tom]

Obfuscate, Obvious.

[Lauren]

Obs. Anyways, that word to hide all this information. So let's keep going.

[Tom]

All right, we're doing it. We're doing it. So anyway, inability to segment new users or customers and targeting. So big problem, especially in meta right now is unless you actually have this thing that we call Capi Imports or you have a tier 11 data suite, you really don't know who your new customers are, who your returning customers are. So the point is, is that if you were already a customer, meta in most cases is going to target those people, even if you put them in as exclusions. They were having a very hard time segmenting out new potential prospects in their targeting and they were just serving their ads at a very, very high frequency to people who've already bought. So they're super frustrated and their members were getting super frustra. Yeah, there was that. They had good creatives, but I think they needed some help from a strategy standpoint for identifying winning creatives based upon the point before that, which is, all right, which creatives are attracting new customers? So we had to figure that sort of stuff out. At the heart of all this is really is data and reporting. So we needed to figure out what their NCAC is. So in our first three weeks or so, their growth strategist, we went through the whole spreadsheet, you know, sharing the P and L. You know, obviously there's confidential information. So I mean, we typically will get sort of a summarized P and L. But anyway, we'll figure out exactly what your gross profitability is, what you want from your net, all of that. We use the NCAT calculator, which you can get over at 211.comforward/NCAC, of course. So we figured that out with the advice of our growth strategist and we really focused on new customer acquisition. And the big thing was new customer signups for the membership site. And on the back end, obviously, is the E commerce side, sort of pull them in with the app as well. So it was just a whole strategy component that just really wasn't in place. And they had a great business leveraging

[Lauren]

all the money models throwing back to Alex that they had in the system. So essentially you're saying how might we acquire new customers without pissing our existing ones off and introducing them to the suite of offers and products available to them, whether they join the membership or Just tap into these resources.

[Tom]

Yeah, this is a very common problem, like on every call that I'm ever on. Like, I'm sure for you too, this is the big problem. Like, I can't acquire new customers or I don't know, like, cost effectively.

[Lauren]

They're like, how do I penetrate a new market where it doesn't blow out my budget? Because there's two ways to bankrupt a business, right? Either bankrupt them by overspending on staff or overspending on marketing. And that's the fear where people will mess it up. So it's like, yeah, I want to acquire new customers at a reasonable cost. I don't often get that without pissing off my existing customers. Because you were saying that that frequency is like that importance of where with Andromeda and all this type of stuff, like everything in Meta we've talked about many times is essentially a master retargeting ecosystem of ads.

[Tom]

Hey, quick heads up.

[Alex]

If you're marketing to marketers, this is

[Tom]

where you want to be.

[Alex]

Sponsor Perpetual Traffic and get seen and heard by thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. We get hundreds of thousands in downloads every single month, all to marketers. So go to perpetual traffic.com to apply

[Tom]

for a spot on the show in

[Alex]

Q1 or Q2 of 2026.

[Lauren]

And it's. You want to have some control because Meta should not be shoveling down a product you already bought. Down my throat, I'm like, I already bought it back off. That's how I feel about Live Fresh right now. I'm like, stop advertising to me. I have four months worth of toothpaste.

[Tom]

I know. Yeah.

[Lauren]

So I feel for these dragon boaters in this.

[Tom]

Dragon boaters, exactly. The fictitious dragon boating space. Yes. So those were the issues that we found very, very common. So the first thing that we did is we did our NCAC tracking setup and we categorized it. This is very important with. Not a lot of people do this. So in this case, these enthusiasts are in specific geographies that are relating to certain bodies of water.

[Lauren]

Okay.

[Tom]

So the point is, is that not every state is a target. So if you live in a state where you don't have this specific type of body of water in that.

[Lauren]

So you're talking about like a puddle versus a lake, or is it like salt water versus fresh water versus be

[Tom]

any of those things? Like, I'm not going to give it away.

[Lauren]

Water, waterfalls.

[Tom]

Right. Somebody in Florida is a very good target, whereas somebody in Nebraska. Not a good target, if you get my drift.

[Lauren]

Great.

[Tom]

So they Were targeting everyone. They weren't going by state. So the one of the first things that we did is we're like, all right, well let's think about the business. People in Nebraska are not your customer unless they're traveling to Florida and, or Massachusetts or wherever it happens to be. So. And there was also a seasonal component to this as well. So there's a lot of different factors and they never really thought about that. So then we looked at by state, what is their NCAC by state, new customer cost to acquire a customer.

