Case Study of the Calm Meditation App

The growing emphasis on mental health and self-care has resulted in the development of hundreds of guided meditation applications. These applications provide easy access to resources and guidelines to assist everyone on their meditation journey. Let’s take a look at a case study of the Calm meditation app, as it is one of the most popular mindfulness applications with features to help users with issues.

About the Calm App

Calm is an application for meditation and consuming mental health that enables free exercises and programs to help individuals in sleeping better, reduce stress, and increase focus.

Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew developed Calm on May 4, 2012. Tamara Levitt, who joined the app as the Head of Mindfulness in November 2014, is one of the main narrators.

Calm is an award-winning mindfulness software that has had over 100 million downloads and 700,000 5-star ratings since its launch in 2012.

The Calm app is free to use, and some free content is accessible, but a paid membership to Calm Premium allows access to the whole Calm content collection. Calm’s heart is digital, but it is also expanding offline in numerous ways to bring more serenity, clarity, and perspective into people’s hectic lives. It has collaborated with Penguin to produce the Calm Book, created a natural sleep aid called Sleep Mist, and has ambitions for much more.

Brief History

• Tamara Levitt, the app’s principal narrator, was appointed Head of Mindfulness in November 2014.
• In 2017, the firm earned $22 million in sales and had a revenue run rate of $75 million. Calm had raised $1.5 million in angel funding as of 2017.
• Calm was named Apple’s “App of the Year” in 2017and was named one of the fastest-growing private companies in America by Inc. in 2018.
• As of February 2019, the firm was worth $1 billion and has raised $116 million from current investors such as Insight Venture Partners, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, and Creative Artists Agency.
• Calm bought Ripple Health Group, a digital business that provides people with appropriate healthcare solutions, in February 2022. Calm Health, which will replace the company’s current employer product, Calm for Business, will be the focus of the purchase.

Success Story: Calm Mobile App

Calm is one of the most popular applications for helping people relax. Let’s learn about the successful journey of the Calm app into an award-winning app.

Founding Calm

Michal Action Smith has founded many firms earlier and felt the stress of being a successful entrepreneur. He pursued his interest in mindfulness and neuroscience with Alex, who was attempting to establish the benefits of meditation, and together they founded Calm.

The platform was created in 2012, and since then, its founders have added several features to make it more advanced. These services are now available to iOS and Android users.

How Calm Does it?

Let’s have a look at the key elements and strategies that make Calm so powerful.

• User Experience

Calm emphasizes why users must submit their data and the outcomes achieved after using the program. It is all about interacting with users and gaining their trust.

One of the most effective Calm designers’ techniques is Regular Calm, a 10-minute program that persuades consumers to return to the app daily. The session is short enough for even the busiest individuals to attend, and the fact that it occurs daily enhances retention.

• App Specialists

When we talk about health and fitness applications, the material must be designed by specialists who understand how to achieve the desired outcomes.

And Tamara Levitt, who has been practicing meditation since she was 18, is the ideal person to teach users how to live a less stressful life. The fact that she found these methods at an eating problem clinic is intriguing.

Let’s highlight another user-attractive tool. Calm Masterclass and Mindful Eating with Dr. Michelle May is a fantastic workshop for anybody who wants a “good relationship with food.”

• Partnerships

Calm is the best app for partnering with (RAD) since it focuses on good practices. They are fighting AIDS together.

Calm created a unique Sleep Mist product that donates $1 from every purchase to the cause. Calm uses additional elements, such as Calm Masterclass, to support persons diagnosed with HIV.

Market Analysis

The number of searches for meditation apps has climbed by 65 percent year on year, and over 2,500 meditation apps have been released since 2015. Calm was the highest-grossing health-related meditation app in March 2022, with in-app sales of more than 7.5 million US dollars for the period studied.

Users are willing to pay varying sums as monthly membership charges ranging from $5.04 to $18.39 for various benefits such as relationship building, stress relief, and sports performance enhancement.

Competitive Analysis: Calm vs. Headspace vs. Meditopia vs. Waking Up

Calm’s Revenue Model: How Does It Make Money?

Calm earns money from three different sources, which are detailed below. Take a peek around!

1. Subscription Revenue Model for B2C

Calm offers a free version of the app, but it does not have access to the whole collection. It provides a 7-day free trial to help an individual get the most out of the app, following which one can pick from various premium options.

To access all of Calm’s meditation sessions, sleep timer, and other content a monthly cost is required, which contributes to a portion of Calm’s revenue stream.

Users can select between two subscription plans: yearly subscriptions and lifetime subscriptions.

• A yearly subscription package costs $49.99 per year.
• Calm For Life is a $399.99 unlimited membership plan.

2. Subscription Revenue Model for B2B

Calm features a B2B subscription income strategy in the form of business-only packages:

• Calm for Team: Suited for businesses with 5 to 100 employees. The subscription rate per user reduces as one adds more users.
• Calm for Business: Designed for businesses with more than 100 employees.

Gofundme, Lincoln, Universal Music Group, and Iterable, to mention a few, are among the companies that use Calm. Each employee of the organization will have access to the entire Calm app library if one purchases Calm for the team through B2B packages.

3. Revenue Model for Partnerships

Calm interacts with other companies in various ways, including marketing campaigns, content licensing, content production, physical product collaborations, and others.

