WeWard · B2C · walking rewards app
Add card collecting with your own characters to keep walkers coming back
Founder says retention is the highest it has ever been; no numbers
Workedretention
What they did
WeWard borrows retail/airline loyalty programs, game mechanics and social-media hooks ('motivational layers', inspired by nudge theory) to motivate walking. Recent additions include a collectible card game with WeWard's own characters/IP and more social features; different users respond to money, charity, beating friends or collecting.
What happened
Retention is at its highest ever.
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How WeWard Hit 20M Users Without Paid Ads — Yves Benchimol, WeWard“We launch an amazing collection card games where you have to collect stuff.”
“So we build our own IP with our characters and all of that, and so this is also very powerful.”
“So in the app, the retention, now we never had such a high retention into our product”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- WeWard: Pay a PR agency $3-5K a month instead of buying ads300K downloads in 5 minutes from one TV spot; four years with zero ad spend
- WeWard: Take the PR playbook that worked in France to Italy, Spain and the USWorked in Italy and Spain; flopped in the US despite a top agency
- WeWard: Add in-app ads once you see retention hold after a big traffic spikeAds work well thanks to the large audience; says they pay at ~100K daily users
- WeWard: Promote brands like Nike and Expedia in the app for a cut of salesWorks well; Nike, Adidas, Expedia, Booking.com and Amazon signed on
- WeWard: Add a paid plan that removes ads, after ads and affiliate already workStill a small share of revenue but growing fast
- WeWard: A/B test every feature on steps walked, and don't track time in app
- WeWard: Lock TikTok and Instagram until users hit their walking goalUsers of the feature walk 10% more
- WeWard: Give a famous athlete shares to be the app's face and press voiceHelped press, hiring, CAC and retention; founder says hard to quantify
- WeWard: Put the celebrity's face in ads and onboarding so the app feels localFounder says better ad conversion, lower CAC and higher retention; no numbers
- WeWard: Rebuild onboarding to get users to commit and feel somethingBiggest win of the year: retention and LTV up a lot; unlocked more paid UA
- WeWard: Sell companies step challenges for staff, with charity donationsBiggest fail of the year; couldn't make it work
- WeWard: Keep one app everywhere; swap only the rewards and partner brands per countryLive in 29 countries without local teams
- WeWard: Ask users if blockchain matters; switch to plain points when they shrugUsers happier, engineers relieved; scaling and lag problems gone
- WeWard: Move the founder to New York to crack the USSlow first two years; now 'becoming a significant app' in the US