Transforming Animal Training Academy's Membership Growth with Targeted Marketing Strategy
Animal Training Academy is the leading online education provider for professional animal trainers. Their membership platform gives experienced animal behaviourists access to the top experts in the world, and provides actionable training for their members.
Animal Training Academy was opening membership doors every quarter, hoping scarcity would drive sign‑ups. Instead, each launch saw fewer new members and more existing members dropping out. Year over year numbers were slipping and the membership model was losing momentum. On top of this, the lead generation efforts were bringing in leads that weren't part of the core audience that Animal Training Academy wanted to target.
Our task was clear: figure out why the approach wasn’t working, bring in more of the right members, and put growth back on track.
The Research & Key Insights
Through comprehensive audience research and customer surveys, we uncovered two critical insights:
Buying vs. Staying:
During the research we discovered that the reason why people signed up, wasn't the reason why people stayed. People signed up to get specific training, usually based on a pain point they are facing at the time E.g. webinars on handling reactivity in dogs. However, what kept trainers in the membership, was the world class community that Ryan Cartlidge had built. Previously, the sales messaging had heavily focused on this community aspect as the main selling point to cold prospects.
Lead Quality Matters:
Although ATA’s Meta ads were effective in generating quantity of leads, they weren't doing so well on quality. A significant portion were casual inquiries from pet owners rather than professional animal trainers. This meant while the email list was growing, conversions, and membership numbers were going backwards.
We implemented a strategy across three areas to address these challenges and turn the business around:
Fixing the Leads
The paid ads were pulling in both professional trainers and casual pet owners. To zero in on the right audience we added a single question on the sign‑up form: “Why do you want this training?” We fed those responses into a Looker Studio dashboard, and back to meta so we could track which ads were driving qualified leads instead of pet owners. With that data we rewrote our ad copy to call out professional trainers by name, cutting out the unqualified leads and boosting the signal-to-noise ratio.
Fixing the Strategy
A $70 NZD membership was too big a leap for many prospects. Without a look inside the membership, users were relying on the messaging on the page to get them to commit to a reccuring membership, a pretty tough ask. We introduced a 30‑day trial for $1. That small entry point let trainers experience the community and content with almost no risk.
We also leaned on ATA’s expert webinars as our primary driver. We built a new landing page template for the specific exper webinars with clear call to action: “Join for $1 to watch this live.” Running promotions around each event created a natural deadline, resulting in over 200 trial sign‑ups in two weeks and a 50 percent conversion to full memberships.
Fixing the Website Conversion
Every step needed its own page. We redesigned and relaunched the home page to update the messaging and design. We improved the lead magnet page offering a free training guide for email capture to warm up prospects. We created a dedicated landing page for the $1 trial, with a clear headline, clear USPs, objection handlers, and social proof. And we rolled out a flexible landing page template for expert webinars so every promotion looked sharp and consistent.
The Results
Membership grew 43% year over year
Monthly recurring revenue jumped 63% in nine months
Qualified leads rose by 30%
These results turned ATA around as a business. From here, we are continuing to double down on this strategy, and optimise each part.
