How fitness app SWEAT beat the trends to sell for $400 million

The success of the SWEAT app highlights key strategies for growth in the competitive mHealth market.

Interest in mHealth apps is skyrocketing - and fitness apps are leading the way. In 2020, growth in fitness application users increased 46%. As a result, there is a fierce battle emerging between competing apps. Take SWEAT, for example, which launched in 2015. Within just 2 years, SWEAT became the most profitable fitness app in the world, making $76 million! How did they do it?

Let’s look at some gamification examples that build customer motivation for SWEAT users. There is one feature in particular that co-founder Kayla Itsines credits for the app’s success. Here is what SWEAT does to earn more downloads than both Nike+ and MyFitnessPal:

• 3 trends affecting fitness apps today
• How SWEAT stays ahead of the curve
• 5 gamification examples in SWEAT that boost customer motivation
• Recap

This graph illustrates the rapid growth forecast for the mHealth app market, setting the stage for increased competition.

3 trends affecting fitness apps today

The financial forecast for mHealth apps predicts near double growth every two years. Given this, product managers in mHealth need to be on the lookout for trends to keep their apps on top:

#1 Virtual trainers are ‘in’. More than ever, people are now used to things in their own homes. With this in mind, the growth in online trainers seems inevitable. To put a number on it, the virtual fitness market was worth $6 billion in 2019, and is set to be an extravagant $60 billion in 2027! SWEAT, however, was pioneering virtual trainers as early as 2017, but more on that later.

#2 Inclusive app design is a customer necessity. Motivating the growth in mHealth is the need for ‘inclusive integration’. Put briefly, people prefer one platform with multiple features, rather than many platforms with one purpose. In response, tech professionals are calling for ‘multi-user, multi-health condition’ apps in order to streamline and integrate mHealth.

#3 Community challenges are encouraging customer motivation. In 2020, the top activity tracker app Strava ran a 5k running event in the UK, which saw 1 million users take part from their hometowns. Product managers view online challenges as a way to reduce the barriers to fitness app engagement. There is little excuse to not go for that 5k run if you can do it down your street!

How SWEAT stays ahead of the curve

SWEAT saw the trends in online fitness coming and adopted them early on. For one, Co-founder Kayla Itsines became the world’s biggest fitness influencer in 2017, mainly through Instagram. She was popular online long before virtual trainers were a hot topic like today!

Kayla started SWEAT with now CEO Tobi Pearce, to help women get fit and provide them with variety in exercise beyond the treadmill. At first, Kayla launched the ‘Bikini Body Training Guide’, now called High Intensity. This package cost $19.99 a month and bought users the ability to create meal plans, training videos with Kayla, and various e-books. That integration has come to define SWEAT - somewhere users can fulfill all their fitness needs. Clearly, SWEAT has always been an inclusive digital platform with customer motivation at heart.

Features like integrated meal plans and music streaming demonstrate how SWEAT creates a holistic, all-in-one user experience to retain subscribers.

Today, SWEAT is integrated with Apple Music and Spotify. This way, you don’t even need to leave the app to play music (and then get distracted by something else). These integrations and features like the meal planner keep users glued to the app. To go into more detail, the meal planner ranges from breakfast to late-night snacks, includes filters for vegetarian, vegan, and other diets, and even lists full recipes.

What is gamification and how does it increase customer motivation?

5 gamification examples in SWEAT that boost customer motivation

SWEAT’s app is well designed to keep users fit and achieving their fitness journeys. Let’s explore 5 gamification examples the app employs to motivate its userbase.

1) Community features enhance the social experience

Aside from sharing post-workout selfies, SWEAT has forums where users can connect. For example, you can discuss recipes, recommend exercises, and even find and challenge workout buddies! A recent study found that the mechanism of competition enables interaction. In turn, the closeness of the community motivates the intention to exercise, ‘increasing confidence and connection’. It’s a built-in positive feedback loop!

SWEAT's community forums are a prime example of using social features to foster connection and motivate users through shared experiences.

2) Personal profiles give users autonomy

It may sound simple, but basic tools like avatar selection and a personal profile can transform the user experience. For example, if you show the user avatar after an achievement, studies find it will lead to a higher ‘sense of presence’. This means that users feel more involved! As a result, you tap into the intrinsic motivator of self-worth.

3) Setting fitness goals creates targets to strive for

In setting exercise goals and time targets, users create ownership over their fitness journey. Studies show that adding a deadline greatly helps goal pursuit! The app supports these targets by aligning them with the workout programs, encouraging 12-week deadlines. Just long enough to make a difference, not too long to seem daunting.

Goal-setting features, like the 12-week challenge shown here, provide clear targets and a sense of ownership over the fitness journey.

4) Trophies let users take pride in their achievements

A dedicated ‘trophy’ section lets users review their progress and remind them of why they use the app. Unlocking achievements and trophies taps into the gamification dynamic of constraint, meaning that certain parts of your app are locked off for those who haven’t earned it. Give your users something to work for! A trophy cabinet with empty slots will motivate users to fill them in.

5) Before-and-after photos act as a progress tracker

This is one of the signature features on SWEAT, and what Kayla says she owes the app’s success to! Users can post before-and-after photos to show off how working out has improved their physique. In effect, this helps users track their progress, an important gamification dynamic. By seeing how far you have come, it provides positive reinforcement to continue exercising. In addition, you can also easily share these photos, which facilitates community feedback and lets users brag about their social status, an extrinsic motivational driver.

