Subscribers at £38, not £71.

Rally BikesE-bike subscriptionPaid social, Measurement2025

Rally spent more on brand and less on chasing clicks, proved it with city holdout tests, and nearly halved what a subscriber costs.

Client: Rally Bikes
Sector: E-bike subscription
Channels: Paid social, Measurement
Period: 2025

£38

per subscriber, down from £71

Channels: Paid social, Search
Layer: Brand + performance
Period: 2025

Cheaper subscribers, without cutting the spend.

Rally rents e-bikes by the week in London, Manchester and Bristol, with servicing included. Almost all of its budget went on search and retargeting, and every extra pound was buying fewer subscribers than the last.

The board wanted a plan to grow without the cost per subscriber climbing further, and proof that any new spend was adding subscribers rather than taking credit for them.

Client since: 2024
Cities: Three
Channels: Paid social, search
Upwell team: Seven

Three moves.

What we changed, in the order we changed it.

Months 1–2
Measure what each channel adds
Before changing anything, we switched paid social off in Bristol for six weeks and kept it on in Manchester. The gap between the two cities told us what Meta and TikTok were really adding, not what they claimed.
Geo holdout across two cities
Months 3–6
A brand layer, on purpose
Short films about the commute itself, aimed at people within three miles of a Rally hub. No offer, no countdown: just forty minutes back every day and the first week free.
22% of spend moved to brand
Months 6–12
Search got cheaper on its own
As more people knew the name, they searched for Rally rather than for e-bikes in general. Branded clicks cost a fraction of generic ones, so the same search budget bought twice as many sign-ups.
Generic CPC £2.40 → £1.55

The ads that made the name.

Filmed in all three cities. Hook rate for video, click-through for statics.

01 / 04Reels · 9:16

“Forty minutes back, every commute”

Hook rate26%Scaled

Tap the left or right of the ad to skip

Before and after.

January against December 2025, all three cities. Subscribers counted after the free week converts to paid.

Cost per subscriberLower is better

Before£71After£38

−46%

Cost per click, generic searchLower is better

Before£2.40After£1.55

−35%

New subscribers a month from paidHigher is better

Before1,150After2,480

+116%

The test design is what sold me. Every month I can tell our board exactly what an extra ten thousand pounds of spend will and will not do.
Tom HadleyCMO, Rally Bikes