How Oura Ring Sold Over 1M Rings

What’s up legends, hope everyone is doing well 👋

I snagged an Oura Ring right before the pandemic took over. I was deep into my bio-hacking journey, geeking out on good sleep and having conversations about it. That's when I got hit with a Facebook ad by Oura ( I think by this point we all know Facebook is listening), then immediately fell into their remarketing funnel before pulling the trigger to get one. 

I'd be lying if I said I'm surprised with its growth, but I am surprised by all the recent tech developments they've made in their product! Oura's come a long way since I first made that purchase, and today I'll take a deep dive into their sales funnel and unpack how they drove over 1M ring sales. 

This is what I’m covering in today’s edition:

• Unpacking their customer journey; from discovery through to post-purchase and retention

• What type of content do they post that generates over 2.3m organic traffic

• Key channels that work well for them

• A quick look at the type of ads they're testing on paid social

CASE STUDY
Oura Ring

Context: Oura Ring is a health tech wearable brand that focuses on monitoring your health and sleep. Backed by science, it offers an intuitive interface and a vibrant community. The ring provides daily scores on your sleep quality, activity levels, and readiness for the day ahead. It also identifies your body clock type, educates you on how hormones impact your sleep, and alerts you to potential illness. Before expanding as an omnichannel brand, they had a laser-focused DTC funnel that helped them drive sales growth.

Customer Journey

Overall, their content flows smoothly thanks to a good mix of media. Content is spread out strategically on different channels, including both free and paid online platforms and even good old TV. Their funnel can be broken down into six parts, this is what it looks like:

1. Discovery Phase

During the customer discovery phase, they're pretty active on key social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. They're all about sharing info on health tracking and wearable benefits. To expand their reach, they rely on paid social, Google ads, and standard top-of-funnel influencer partnerships.

Outside of paid, their organic SEO game is strong, bringing in a whopping 2.3 million visitors every month and boasting over 8,000 backlinks. Probably the main reason why they aren’t running any branded Google search ads. It seems like their secret sauce is the science-based content that people trust for helping with research and making well-informed decisions, to eventually making the purchase later down in the customer journey.

2. Interest Phase

As the smart ring category continues to evolve, it's crucial to maintain awareness and conduct numerous audience tests in the early stages of growth. For Oura, paid social ads are a game-changer, allowing them to experiment with different tactics, collaborate with the right partners, and test multiple ad angles simultaneously. One notable strategy they've implemented is 'whitelisting,' where they run ads through the influencer's ad account to expand their reach while maintaining authenticity.

3. Consideration Phase

Oura's homepage and remarketing ads work well together, as they continue to nudge people further along their sales funnel. It seems like their key goal is to provide helpful info and foster trust during this phase, they do this well with customer testimonials and educational content in different formats.

• Testimonials help them use other people’s experiences to put the product in a positive light.

• Educational content helps remove obstacles for potential customers. Oura sets itself apart by providing detailed webinars, ebooks, and whitepapers. These resources offer essential information for a better understanding of their technology and the ring.
  

4. Conversion Phase

Their strategy is all about direct messaging and a compelling Call to Action (CTA) that drives potential users to their online store. Here's how they lock in:

• Paid Social: They haven’t deviated away from the early days, and Meta ads are still the go-to channel for them. They are currently experimenting with over 140 ad variations on Meta, and since the start of January have added 37 more ads, tackling key issues like stress management, sleep deprivation, and pregnancy.

• UGC: Leverage user-generated content style creatives for ads as they feel native to the prospect’s experience.

• Google ads: They focus on unlocking opportunities from keywords related to sleep, activity monitoring, heart rate, and overnight blood oxygen levels to help users improve their overall well-being. They are also running dynamic remarketing ads, following people who land on the site, to further drive their omnipresence across the Google ad network.

• Special offers: They deliver special offers and exclusive discounts to persuade people sitting on the fence, often through email marketing and remarketing ads. Limited-time deals work well for their email list, as indicated by the clock timer widget in their emails. Typically, urgency is a great motivator for people to prompt someone to take action - not surprised they use this tactic. Most DTC brands do.

5. Post-Purchase Phase

This strategy enables them to convert first-time buyers into long-term customers. In this phase, this is the playbook they use:

• Personalisation: After a customer makes a purchase, they receive materials to measure their ring size and provide the necessary details to Oura's team for ring customisation. Through personalisation, this onboarding phase helps lower the return rate as well. 

• Guides and Memberships: These are strategically spaced out in a sequence to offer guides that help customers understand and utilize the ring effectively. These emails include opportunities to upgrade the current model or to buy their monthly membership, all positioned as benefits for the end user.

6. Advocacy Phase

They foster loyalty through exciting referral programs and positive community collaborations.

• Community building: Their innovative approach to community collaboration sees the Oura team engaging with experts to discuss topics that bring immense value to their existing customers and members, empowering them to improve their well-being and make the most of the ring's capabilities.

• Shareability: This dynamic strategy thrives as more customers connect with Oura, inspiring them to share their positive experiences with others. It's no surprise that their word-of-mouth marketing has spread far and wide!

Key Channel Strategy based on Ideal Customer Profile

Oura tailors its content to different channels based on its core target audiences; Wellness lifestyles, Wellness optimisers, Women’s functional health, and Employers.

Organic: They use YouTube to boost their brand, TikTok to connect with users, and Instagram to build strong relationships with their community.

Paid Search: Using Google ads to tap into problem-aware, higher-intent prospects.

Paid Social: They run campaigns across Meta, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok and Twitter ads.

Email Marketing: Engages existing customers and potential leads through personalized email campaigns. They are still partnered with Braze.

Display: Programmatically serving ads through The Trade Desk tapping into a wide network of ad inventories (including Google ad network), Taboola, and across the app store via Apple & Google.

Linear TV: In their recent media mix, they include linear TV to reach a wide audience and partner with various brands to engage diverse viewers. A trend I’m noticing with DTC brands that are expanding and becoming a more omnichannel brand.

NB: These are based on the pixels implemented on their website

Content Pillars That Help Them Stay Consistent

Using various content types helps them to test, strengthen customer relationships and sell their ring and memberships. After looking through their blog, social posts, and email newsletter, these are the content topics they are posting about and their main reason for posting these:  

Sleep science and wellness - Tips to sleep better and to showcase how Oura Ring integrates into daily life

Technology insights - Explaining the tech behind the ring, sharing updates and improvements

Performance optimisation - Success stories from athletes and credible influencers to build on their existing social proof

Research collaborations - Building trust through presenting informative content based on scientific research

Educational and guides - Providing use cases for effective adoption of the Oura Ring

Community-oriented content that is generated by fans and customers - fosters community engagement and provides social proof that strengthens trust.

NEWS

• Ads are coming to chatbots: Both startups and major companies are exploring this option within AI chatbots as a new revenue stream since creating AI chatbots is an expensive venture in the first place. Plus, with cookies being taken away, startup platforms like Adzedek are exploring this opportunity.

• CVS Media Exchange (CMX), is getting even smarter with the integration of the LiveRamp data clean room solution from Pinterest. This partnership empowers consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers to track product sales driven by Pinterest ads.

• Google was forced to take their AI, Gemini, offline for repairs after it went rogue. The chatbot filtered user prompts, sometimes inaccurately, to avoid cultural insensitivity. Its responses seemed tailored to avoid offence.

• TikTok released its Trends Digest series, to provide an overview of the latest trends that are gaining traction in the app.

See you on the next one!

Dev✌️

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