The signature before-and-after photo feature acts as a powerful progress tracker, providing tangible proof of users' hard work and success.

In conclusion, SWEAT is a model to follow. Learning how the SWEAT teal stayed ahead of the curve to lead the world’s most profitable fitness app teaches a lesson for aspiring mHealth apps.

Want to increase the fun on your app? Discover our app gamification software!

Recap

In 2020, growth in new fitness application users increased 46%. SWEAT is one of the market leaders, specializing in exercise programs for women. Within just 2 years, SWEAT became the most profitable fitness app in the world, making $76 million! In 2021, it sold for a colossal $400 million. So what did they do right?

They were ahead of today’s trends:

1. Virtual trainers are a hot topic. The virtual fitness market was worth $6 billion in 2019, and is set to grow to $60 billion in 2027! Far ahead of the game, SWEAT was pioneering virtual trainers as early as 2017.
2. Customers expect inclusive and integrated platforms. Consumers want one platform with multiple features, rather than many platforms with one purpose. SWEAT provides fitness and meal planners, as well as integration with other platforms like Spotify!
3. Community challenges are the next big thing. Online challenges reduce the barriers to fitness app engagement and make it easier to join in.

SWEAT took advantage of the trends to build an app around customer motivation. Here are 5 gamification examples that earned them more downloads than both Nike+ and MyFitnessPal:

1. Community features enhance the social experience.
2. Personal profiles give users autonomy.
3. Setting fitness goals creates targets to strive for.
4. Trophies let users take pride in their achievements.
5. Before-and-after photos act as a progress tracker.

In conclusion, SWEAT is a model to follow. Learning how the SWEAT team stayed ahead of the curve to lead the world’s most profitable fitness app teaches a lesson for aspiring mHealth apps.

Want to improve health through motivational science? Get a free consultation & find out how it can help your app!

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Top App Retention Strategy to Master from Day 1

This visual represents the core theme of mastering app retention from the very first day of a user's journey.

Ask any mobile app marketing expert: What’s an app’s most important—and trickiest—metric to master for app success?

The answer you’ll get (almost) every time: App Retention.

But here’s the harsh reality:

The average app loses nearly 75% of users within the 1st day of the app install. Looking at it from the flip side, average D1 app retention rates reach only about 25%—meaning that only 25% of unique users come back on the next day of opening the app.

As we move along the app retention rate spectrum, it gets even more challenging. By Day 7, app retention rate numbers fall to a scant 9%. By Day 30, to a measly 4%.

No matter how you slice it, the outlook looks grim.

The graph starkly illustrates the rapid decline in user retention, dropping from 25% on Day 1 to just 4% by Day 30, highlighting the critical importance of early engagement.

It’s clear that the first days are critical to an app’s success. While there are many common strategies for increasing retention, here we’ll zero in on the best app retention strategy you must master from the very beginning to help reduce your app churn rate. Spoiler alert: it’s the app user onboarding process.

Before we dive into app user onboarding best practices with some helpful use cases and examples, let’s cover some of the basics first…

The role of the user onboarding process

When determining the best app marketing strategies, we app marketers look at everything in terms of where the user is in the app journey—or their Lifecycle Marketing stage.

This diagram shows the typical app user lifecycle, moving from awareness and acquisition to activation, retention, revenue, and finally referral.

If a new user has downloaded your app, that means you’ve successfully led the user from the acquisition stage to the activation (or onboarding) stage. Through your diligent ASO strategy efforts—your app store description, screenshots, reviews, etc—the acquired user should have a solid idea of what to expect from your app product.

But, just because they’ve moved along to the activation stage, that doesn’t mean that your work is done. Far from it—remember those stats we mentioned above?

Now, imagine you’re the newly acquired user and picture the following:

I just downloaded this app I’m really excited about, and I’m opening it for the first time. Is my excitement/need for this app reconfirmed upon opening? Do I have a clear sense of what this app will do for me and what I need to do next? Are there more complex features that I should be familiar with in order to truly benefit from this install?

If there’s any doubt about these user-facing issues, then you know your app needs an onboarding UX overhaul. Without it, you’ll end up with a frustrated user and an uptick in your app churn rate.

So the role of an optimized user onboarding experience is to effectively guide a new user from the activation stage and seamlessly into the app retention stage.

Ok, so how do you do that?

The features of a retention-boosting app onboarding UX

To avoid the dreaded “app-churn-at-first-open” scenario, you want to optimize the app onboarding experience so that it’s neither overwhelming nor insufficient—but make it so it’s just right.

It’s important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all rule when it comes to the best app user onboarding strategy. How lengthy you make the onboarding process will have a lot to do with the type of app you have. The key is presenting it in the right way so as not to confuse or frustrate your user.

With that in mind, let’s look at the onboarding UX features that yield the best retention rates:

Concise, focused initial walk-through or tutorial

We’ll be using the popular meditation app, Ten Percent Happier, as an example for the next couple of points.

The first thing they do right is immediately affirm the new user’s what and why of their app install decision with this simple, to-the-point first screen:

The Ten Percent Happier app greets new users with a simple, value-driven message, confirming the app's purpose to help them with mindfulness.

