Sweaty Betty: Reaching Global Audiences

Sweaty Betty is a global women’s activewear and lifestyle brand based in London, UK. Since 1998, the brand’s mission has been to empower women through fitness and beyond.

The Challenge

Through the Let’s Go Outside challenge, Sweaty Betty encouraged Strava users to run, walk, or hike 40 kilometers over two weeks to redeem a “secret reward” (discount) and chance to win £1000 of Sweaty Betty gear. 

Why Strava?

As a women's activewear brand, Sweaty Betty was excited by the opportunity to reach a global audience interested in fitness. As Sweaty Betty wanted to further grow their brand recognition and customer base internationally, the ability to connect with different customers globally through Strava was a huge draw for a partnership, along with Strava and Sweaty Betty’s shared belief that fitness is empowering. They aimed to build on key brand moments, grow their global community of “Bettys”, and expand their CRM database. 

How did they promote the challenge outside of Strava?

In order to drive more challenge joins, Sweaty Betty promoted the Let’s Go Outside challenge across their organic & paid social channels, as well as through affiliate channels. They also organized some PR coverage for it, sent out specific challenge registration emails to members of their CRM database, and inserted challenge reminders into other emails to spur customers to sign up.

Impact

To drive sales from the challenge, Sweaty Betty rewarded Strava athletes who completed the challenge with a discount. Sweaty Betty kept their discount code live for six weeks after the challenge ended to incentivize reward redemptions and drive subsequent purchases. During those six weeks, Sweaty Betty saw an increase of three percent in online sales.

Future Learnings & Next Steps

Sweaty Betty recently launched a cycling challenge to promote their new collection of women’s cycling gear. Since Strava’s cycling community is huge and is seeing tremendous growth in female cycling participation, launching a cycling-specific challenge made a lot of sense. Focusing on their next Q1, Sweaty Betty is preparing for a January challenge to capitalize on the surge in exercise and fitness-related purchases accompanying the New Year. They are excited to reach new international audiences, as they’ve seen a lot of interest in various regions. For example, Sweaty Betty ended up expanding the targeted regions for the Let’s Go Outside challenge to Ireland and Canada, due to popular demand from Irish and Canadian Strava users. As a result, they are looking into how they can effectively expand their targeting to further focus on their growth regions, North America being a key one. They also plan on utilizing the additional in-feed and email promotions that Strava provides to bolster the success of a sponsored challenge. Sweaty Betty is actively brainstorming new ideas to make future Strava challenges even more engaging and exciting, and they are working on a fifth challenge.