How to hack growth like Revolut (the secret is mobile app engagement!)
In this article, we’ll dive into how gamification made Revolut a key player in finance:
- Revolut is changing banking for the better
- 3 steps to turn mobile app engagement into growth
- 5 gamification examples that boost the user experience
- Recap
Revolut is changing banking for the better
Initially, Revolut was created to allow customers to avoid transaction fees when traveling abroad. In today’s interconnected world, with more being spent by international tourists each year, Revolut saw a growing customer need and satisfied it. Now, though, Revolut wants to get more out of its existing customers. As an illustration, from 2018 to 2019, user numbers doubled. However, Revolut’s profit margins tripled!
The company achieves this with mobile app engagement that keeps people glued to the app. Revolut boasts 1.1 million daily users – and an active user offers more touchpoints for the company to connect. In addition, loyal users will spend up to 30% more than average users and are more likely to become brand advocates. In turn, customer advocacy will lead to more effective user referrals. That’s the answer to becoming the fastest-growing tech company in Europe!
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3 steps to turn mobile app engagement into growth
The thinking can be summed up in 3 easy steps:
- Make an exciting app with gamification examples like points systems.
- Motivate daily user activity and turn them into customer advocates.
- Incentivize user referrals, led by your loyal customers!
Revolut further encourages user referrals by exploiting the ‘network effect’. Essentially, the service becomes more useful the more people that use it. For example, features such as bill splitting or shared saving vaults encourage users to persuade their friends to join. These features will give users a purpose, or an ‘extrinsic motivation’ to use the app.
However, to create long-lasting customer loyalty, you need to harness intrinsic motivation. This is when the app is naturally fun to use. One of the best ways to create this is with gamification.
Since Revolut started in 2015, dozens of studies have examined the benefits of gamification. Consultancy firm Deloitte found that gamification can boost engagement by as much as 40%. In turn, and this is important for achieving referrals, gamification results in a 22% increase in customer loyalty! By keeping users active, Revolut managed to sustain affordable and fast customer growth and won the place of Europe’s biggest neobank.
Changing user behavior is hard. To make it work you need a deep understanding of what motivates your user to keep going forward. Luckily for you, our team of gamification experts already did the hard work! Even better, we put it into a workshop packed with foolproof ways to make gamification work for you!
Find out how to leverage psychology to drive behavior change!
5 gamification examples that boost the user experience
#1 A points system rewards user loyalty and creates a fun competitive dynamic
Additional incentives that boost user ranking include referring friends (a priority for Revolut, as established), and completing in-app challenges. While the £250,000 prize pool acts as an extrinsic motivator that guides user need for purpose, the leaderboard taps into intrinsic motivation by making the competition fun. The excitement is enhanced with falling coins that act like digital confetti.
#2 Customization tools like personal avatars and theme selection give users control
#3 Gamified tasks help junior accounts shape the right behaviors
The junior user can choose what tasks to do and when! Gamification is a core element of what makes the Junior account work so well. In fact, research shows that gamification is especially powerful for young learners. Since young people make up the largest share of digital bank users, it is smart that Revolut is targeting them with Junior accounts.
#4 Progress bars push users to save up a nest egg
By visualizing progress, users can see how much time and effort they still need to allocate. Additionally, the progress bar provides instant gratification and triggers a natural motivation for progression. Crucially, this feature creates active and loyal users. Customers will use Revolut every time they spend if they wish to keep accurate records!
#5 Tiered loyalty programs reward app engagement and create customer advocacy
Why should users engage more with your app, if the rewards don’t recognize the extra effort? In gamification lingo, this means harnessing the constraint mechanic. In other words, certain elements are locked off and must be earned or bought. The instant benefits gained in a tier system are shown to increase user enrollment and builds customer advocacy.
In short, Revolut has learned from classic gamification examples like rewards systems and smartly adapted them for the Fintech context. The results are clear – in the first quarter of 2021 revenue grew by 130% and that rise will likely continue! User-friendly apps are the future standard of finance, and Revolut’s fast growth is a testimony to that.
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Recap
Revolut is changing banking for the better
The results speak for themselves. From 2018 to 2019, the number of Revolut users doubled. However, profit margins tripled! The company achieves this by with more engaged, more loyal customers, and in turn, who refer more friends.
The 3 easy steps of how mobile app engagement creates growth
- Make an exciting app with gamification examples like points systems.
- Create daily active users that become customer advocates.
- Incentivize user referrals, led by your loyal customers!
Consultancy firm Deloitte found that gamification can boost engagement by as much as 40%. In turn, and this is important for achieving referrals, gamification results in a 22% increase in customer loyalty! This is the secret to a growing and active userbase.
5 gamification examples that boost the user experience
- A points system rewards loyal users and creates fun competition.
- Customization tools like avatars and theme selection give users control.
- Gamifying tasks incentivizes Junior account holders to achieve.
- Progress bars push users to save up a nest egg.
- Loyalty programs reward app engagement and create customer advocacy.