Next, the user embarks on an introductory journey that involves a series of questions. There are actually 15 total screens to get through. Usually, this is overkill, as scrolling through that many screens seems like a big ask. But let’s take a look at the strategy behind it.

For reference, here is a look at the first four onboarding screens or questions:

The first step in the onboarding process for Ten Percent Happier asks users about their prior experience with meditation to begin personalizing the journey.

The app continues to gather information about the user's goals, asking what brought them to meditation in the first place.

This screen gauges the user's primary motivation, such as reducing stress or improving sleep, to further tailor the content.

There are a few points about how Ten Percent Happier has structured the long series of questions that actually works in their favor:

• Each screen focuses on one, easy-to-answer question that’s painless to get through
• A clean design and simple visuals make for an aesthetically pleasant experience
• They clearly explain early on why they’re asking the questions from the user benefit perspective (“to help us personalize your experience) and remind them again about halfway through (at screen #6) what benefit the user will receive from this line of questioning—a benefit that is itself personalized based on your previous responses:

This screen reassures the user that their answers are being used to build a personalized plan, reinforcing the benefit of the onboarding questions.

Minimal personal data requirements for registration or a “delayed ask”

People don’t want to give away too much personal information. As private beings, humans tend to be scared off by technology when they’re asked to divulge too many personal details, especially if they don’t know why or how this information will be used.

Again, Ten Percent Happier does an excellent job recognizing this skepticism and using a kid-glove approach. They start the onboarding by asking a series of questions—none of which involve disclosing personal data—with the why behind them.

After answering all of the questions, they come to a “celebration” screen with an invitation to “see my plan.” By going through the personalization interrogation session, the user is already vested. Only after they’ve intrigued the user enough to want to see their personalized plan are they asked to create an account. By this point, the new user knows exactly how their personal info—whether they choose email or another sign-up method—will be used and why.

After the questionnaire, a celebratory screen builds anticipation and encourages the user to view their custom-built plan.

Only after demonstrating value and getting user buy-in does the app present the account creation screen, a strategy known as a "delayed ask."

On-the-go user guidance with timely visual tips

Visual tips are useful for apps that feature many interactive elements or have an untraditional navigation method, as they will help new users understand how to interact with the interface. But you don’t want to bombard them upfront with visual tips, otherwise, you risk taking the user into cognitive overload. This doesn’t usually end well!

Instead, save such visual tips for when they’re needed. Providing the information in context is the best way to help the user make sense of it and ensure a more seamless and personalized user experience.

User-guided interactive tours can also be very effective. This means having a quick app tutorial activated only when the user reaches a certain point in their journey. It’s a learn-as-you-go approach that’s known to be an effective learning technique.

App onboarding & retention best practices for gaming apps

The onboard UX tips apply to most apps across categories. Here we’d like to highlight gaming apps as they’re the most popular app category in both iOS and Android.

As an example, we’ll use Gobsmax, a popular hyper-casual gaming app. They had a specific—though not uncommon—problem. They actually saw great Day 7 and Day 30 retention rates, but the issue was getting most users to that point. They were in fact losing a large chunk on Day 1.

As our client, we recommended that Gobsmax implement the following best practices:

1. Reducing the number of taps (or screens) needed to reach the first action of the game
2. Teaching the user new game mechanics at the relevant time—not all upfront
3. Uninterrupted game play—especially at the beginning
4. Introducing achievements and planting the seed of gamification benefits

The result?

A 40% increase in Day 1 retention rate!

The tricky part about increasing app retention is that no one solution is guaranteed to be the golden ticket to app success. But, there are app engagement best practices and proven app onboarding strategies that will certainly increase your chances.

Need help growing your app with customized marketing solutions—anywhere from user acquisition and ASO strategies to engagement and retention tactics and beyond? Book a free consultation with one of our experts!

How a community makes an app successful (and why you need one)

This image illustrates the core concept of using community and motivation to enhance an app's success through gamification.

Did you know that the top 10% of app users will spend 3x more than the average customer? Needless to say, creating such a top tier of loyal users requires a lot of effort. Currently, that might be a challenge for apps.

Whether it be eCommerce where 88% of users dropping out before buying anything, mHealth, where apps experience a disappointing 4% user retention after 30 days, or banking, which retains a larger but still small 10% of its users.

So how do apps use communities to increase user retention?

Let’s find out how a community can affect app success and learn from 3 great gamification examples on how to grow your community:

• The untold science behind communities
• How do mobile apps benefit from communities?
• Here’s how gamification helps you build a loyal community
• 3 gamification examples that created successful communities
• Recap

The untold science behind communities

To reduce churn, you must give users a reason to stay on your app. Essentially, you need to provide the right motivation for the users to install and keep using your app.

Behavioral research finds that users tend to install new apps due to extrinsically motivating factors, such as getting rewards or praise. However, to create long-term mobile app engagement, you need intrinsic motivation as well. A great way to increase intrinsic motivation is to play on the human desire for relatedness and social connectivity.

In 2020, out of all app categories, social apps attracted the most weekly engagement. This is no coincidence; research is clear that communities create an engaging and satisfying user experience.

One of the most well-known scientific studies on how it works is ‘the need to belong’. In this paper, social psychologists Baumeister and Leary describe what makes relatedness so motivating. The report’s conclusion names social relations as a “powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation”.

In addition, the study writes that forming social attachments “produces positive emotions”. In other words, intrinsic motivation! The use of social levers has been used in many gamification examples before. Together they work in synergy to keep users engaged and motivated by enabling a joyful experience!