[Lauren]

Okay, so you're taking it down. You're dialing back from the federal level to the state level. Instead of focusing on the national coverage, you're dialing down into the hyper specificity at the state level. Because the water recreation areas that they're participating on, they are very well known to that hyper localized community. But I can't tell you about anything in Nebraska versus I can tell you

[Tom]

all about Wekiva and I can tell you about Wekiva. Yes. But that's all right. Yeah.

[Lauren]

Because you're not in Florida. You're not.

[Tom]

I'm not in Florida. Sorry, sorry. I'm in Massachusetts. But you know, we are both surrounded by water. Salt water, that is. Anyway, the point is, is that they had never really broken this down and they all of a sudden had never really broken down, like which state is the most profitable or which state has the largest potential.

[Lauren]

Oh, they didn't know the importance of their priority markets. Oh, that's hard. Oh, dang, that's hard.

[Tom]

So, but the data was so cloudy, we installed tier 11 data suite. We did. You know, this, one of the processes of this is CAPI imports. So we can basically figure out who's a new customer who is not a new customer. So in most cases, like, you know, they were, they were on track because most of the folks that they're targeting are potential new customers, but they didn't have a level of granularity. So like I said before, current customers were also being targeted by ads, which wasn't as big of an issue. The point is like, they didn't really know geographically where the real sweet spots were, where. Where were the most lucrative enthusiasts. And so we broke this down literally state by state by state and then created an NCAC almost specifically for each state. Didn't fluctuate all that much. Okay, okay.

[Lauren]

So because they might want to do like, like additional marketing. Right. Are they present at specific trade shows that these Dragon Motors could be attending? Are they going to festivals where Dragon Motors are competing like, where do you invest deeper into markets that you can acquire new customers faster and cheaper. So like this type of stuff while you're doing it for the digital side, it's like mission critical to know your numbers because if you don't know your numbers, you have no numbers to know. Like it doesn't make you don't have a business if you don't know your own numbers because that way it allows you to. I mean, I say this with sensitivity to Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Everyone defaults to the big three, Google, Meta and TikTok for their advertising when there's still a lot of local opportunities or stuff. Like we said this what you do with your first $10,000, knowing which states to penetrate to and knowing the trends of that state can open up diverse advertising channels that may make sense for you.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah. And even going down to like the regional level and you'll see and we'll share some of the ads here. I'm not sure how much I can really show you, but I'll show you sort of an example of a couple of the ads. We even went down from like state and then to the local geography.

[Lauren]

Love that.

[Tom]

And then in that local geography actually shot footage of bodies of water specifically that are unique to that locale.

[Lauren]

Amazing. You added relevant creative hooks through landmark visual cues that enhance. I mean we do that a lot. And we'll even have like the copy language because if you think of someone in NorCal, if you hear someone say like hella, you know they're from NorCal, right. And if you hear someone say like a boot or there's different like vocal cues, language cues, landmark cues that act as really good creative hooks to have you stand out above the competition. So you leverage those getting down to the regionalized level again. If you had Wekiva Island, I would recognize it. You have no idea. But I hear you on this.

[Tom]

Yeah, totally. And you know, even in the ad copy. And we'll show some of the ads here. Like we are even using some of the local lingo. Like this is, this is next level targeting for the ideal customer profile.

[Lauren]

So we, I would argue it's past level because I'd say this is Mad Men era. This is how you did marketing before digital marketing and like Facebook and click funnels made it so easy to just like spray and pray massively what you like. People just took their digital billboards and made it so they were talking to everyone and it was easy to make money for a while. But now you're going back to like foundational marketing.

[Tom]

Yeah. I mean, if you really think about it, okay, like, the enthusiast in Southern California is extremely different than the enthusiast for this in Alabama, for sure.

[Lauren]

And they have different things that they're thinking about. Different, like ways that they're competing where their dollars are being spent. And so if you talk to everyone, no one is listening. And here we're saying, I'm being intentional. I'm personalizing my campaign and making it relevant for the end user. And that's where, like, you and I have said a lot, you will win with advertising, especially in the world of AI, when you're as personalized and as relevant as you can to who they are in relationship to your brand and who they are in relationship to your CRM. Which is where, again, going back to what you said, the people who are existing customers, the relationship with the CRM is they were already bought, so that relationship wasn't personalized or relevant to them. It was annoying.

[Tom]

It is annoying. Hey, quick heads up.

[Alex]

If you're marketing to marketers, this is

[Tom]

where you want to be.

