Duolingo · B2C · language learning app
Send one practice reminder for each missed day; stop after day 7
Reminder efficacy drops sharply by day 7; users gone past day 3-4 rarely return
Workednotificationsretention
What they did
Each day a user skips the app they get a practice reminder push (Duolingo's most powerful notification), up to a series of 7. At 7 days of inactivity the practice reminders are turned off because the extra value from continuing is much lower. The key window is the first 3-4 days: for a daily-use app, users not back by then are very hard to win back.
What happened
Practice reminders are Duolingo's most powerful notification, but their efficacy has dropped significantly by day 7, so they are stopped then.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How to Time Reactivation Campaigns for Maximum Impact — Jackson Shuttleworth, Duolingo“At seven days, we turn off our practice reminder notifications, which are our most powerful notification, because the additional value we get of continuing to reach out to you after 7 days is significantly lower.”
“If they're not coming back by day 3 or 4, again, depending upon the use case, for us, that's for a daily-use app, that's definitely the case, man, it is just going to be tough sledding”
Related topics
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More from Duolingo
All 61 Duolingo tactics- Cut the free trial from 14 days to 7More conversions overall and experiment results twice as fast
- Sell a one-time ad-free month at $3, $5 or $10 to test demandUptake far above expectations; led to the subscription
- Tell users on the paywall you'll remind them on day 5 of a 7-day trialWon A/B tests by easing fear of subscription traps
- Change the buy button to say 'Try for $0.00'Beat 'Try for free' on both trial starts and trial-to-paid
- Let an algorithm pick from 250 reminder messages, and A/B test adding new onesNotifications called a top retention driver; no numbers shared
- Keep reminders to about three words for newer users; say more to loyal onesThree-word messages 'worked really well'; no numbers shared
More from this episode
- Duolingo: Send tomorrow's reminder 23.5 hours after today's lesson, not at a time users pickBeat every other scheduling strategy tested, including user-chosen times
- Duolingo: Email lapsed users a weekly progress report comparing this week to lastGuest says simple activity stats get most of the value; no numbers
- Duolingo: Let a learning system pick which reminder wording each user getsPractice reminder copy under test for 6 years; no lift numbers shared
- Duolingo: Send even long-gone users a fun, personal year-in-review of their statsGuest says personal hooks perform much better than product updates; no numbers
- Duolingo: Aim winback messages at back-to-school and New Year's resolution seasonGuest calls these the most important times of year; no numbers
- Duolingo: Ask active users to bring back friends who stopped using the appOne of the best-performing winbacks; beats app-sent messages, even from leaderboard strangers