To sum up, a community makes for a rewarding experience by providing the need to belong, which motivates users to keep the app. Improving intrinsic motivation through the community has clear benefits – a modest jump of 5% in user retention can boost profits by as much as 25-95%!

How do mobile apps benefit from communities?

A loyal community helps alleviate two squeezes that are affecting the growth of mobile apps. At the outset, the average cost of registering a new user is close to $4. On the other end, you have most mobile apps struggle to retain more than 10% of new users past Day 30.

An app community has proven benefits to solve both of those problems and more:

• 88% of people with access to a community report an improved customer experience. In fact, a community clears the way for the 5 most important CX aspects.
• User acquisition costs can be slashed by 90%. It’s 5x cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire one.
• Customer data is plentiful. Increased interaction and active time on the platform will inform your perception of user behavior, improving your app.
• Increase in customer lifetime value. Get more out of your users!

While losing 90% or more of your users by Day 30 might be ‘normal’, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem. Solving it is a part of the solution in making your app successful. The apps with better user retention metrics just so happen to be the top apps on the market! You can see this shown in the graph below.

This graph clearly shows the difference in user retention between top-performing apps and the average, highlighting the importance of community engagement.

Here’s how gamification helps you build a loyal community

Gamification is the use of game psychology, motivational science and game-like elements in a non game context. Some well known gamification examples include the leaderboard on Strava or the reward system on Duolingo. The most popular apps in the world leverage gamification to create powerful in-app communities.

New to gamification? Catch up to speed with our ‘What is Gamification’ page!

Game elements like a leaderboard or competition can contribute to a community by motivating users to engage in it. Apps like Dropbox rewarded users for sharing with friends or posting on Facebook, whilst LinkedIn keeps users engaged throughout onboarding with a progress bar. The sheer growth of these two apps should tell you enough about how gamification can boost your community.

That being said, here are 3 things to keep in mind when using gamification for app communities:

1. Don’t fall prey to the overjustification effect. Satisfying community interaction is intrinsically motivating. That is to say, the action itself is enjoyable, and requires no encouragement from the app. If you reward users with extrinsic motivators such as prizes and trophies for something they are already intrinsically motivated for, you will be ‘overjustifying’ the action. This either does nothing or worse, a great deal of damage to customer motivation!
2. Rewards should be personal and acknowledge contributions. In creating a community, don’t think of a reward as a transaction. Instead, rewards should be personal and given in context to what the user’s actions meant to the community, such as helping others. This makes users feel like they belong!
3. What works for one community may not work for another. Games are highly social-specific, and they depend on the demography of your userbase. To have a successful gamification strategy, visualize how your gamification features serve your particular community and its aims.

To top it off, a growing community leads to the rise of influential and highly active members of the group, who can strengthen the network further and bring in new users. In short, a successful community becomes resilient and will stick around!

Building a community is already hard enough… That’s why we made gamification easy! Learn more about our app gamification software.

3 gamification examples that created successful communities

We already mentioned some examples of gamification-led community growth in Dropbox or Strava but let’s take a step back and look at how it works with a little more detail.

Below are 3 gamification examples to learn from.

How Kazyr’s esports community gives users more autonomy

Kazyr is the biggest esports platform in the Benelux with a community of over 100,000 users. They connect esports streamers, gamers, and event organizers through online and real-life tournaments in a variety of games.

The Kayzr community is driven by a shared passion for esports and gaming. A great intrinsic motivator to start with. However, a wide range of game elements like leveling systems, leaderboards, and badge rewards ensure users keep interacting with the community.

Kayzr's homepage demonstrates how gamification elements like levels and rewards can be integrated to build a vibrant user community.

Nike Run Club’s uses competition as a positive feedback loop

Nike Run Club’s social element greatly influences users to continue using the app. By encouraging users to compete against each other, the app fosters a sense of community. As a result, the app fulfills the human need to socialize. In addition, when users interact they keep each other motivated.

Research confirms that feeling part of a larger community leads to long-term mobile app engagement. The running app does everything in its power to keep users interacting with one another. Not only do users have a social feed, but there are also plenty of opportunities to team up and form an exercise group. Maybe that’s why they call it the Nike Running Club?

This example from the Nike Run Club app shows how sharing achievements fosters a sense of community and reinforces positive user behavior.

Barclaycard Ring Mastercard – a ‘team’ credit card that brings users together

Feeling part of the team adds a great sense of motivation for a lot of people. That’s why banks like Barclays leveraged this feeling with their Barclaycard Ring. They described this as a social debit card with the goal of financial education.

Members of the ring were awarded according to their participation in an online forum and the provided feedback they gave to each other. They worked as a team and learn about things like financial management, while also having an accountability partner. For instance, if the community of card-holders met a target, such as staying under a credit borrowing limit, they would all receive rewards.

To sum up, fostering a community is one of the most important steps in creating a long-lasting app. As well as the boost to user retention metrics, users are 4x more likely to refer others if they feel they belong to the community. When done right, social interaction among users is both a powerful and affordable strategy at any app’s disposal!

Recap

Currently, most apps have trouble with user retention. This is true across the board – for mHealth, where user retention is just 4% after 30 days, or banking, which is a low 10%. However, while it is ‘normal’, user churn is a serious problem that needs solving! To be sure, the top apps are those that found a fix. A powerful solution is an app community.

