Low-cost exercise interventions study

Research funded by Innovate UK points the way to massive cost savings in getting people more active.
During the second UK lockdown in 2020, we trialled a new method for encouraging people to take up online exercise classes.

We worked with IMIN, a physcial activity connectivity platform, in response to their successful Innovate UK bid.

IMIN’s technology connects people with exercise classes. Together, we designed and delivered the Get Active At Home challenge, to explore using incentives to generate more bookings of classes.

The Get Active At Home research programme integrated content and links to online exercise classes, with incentives and message prompts.

We developed an approach to using open data about upcoming physical activity opportunities that successfully connected those wanting – or needing – to be physically active, with a range of activity options available to them.

We integrated different versions of curated, live, and open data about online classes, with incentives and message prompts. The data from this allowed us to test systematically what information participants responded to, and how well it encouraged them to book classes.

Huge cost savings

When compared to activation methods for similar projects, our trial was 4.6 times more cost-effective than other digital methods, and 8.5 times more so than traditional, non-digital methods.

The cost of recruiting a new user into the study was £4.17, with a ‘cost per activated study participant’ of £1.45. This gave us a total, end-to-end, activation cost of £5.62 – dramatically lower than the comparison projects.

Download the two-page case study.

Download