Komoot- updating marketing cta's, replacing face-to-face events and rescheduling launches

Amsterdam, July 6th, 2020 - While many industries are struggling to keep their heads above water, the cycling industry is one of the few industries that is booming right now. So as the era of Corona carries on and 2020’s paradigm-shifting pandemic remains a theme of nearly every conversation, the team here at Twotone decided to make a concerted effort to really understand how our clients have been affected by Covid-19. Has it actually been a blessing in disguise for our clients and the industry at large? What adversity has been overcome and how did they do it? We asked five of our clients one question: “What are the top 3 changes you’ve made to run your business to accommodate corona conditions?”. We hope these insights will help you understand what has been going on in the cycling industry, learn about what has worked for our clients, and identify what could potentially help your business, even if you’re in a different industry.

Komoot is the #1 outdoors app in Europe for planning routes, voice navigation and offline maps for all your cycling and hiking experiences. As the whole company has been largely remote for several years now, working remotely during the pandemic wasn’t a big change for the komoot team, doing an online gathering, however, was. The entire company usually gets together three times a year to do a bunch of project-based workshops, have chill time and nice rides.

Fiola Foley, komoot’s international cycling and outdoor communication specialist shared more about the top 3 changes they had to make:

1. Update Marketing Call to Action- During the first weeks of the lockdown announcements across Europe, komoot had to revise all their media campaigns, advertorials, and ads to make sure their call to action aligned with precautions and corona related advisories. Normally their spring campaign message focusses on sharing inspirational content, encouraging people to go outside and explore the great outdoors. That is of course not what they wanted to tell their 12 million users worldwide. Instead, they inspired the outdoor lovers to go back to their profiles and polish previous adventures by adding photos and tweaking routes for when they could go outside again.
2. Replace face-to-face events with Webinars – While all their events got canceled they created a webinar series instead: The komoot Campfires. In the course of May, they scheduled 25 webinars, had over 15.000 participants and covered a range of topics like planning routes with komoot, tips and tricks, and very specific topics on how to plan a mountain bike or gravel-route.
3. Reschedule New Feature launches – From a product perspective, it was quite interesting. Any of the features that were planned to get launched in 2020 had to be revised and rescheduled. One of the features that would have been launched in September/October but instead got launched in late May / early June in the DACH and The Netherlands was an improved version of the already existing Smart Tours where the komoot algorithm analyzes user behaviour of thousands of people that do similar routes or loops. In the past, these smart tours would be presented as an isolated tour, now this gives the users the ability to personalize the smart tour and start the tour from your front door. Something which was not yet possible previously. Komoot saw a massive difference in the number of activities between different regions. The pandemic largely had an adverse effect on people going outside yet cyclists actually in certain countries actually went outside more than usual. So, countries that were less restricted had a big increase in activities. Insights in users’ behaviour inspired a timely update to the 2020 feature launch schedule. This made it easier for the company to present its users with tools that would be particularly helpful during the pandemic.

For komoot, having a largely remote team already in place combined with their agile ability to relatively easily pivot marketing messaging, shift from in-person gatherings to webinars and update their feature launch schedule. This made it possible for komoot to successfully adapt to quarantine, despite being an app for exploring the outdoors.

Interested in reading about Twotone's conclusion and knowing more about the common themes that emerged in all interviews? Check it out here!