How do in-app communities work?

People feel ‘the need to belong’. Research shows that social relations provide a “powerful and fundamental motivation”. As well as a source of “positive emotions”. In other words, this is intrinsic motivation, which makes your app enjoyable to use!

4 reasons mobile apps need communities

• A near 300% jump in user retention.
• Customer acquisition costs can shrink by 90%!
• Customer data increases, as user interaction grows.
• Loyal customers lead to an increase in customer lifetime value.

Where does gamification come in?

You can find great gamification examples in apps like Facebook, Dropbox, Strava, and many more. Building opportunities to socialize fosters the environment for a cohesive community to form.

As a result, you will see the rise of influential and highly active group members, who can strengthen the network further. In short, successful communities are resilient!

What successful gamification examples are there?

Kazyr is the biggest esports company in the Benelux region with over 100,000 users. The app connects gamers and event organizers, allowing them to discuss and create content.

Nike Run Club’s challenges among users lead to long-term mobile app engagement, by giving users the confidence and support network to exercise.

Barclaycard Ring was a team credit card where users worked together to meet targets and earn rewards. In ‘gaming’ together, users improved the health of their finances!

To sum up, fostering a community is one of the most important steps in creating a long-lasting app. As well as the boost to user retention metrics, users are 4x more likely to refer others if they feel they belong to the community. When done right, social interaction among users is both a powerful and affordable tool at any app’s disposal!

This call-to-action encourages readers to learn more about implementing these community-building strategies through a consultation.

5 gamification examples that make Adidas Running app a success

The Adidas Running app leverages engaging features to motivate users, as shown by this athlete using the app on a run.

Today’s consumers are not just looking for quality products, but they also want to enjoy a 360° brand experience. One of the companies picking up on this trend is the sports brand Adidas. In 2019 they launched their own activity tracker app.

While exercise and weight loss apps have long held the largest market share, activity tracker apps are the fastest-growing segment in mHealth. So what are the companies in this segment doing right?

For the most part, they are leveraging app gamification to improve user motivation to work out. Examples of gamification strategies are in-app challenges or badge reward systems. These behavioral dynamics are used by the leading apps to generate growing legions of monthly active users committed to exercising.

This graph highlights the growth of gamification in the mobile health and fitness app market, indicating a clear trend towards engaging user experiences.

Let’s see how gamification helped the Adidas Running app generate over 5 million participants in the Run For The Oceans campaign. In this article, we’ll cover:

• How sports brands are creating customer motivation with mobile app engagement
• Adidas Running app and the challenge against plastic waste
• 5 examples of gamification that make Adidas Running a motivation success
• Recap

How sports brands are creating customer motivation with mobile app engagement

Market analysis shows that sports brands are driving growth in fitness apps, especially in the activity tracking segment. Athleticwear brands like Asics and Adidas both have leading fitness apps that benefit their business (and their customers) in a few ways:

1. Healthy people make healthy consumers. The goal of mHealth mobile app engagement is to keep customers fit and health-conscious. Ultimately, a person that runs regularly is more likely to buy fitness shoes. Hence, most running apps from sports brands integrate their products into the app. Take Nike Run Club, which sends you a notification when you need new trainers!
2. Rewarding your userbase results in customer loyalty. The best way to reward your users is to give them an enjoyable experience. Gamification is a key tool to achieving this on mobile apps! For example, Nike Fuel’s partnership with the game Zombies, Run! generated significant customer loyalty for the brand. As an added bonus, Nike reported a boost in R&D productivity and marketing.
3. Fitness apps increase customer retention. In using your fitness tracker, customers will store their activity data on your app. How does that create customer retention? Put simply, in the words of a tech analyst from Recon Analytics, “runners will be more loyal to the shoe brand if it also has all [their] stats. Imagine the hassle to switch the data from one app to the next”.

Given these circumstances, Adidas bought the popular running app Runtastic in 2015. At the time, it had 70 million users. Quickly, the app became a plank of Adidas’ digital strategy. In 2019, the app was rebranded to Adidas Running and boasts 170 million users today! One campaign that has boosted customer engagement (and the Adidas brand image) is the Run For The Oceans challenge.

Adidas Running app and the challenge against plastic waste

Adidas is getting serious about sustainability. As a target, the company plans to cut its carbon emissions by 30% before 2030. Of course, the tracker app is a fantastic method to contribute to the company’s social responsibility. A notable example is Run For The Oceans, which challenged the app’s users to run and raise money to fight plastic waste. First launched in 2017, the challenge encourages users to exercise by donating $1 to the cause for every kilometer spent running. In 2018, the campaign raised 1 million dollars!

The "Run for the Oceans" campaign is a prime example of using gamification for social good, motivating users to exercise for a cause.

In short, the Adidas Running app allows users to track their “run, jog, walk, or wheelchair” activities. The app gathers data from exercising sessions and produces statistics that both guide users and inform their fitness habits. Ultimately, the aim of the Run For The Oceans challenge was to not just advance the business goal of creating a sustainable Adidas but to engage users in the app and create positive associations with the brand.

In other words, it will be more authentic when Adidas claims to be sustainable if it has the history to support it. This is a crucial step in unlocking customer motivation and loyalty. In fact, brand authenticity creates perceived value and fosters brand trust!

