The leading running coaching app replaced its Facebook group with a fully integrated in-app community — increasing retention, reducing support load, and turning users into active contributors.
Why RunMotion went community-first
About RunMotion
RunMotion is a fast-growing European app helping runners train smarter — from beginners to marathoners. To stand out in a crowded market and strengthen its value proposition, RunMotion sought to go beyond training plans and foster real connections between runners.
The strategic challenges
Motivation is essential to succeed in running but users didn’t have a dedicated space to connect, share, and support each other within the app, beyond a low-activity Facebook group.
At the same time, RunMotion’s fast-growing user base and high engagement levels led to an increasing volume of support requests, many of which could be answered by peers.
→ RunMotion partnered with Octopus to turn an in-app community into a smart, scalable solution to both challenges.
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How RunMotion integrated Octopus (spoiler: it was fast)
RunMotion embedded the Octopus Community native SDK into its main navigation, giving users direct access to a dedicated social space. The setup included:
- A notification badge on the community icon on the home screen
- Push notifications to help boost retention
- Custom events tracking for A/B testing
To measure the impact of the community on key app metrics, RunMotion ran a live A/B test on Android: 90% of users had access, while 10% formed the control group.
What the Community made possible
User-powered support
Community members answer each other’s questions in real time — and in over a third of cases, support never needs to step in. This peer-to-peer dynamic has significantly reduced ticket volume and freed up the team’s time.
Replacing Facebook with real in-app interaction
The community quickly outpaced RunMotion’s legacy Facebook group, generating 15× more posts and allowing the team to sunset the old group entirely.
Monthly challenges = regular engagement
RunMotion runs recurring “Monthly Challenges” in the community, creating rituals that give users a shared, intermediate training goal and encourage them to share their progress together.
Effortless moderation
With zero manual interventions needed, moderation is fully handled by Octopus.
Blog content = fuel for engagement
RunMotion pushes relevant blog articles into the community feed, driving qualified traffic to their content and opening new discussion threads around training and motivation.
The in-app community measurable impact
- +40% retention uplift vs. control group
- 3.7× more sessions from community users
- Half of users visited the community (31% of monthly active users)
Go lead, go social
For RunMotion, the in-app community is no longer an add-on, it’s a growth lever. It supports the product, fuels retention, reduces support pressure, and strengthens the brand’s long-term position.
With just a few hours of dev time, the team turned social interaction into a strategic asset and let runners take the lead.
In-app community can boost your app too
See how you can unlock the retention, engagement and monetization gains that in-app communities already deliver for leading apps.