[Alex]

Sponsor Perpetual Traffic and get seen and heard by thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. We get hundreds of thousands in downloads every single month, all to marketers. So go to perpetual traffic.com to apply

[Tom]

for a spot on the show in

[Alex]

Q1 or Q2 of 2026.

[Tom]

Well, that wasn't the biggest issue, but that was like, the real issue is like, they just didn't know what they didn't know. And the question that they had, I think it was our first call because this is obviously this a friend of mine that is now a customer of our. But the point was, is he was like, am I tapped out in my market? And I gave him the example of my buddy on Cape Cod, my fishing Cape Cod, my buddy Ryan Collins, which, you know, we were talking about this yesterday, I think, is that he has a membership site for Cape Cod in this particular niche, and he has 2,000 members, which bloats up to like 4,000 members.

[Lauren]

So if he doesn't. This individual, this dragon boat company, if he didn't have at least 4,000, then no way did he conquer his town.

[Tom]

Exact. Well, exactly. But if you think about, like, Cape Cod is tiny.

[Lauren]

Exactly.

[Tom]

Tiny, tiny, tiny little area. And it's literally, it's Cape Cod Bay. That's what he actually markets to. He doesn't even market outside of. So it's a market inside a market inside a market. And he's got 4,000 of these enthusiasts

[Lauren]

are in the niches.

[Tom]

Absolutely. And you Got I was like, you guys are nowhere close to tapping out your market.

[Lauren]

Great.

[Tom]

So subject matter expertise certainly does help here. But also we were looking at some of the audiences inside meta. We're like, oh my God, like they've barely scratched the surface. You just need to have good data to be able to target the right people with the right message to the locale that makes the most sense. Them speaks their language.

[Lauren]

So the creative helps curate the audience 100%. That helps allow them to penetrate new markets. And especially with Andromeda, like that's what Zuckerberg wants. He wants again, that personalization and the relevancy. I want to know that you're talking to me, Lauren Elizabeth of Trullo.

[Tom]

Yep. And no one else.

[Lauren]

Yeah. Make it all about me. My favorite subject.

[Tom]

Okay, so speaking of making it about you, what we did notice is that we went back, we did an analysis of all their ads that have worked well. They didn't have this regional targeting or any of that sort of stuff, which is fine. So that's one of the things that we obviously did. But we also looked at what was the hook that was bringing in what we felt like according to in platform metrics were the strongest hooks and it was clear there was one or two. And we'll show them here in just a second. I don't know how much we can show them, but it was really problem based. It was like this enthusiast has this specific problem because they see it inside their membership site and they know that that's the big problem. So that hook, like where to find X was the big problem. We identified that hook as the ad type or the hook hook with regional copywriting, regional lingo, regional dialect that then targets these people that all had the same problem but spoke to them in a slightly different way. If they're from Southern California or they're from Alabama.

[Lauren]

Makes sense. Yeah. Because if they're in LA F the 405, you know that it's going to take you two hours just to be able to participate in this recreational activity.

[Tom]

Right.

[Lauren]

And so you're concerned about like, I need to be on the road by X time. Whereas in Alabama you might be walking or biking or like just be have this as your backyard. So again, you're getting into that personalization and what that allowed you to do. What I'm looking at here for those that don't see online, is we have a 52.7% increase of total subscribers year over year.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Lauren]

Almost 20% increase of web subscribers year over year with a price increase so they've made more money and acquired more customers and had 156% increase in app subscribers. So that was leveraging one of the money models. One of the resources that was probably heavily invested in that was just sitting on the side. Like, I built this really beautiful thing and it's so helpful, but no one's using it. And you're like, hold on, let me use it, let me get it in front of the right people. Because they would love to have this app or software.

[Tom]

Yeah. So the app, the subs, the subscribers, all of this incredible growth within six months. Just, just these changes alone, like most of these changes are not even really media buying related. They're just like, let's think about the business critically and let's try and figure out how to solve X problem, which is we've had flat growth the last three years. We feel like we've tapped out our market. They didn't know any of these numbers. They didn't know what was the cost to acquire a new customer. Like, let's get that up as high as we possibly can. That and it still makes sense for you. And you guys are profitable, you know, including our fees. And they're like, great. So we figured out that we hinted at the results, obviously, great results. Here we're going to show you some graphs inside their membership platform. So here are the results. And once again, if you're not watching this over on professionaltraffic.com YouTube, I highly recommend that you do so. But actually this is. You see active subscribers going from about 3,000 to nearing 10,000.

[Lauren]

You've been listening to perpetual traffic.