5 examples of gamification that make Adidas Running a motivation success

By leveraging popular gamification features, Adidas made the Run For The Oceans campaign a real hit. The app is a top-tier gamification example and shows you how to use game-like elements to boost mobile app engagement.

Let’s run through 5 examples of gamification features that motivated users to run a staggering 12 million kilometers in just 1 month.

New to gamification? Get up to speed on our ‘What is Gamification?’ page!

1. Challenges are fun and motivating, win or lose

A challenge like Run For The Oceans is a validation of one’s self-worth and knowledge. These are powerful intrinsic motivators, as people are driven by the enjoyment of testing themselves. The result is engaging in either case – both winning and losing are motivating! While winners get the dopamine hit of a victory, losers will strive for their own triumph. Research shows that losers actually engage more persistently than those who win.

2. Community features satisfy the need to develop relationships

People are inherently driven by relatedness! Studies into sports app gamification demonstrate that satisfying the basic human need for relatedness is crucial to creating motivation. Adidas Running lets users join local groups and organize events to stay in touch.

This community feature within the Adidas app shows how users can connect with local groups, fostering a sense of relatedness and shared purpose.

3. Goal-setting gives user autonomy and purpose.

Research proofs that goal-setting is instrumental to achieving fitness targets. It provides users with a personalized purpose and a sense of autonomy – one of the backbones of gamification. Adidas Running facilitates this by allowing customized targets with deadlines, such as cycling 3 times in 1 week. To further increase customer motivation, recent behavioral science shows that goal deadlines are extremely motivating!

Personalized goal-setting is a key feature, giving users autonomy to define their own fitness targets and deadlines within the app.

4. Leaderboards instill a sense of competition.

A leaderboard is one of the most effective gamification examples. To sum it up, a leaderboard helps you track progress, share achievements, encourage competition and social interaction.

That’s good because a recent study into fitness apps found that social interaction is a key motivator. Adidas Running achieves this by having separate leaderboards for each community. According to the research paper, the closeness of the community motivates users to run, by increasing confidence and connection.

Want to create a better experience for your customers? Check out our app gamification platform!

5. A reward system motivates users to level up.

The Adidas Running Creators Club has four tiers, from challenger up to icon. Each level comes with perks and bonuses such as priority access to special events and free app personalization.

In short, a rewards program encourages long-term thinking in the user and is a great way to increase user retention. The reward system plays on multiple facets of gamification, namely, the constraint dynamic, which means locking features off. People want what they can’t have! In addition, a leveling system creates a sense of social hierarchy and our innate desire to be on top.

These 5 gamification examples are what make the Adidas Running app great. To illustrate the influence of gamification in its success, Adidas bought Runtastic in 2015, with around 70 million users. Quickly, however, Adidas gave the app a make-over. For instance, challenges and goal-setting features were added in 2019. As a result, Adidas Running now boasts 170 million users – that’s an increase of 100 million users in just 6 years!

Recap

Activity tracker apps are the fastest-growing segment in mHealth. One of the market leaders in this field is Adidas Running. They can thank their success to app gamification!

Sports brands are creating customer motivation with mobile app engagement

Market analysis shows that sports brands are driving growth in fitness apps, and there’s a reason why athleticwear companies like Adidas are getting in on the action:

1. Healthy people make healthy consumers. Clearly, a health-conscious person more likely to buy fitness shoes.
2. Rewarding your userbase results in customer loyalty. For example, Nike Fuel’s partnership with the game Zombies, Run! generated significant customer loyalty for the brand.
3. Fitness apps increase customer retention. In using your fitness tracker, customers will store their activity data on your app and get used to it there!

Given this, Adidas bought the running app Runtastic in 2015. Quickly, the app has become a plank of the Adidas digital strategy, and essential to their Run For The Oceans campaign.

Adidas Running app and the challenge against plastic waste

Run For The Oceans challenges users to run and raise money to fight plastic waste. First launched in 2017, the campaign encourages users to exercise by donating $1 to the cause for every kilometer spent running. In 2018, the campaign raised 1 million dollars!

Why is this important to Adidas? In claiming to be a sustainable company, challenges like Run For The Oceans lends authenticity. This is a crucial step in unlocking customer motivation – brand authenticity creates perceived value and fosters brand trust!

5 examples of gamification that make Adidas Running a motivation success

Let’s run through 5 examples of gamification features that motivated users to run a staggering 12 million kilometers in just 1 month:

1. Challenges are fun and motivating, win or lose. Research shows that losers actually engage more persistently than those who win!
2. Community features satisfy the need for relatedness. Studies into sports app gamification demonstrate that satisfying the basic human need for relatedness is crucial to creating motivation. Adidas Running lets users join local groups and organize events.
3. Goal-setting gives user autonomy and purpose. Behavioral science is clear that goal-setting is instrumental to achieving fitness targets! In brief, it provides users with a personalized purpose and a sense of autonomy – one of the backbones of gamification.
4. Leaderboards instill a sense of competition. Adidas Running has a leaderboard for every community, bringing them closer together. This is important as a recent study into fitness apps found that social interaction is a key motivator!
5. A reward system can motivate active usage. The Adidas app created a reward system using different motivational triggers such as progress indicators, a leveling system, and constraint-based motivation through locked-off features.

In short, since buying Runtastic in 2015, Adidas Running has gained 100 million users – and the team at Adidas can thank gamification for contributing to the app’s success.