Calm is now working with many well-known companies, like American Express, Apple, and Uber, to mention a few.

Companies that wish to collaborate with Calm have complete control over the aim of the partnership, the number of people they want to reach, the funding level, and other factors. Companies give their intended budget range, and Calm decides whether to accept, negotiate, or reject.

Important Features Contribution to Calm’s Strength

The Calm app has a lot of tools and exercises that an individual may use to develop mindfulness and include in one’s health routines. Let’s examine the encouraging features that make Calm so effective.

1. Daily Practice Routine

Calm offers a new 10-minute meditation called a Daily Practice session. These brief meditations focus on various ideas that both beginners and experienced meditators may utilize to guide their practice.

There are two types of daily practice sessions: Daily Calm and Daily Trip. Daily Practice sessions are available in the apps For Today section.

2. Meditations

The fundamental aspect of Meditations Calm is a vast selection of guided meditations. Meditations might last anything from 3-to 30 minutes. Some of the sessions are stand-alone, while others are part of a broader course or series.

By choosing one of the categories, such as Sleep, Anxiety, Emotions, Work, and Relationships, you may quickly go and pick a meditation that suits your needs.

3. Calm Kids

It is a section of the app dedicated to children’s stories, lullabies, and meditations. Content from Thomas and Friends, Trolls, the Minions, and others are included in segments.

4. Calm Body

A compilation of 10-minute sessions designed to help one release body tension, relax via movement, and recharge the mind if an individual is into a mindfulness exercise.

Calm Body comprises some sessions that an individual may fit in between appointments and other commitments. Back Care, Morning Wake Up, and Evening Wind Down are some examples.

5. Sleep Stories

Stories from various genres, including Nature, Fiction, Trains, and Non-Fiction. These stories are meant to put people to sleep.

Calm also has Nap Stories, which run approximately 30 minutes and are perfect for a short nap.

It has over 50 narrators, including Harry Styles, Kate Winslet, and other well-known musicians. Every week, a new narrative is added to the app.

6. Breathing Exercises

Deep breathing exercises can help an individual calm body and mind, feel more motivated, and relax.

Calm provides six different types of breathing exercises that employ different breathing strategies to achieve different aims. For example, Restore seeks to restore one’s energy, and Energizing aims to increase activeness.

7. Meditation Timer

One may discover that they no longer require guided sessions as they get more comfortable with the medication practice routine. One could even become sidetracked by the app’s images, noises, and narrations.

Calm provides both a timer and an open-ended meditation tracker if an individual just requires a timer for mindfulness practice.

One may select a preset timeframe for your meditation using the Timed Meditation function, and the app will use a quiet bell sound to notify you when the time is up.

8. Calm Masterclass

Calm has collaborated with famous specialists in their professions, such as teachers and authors, to provide exclusive courses in the Calm Masterclass series.

While each Masterclass contains a free opening video that anyone may see, the complete series is exclusively accessible to individuals who have a current Calm membership.

Transformation Possibilities

The problem “how can we” questions below have been created to transform demographic goals into problem-solving opportunities.

Difficulty Matrix

Using a matrix to categorize the challenges by impact and difficulty, it was easy to narrow down the features to be tackled in the sprint to two: a social feature and a live session feature, which would have the highest impact against the lowest difficulty.

Interesting Insights of Calm

• Calm collaborated with HBO Max to develop the series “A World of Calm.” Idris Elba, Nicole Kidman, and Keanu Reeves star in this ten-episode series, which features realistic situations narrated by celebrities.
• Calm’s Chief Purpose Officer, Jay Shetty, a former monk, purpose coach, and best-selling author, provides its users with 7 minutes every day to become their best selves.
• Jonathan Bailey, the ‘Bridgerton’ star, has a story on the Calm app called ‘Love Letter from an Englishman,’ which will let anyone sleep to the sound of his voice.

The cost of a Calm membership has stayed pretty stable over the year, with minor increases. A few years ago, the monthly subscription cost was $12.99, and the yearly subscription cost was $60. “Wisdom” is one of the app’s more recent additions and contains motivational stories from celebrities and professional advice on a series of matters.

Calm is unquestionably on the rise at the moment, but the issue is: how long will it last?

What does Calm want to accomplish in the future?

The goal of Calm is to “make the world a happier and healthier place.”

There are a few key goals listed below that need to be implemented to have a brighter future with Calm:

• Improve the search experience.
• keep users committed to their meditations by keeping them motivated, consistent, and accountable.
• keep up with the latest preferences of your users.
• Combine a social system with the user’s contacts so that the user may track their friends and family’s progress on the app and engage with them.
• Develop meaningful content with popular TV/toy symbols for kids via corporate relationships or expand on current collaborations while still maintaining the meditation component.
• Calendar appointments for meditation should be added to users’ calendars.

Final Words

Mental health is an important part of human well-being that should be prioritized. Meditation is an excellent technique to relax and concentrate. The case study of the Calm meditation app proved that it is one of the best applications for your mindfulness journey, with several elements that can include in your day-to-day mental health practice.

The app’s content is well-produced, and its approach to a card-based design makes it well-organized and simple to use. One may not notice but by the time one connects the app with headphones, the app starts to play natural sounds, one must find it engaging.