Case Study 03 · Rally
Event & community group travel · rally.co
The growth problem was two words on the payment screen.
Rally runs a trip when enough riders join it. Elegant model; brutal moment in the funnel: at the point of payment the rider was told the trip was not confirmed. They were being asked to pay for a maybe.
- Record month vs previous best
- 1.5–2×
- Months held above the old ceiling
- 2
- Fix to the confirmation blocker
- 2-layer
- New demand surfaces opened
- 3
June 2026, gross booking value
July and August 2026
Both layers shipped
Campus creators, organisers, last-mile partners
Growth figures indexed and supplied by the client; seven-figure annual gross booking value. Product diagnosis and rollout documented from primary work, July 2026.
01 — The Situation
A red flag at the exact moment you are asking for money.
Every conversion problem has a location. This one was the payment screen, on a trip that had not yet reached its rider threshold. The model was being honest with the customer at the worst possible second.
Where it started
- Riders shown 'trip not confirmed' at checkout; abandonment concentrated at that step.
- Demand dependent on a few event categories and organic discovery.
- No social engine of its own; Rally read as a bus company, not a community product.
- Audiences built on interest targeting rather than on real booking behaviour.
Where it is now
- Vehicle right-sizing so a trip can always run at some size, plus a last-mile pilot. 'Unconfirmed' no longer exists as a customer-facing state.
- Three new demand surfaces: campus trip creators, event and organiser outreach, last-mile bundling.
- A daily Twitter/X engine and a 'Rally 2035' AI concept film to reposition the group as future-first.
- Lookalike audiences seeded from real bookings.
02 — What I Did
Remove the state, then remove the reason the state existed.
Layer one
Remove the state
'Trip not confirmed' no longer exists as a customer-facing state at the payment screen.
Layer two
Remove the reason
Vehicle right-sizing so a trip can always run at some size, plus a last-mile partner service piloted around Atlantic City.
Then
Open new demand
Campus trip creators, organiser outreach and last-mile bundling, seeded by lookalikes built on real bookings.
- Product
Confirmation-blocker teardown
Traced the drop to one screen and one word. Layer one removes the state; layer two, right-sizing plus last-mile, removes the reason for it.
- Supply
Campus trip creators
Students and societies create the trips; Rally runs them. A per-ticket incentive turns the campus into a distributed sales network with no fixed cost.
- Contracted demand
Organiser outreach
Organisers who move groups repeatedly are sourced from public records and signed on long-term terms rather than won one event at a time.
- Brand
Social engine and concept film
A daily Twitter/X programme, and a three-to-five minute AI-produced 'Rally 2035' film for the brand's repositioning.
03 — The Result
June was the record. July and August proved it was not luck.
A single record month is an anecdote. Two months after it above the old ceiling is the signature of a fixed mechanism, not a lucky calendar.
Monthly gross booking value against the old ceiling
Indexed to the previous best month. The bar shows the midpoint of the 1.5–2× range the client reported for June.
- June 2026
- 1.5–2×
- Previous best month
- 1×
July and August 2026
Both months held above the previous ceiling through the event and political season.
Confirmation blocker
Both layers shipped. 'Unconfirmed' no longer exists as a customer-facing state.
Handover
Three demand surfaces now sit under a growth plan the team can run without me.
- Best month on record in June 2026, 1.5–2× the previous best on gross booking value.
- July and August held above the previous ceiling through the event and political season.
- Both layers of the confirmation fix shipped; the last-mile pilot became the strategy.
- Three demand surfaces now sit under a growth plan the team can run without me.
“Honesty delivered at the wrong moment reads as risk.”
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