Explore how StriveCloud can help you implement similar powerful gamification strategies in your own application.

How to hack growth like Revolut (the secret is mobile app engagement!)

Revolut's growth strategy relies on exceptional mobile app engagement, as visualized here.

There is no stopping the Fintech revolution! The race is heating up - digital banking is growing 3 times as fast as traditional banks. The European leader in Fintech is Revolut, whose innovative model is disrupting banking as we know it. Uniquely, their growth relies on mobile app engagement, rather than spending on marketing. Their engagement strategy boasts some of the best gamification examples in finance. As a result, Revolut has captured 15 million customers across 37 countries in just 6 short years!

Revolut is changing banking for the better

As the digital generation matures, neobanks such as Revolut will continue to grow. Today, almost 1 in 2 people use digital banks exclusively. That’s up from 1 in 4 in 2013. This growth is particularly concentrated in young people, where over 80% of 18-25-year-olds use mobile banking! Given this, Revolut saw how crucial mobile app engagement is now, and how critical it will be to guarantee future success.

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!

Are you still learning the basics of gamification? Get all the info you need right here!

3 steps to turn mobile app engagement into growth

For Revolut’s fast-growth strategy to be successful, it was imperative to create a highly engaging app. Rather than investing its budget in marketing, Revolut preferred to invest in its product and rely on user referrals to grow instead.

The thinking can be summed up in 3 easy steps:

1. Make an exciting app with gamification examples like point systems.
2. Motivate daily user activity and turn them into customer advocates.
3. Incentivize user referrals, led by your loyal customers!

Why is this so successful? User referrals are the most valuable form of marketing! Referrals are achieved by creating loyal customers, which are formed by a fun and satisfying app that keeps users engaged!

Revolut further encourages user referrals by exploiting the ‘network effect’. Essentially, the service becomes more useful the more people 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 Optimove found that gamification can boost engagement by as much as 30%. 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

So you already know why you need an engaging app. But how do you actually go about building it? Let’s take a look at 5 gamification examples that make Revolut so amazing to use!

#1 A points system rewards user loyalty and creates a fun competitive dynamic

Revolut combines 3 powerful gamification features into one. Users get to collect points for being active on the app. As their points increase, so does their ranking on the leaderboard. The higher ranking also gives them a higher chance of winning actual cash prizes!

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.

This leaderboard example from Revolut shows how points, rankings, and prizes can be combined to drive user competition and engagement.

#2 Customization tools like personal avatars and theme selection give users control

Letting users choose a theme and personal avatar is more powerful than it may appear. Not only does customization harness the need for control, but allowing users to make the interface their own also makes them more hesitant to abandon it. After all, it’s their own space! Studies have found that custom avatars significantly improve a sense of ownership. This is how you create an immersive and sticky user experience.

The ability to customize themes and avatars gives users a sense of ownership over the app, increasing its stickiness.

#3 Gamified tasks help junior accounts shape the right behaviors

Revolut Junior utilizes gamified tasks to teach young users about financial responsibility, rewarding them for completing goals.

Intended to help 7 to 17-year-olds learn good financial habits, Revolut Junior gamifies tasks set by parents to motivate the young users to complete them. After finishing a task, the young users get money transferred to their account to spend as they wish. Aside from the obvious motivator of a cash reward, this feature satisfies a core motivational need for control and empowerment.

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

This progress bar visualizes savings goals, providing instant feedback and motivating users to keep working towards their financial targets.

In order to encourage either frugal spending or rainy day savings, a progress bar shows how close you are to your limit or goal. Users can set their own targets, making the app feel more personal. They also get to see a clear transaction history to get insights into their spending habits. It cannot be overlooked that knowledge is an important intrinsic motivator!

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

Revolut's tiered card system is a classic example of a loyalty program that rewards engagement with exclusive perks and status.

A tiered rewards program creates a hierarchy of users similar to a leveling system. This has wide-ranging benefits. In fact, consumer research finds that 75% of people like to associate themselves with a brand that offers loyalty program rewards. Put simply, people like to be rewarded with tailored and relevant perks.

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.

Enrich your own app with fun elements. You bring the data, we bring the tech! Check out our app gamification software.

Recap

Fintech companies are upending banks as we know them. Digital banking is growing 3 times as fast as traditional banks. The clear leader is Revolut – the fastest-growing tech company in Europe!

Revolut is changing banking for the better

Today, almost 1 in 2 people use digital banks exclusively. That’s up from 1 in 4 in 2013. This growth is most visible in young users, where over 80% of 18-25-year-olds use mobile banking! Given this, Revolut chose to focus on mobile app engagement.

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

This is clearly illustrated in the 3 step expansion strategy for Revolut:

1. Make an exciting app with gamification examples like points systems.
2. Create daily active users that become customer advocates.
3. Incentivize user referrals, led by your loyal customers!

Why is this so successful? User referrals are the most valuable form of marketing! It is a fact that 92% of people trust referrals from friends and family. These referrals are earned by people who enjoy using the app – something achieved with 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! This is the secret to a growing and active userbase.

5 gamification examples that boost the user experience

1. A points system rewards loyal users and creates fun competition.
2. Customization tools like avatars and theme selection give users control.
3. Gamifying tasks incentivizes Junior account holders to achieve.
4. Progress bars push users to save up a nest egg.
5. Loyalty programs reward app engagement and create customer advocacy.

In short, Revolut has smartly adapted gamification for a Fintech context. The results are clear – in the first quarter of 2021 revenue grew by 130% and that will likely continue!

Gamify your app with your business goals in mind! Speak to our experts and see how gamification can help you.

4 ways to introduce gamification features that improve the user experience

This article explores how integrating gamification can solve common app development challenges and enhance user engagement.

If you want to become successful in today’s app market, you must be able to stand out. On Android alone, there are nearly 3.5 million apps competing for user attention. What then, do the best performing apps have in common? Gaming! Games form a whopping 72% of Android app revenue. Of course, that doesn’t mean your app needs to be a game. Instead, you can take what works for games and leverage them for your business.

After setting up the right strategy, it takes two steps to put it into motion. First, you’ll have to find the app gamification software that suits your needs. Secondly, you’ll need to select which gamification features you’re going to use within your app, and what goal they have.

In this article, let’s cover how to create an effective gamification strategy and look at 5 gamified app examples that did it right!

• The biggest challenges that apps face today
• How gamification improves the user experience
• 4 gamification features that can transform your app and how to implement them
• 5 apps that found success with gamification
• Recap

The biggest challenges that apps face today

Are you ready for a shock? Global research firm Gartner estimates that just 0.01% of all apps are successful. In other words, that’s a 9,999 in 10,000 chance of failure! To become that 1 app that achieves a return on investment, you must tackle what app developers agree are the biggest challenges that currently plague the market:

App discovery is harder than ever

With so much competition, traditional marketing techniques are losing efficiency. This includes methods that create organic traffic like SEO or ASO (app store optimization). In real terms, this represents a particular issue for up-and-coming challengers in consolidated markets, because apps with more downloads rank higher. As such, taking on the incumbent leaders today requires a truly unique and marketable product.

Low rates of user retention

User churn is named as the most critical issue for apps by 55% of app marketers. Worryingly, there is no sign of change on the horizon. Across the board, average app retention actually decreased by 12% in 2020. At the moment, one can expect 71% of users to churn within 3 months. In other words, for every 10 users that you take effort to acquire, only 3 of them will still have your app installed after 90 days. Strikingly, the importance of user retention is laid clear when you know that user churn is what separates the market leaders from their hopeful challengers.

This chart demonstrates the dramatic drop-off in user retention over 90 days, highlighting a key challenge for app developers.

Are you experiencing low user engagement & high churn? Learn how gamification can help you →

The rising cost of user acquisition

In the past 6 years, the cost of acquiring customers has shot up 60%. Ultimately, this makes existing customers even more valuable than they already were. Combined with low user retention, the expensive acquisition is a killer for any business model. With that in mind, your app should be engaging enough to retain users. Notable examples of success here are the Uber loyalty program and the Revolut referral campaign.

How gamification improves the user experience

Out of all categories of apps, the above challenges are less threatening to mobile gaming. Games have some of the highest retention rates, by far and away the most amount of downloads, and the largest share of app revenue. Gaming dominates the app market! Indeed, non-gaming apps can learn a few things from this sector of the market - and that’s where gamification comes in.

Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts. For example, this could mean adding a leaderboard to your educational app, which can show who in the community is earning more points. Perhaps that feature reminds you of the hit app Duolingo, whose product manager says that “gamification is the reason” they are the most popular educational app in the world!

What is gamification and how does it improve the user experience?

Research has shown that gamification significantly improves the user experience. Studies find that gamification features positively affect the perceived benefits and value of a mobile app. Ultimately, the continued engagement that gamification facilitates leads to customer loyalty and user retention.

4 gamification features that can transform your app and how to implement them

So, how does one implement gamification features? The right strategy is crucial - and the right gamification app software can be the perfect guide throughout the process. Of course, how to gamify your app will vary depending on what you are trying to achieve. However, there are some popular features that will prove invaluable whatever you need:

#1 Set up a points system and reward your users

A reward system does a great job of incentivizing user behavior. For instance, if you want to push people to cycle instead of drive, you can reward points for it. This is how the app Changers saved 80,000kgs of CO2 in just 3 months! However, the important thing to remember is that the points must mean something. To give people the feel-good dopamine hit, gamification features such as leaderboards or prizes are perfect.

#2 Invent a storyline with avatars and create a sense of personal involvement

Research is clear that avatars boost a user’s sense of ownership over the app. In essence, users will feel more personally involved. For sure, this is an important feeling to create if you want to take the user on a story. Not only that, seeing other people’s avatars fulfills the need for social relatedness. It makes competing with other users more meaningful compared to a regular profile pic or nothing at all.

Easily incentivize & keep users motivated to use your product? Discover our app gamification platform!

#3 Hand out badges and boost customer motivation

Badges are a great way of recognizing a user’s accomplishments. In addition, badge systems help align users to goals that you share. Once earned, badges act as status symbols, distinguishing badge-holders from others.

#4 Encourage communities that make the experience fun

One of the most powerful needs that humans have is the need to belong. In the most basic terms, people crave social interaction. Gamification features such as challenges and leaderboards can push users to interact and compete. An in-app community can make customers 60% more loyal to your brand. For example, studies into Nike Run Club found that social interaction was the biggest source of customer motivation.

5 apps that found success with gamification

Gamification can help apps across all categories, from B2B to B2C, and here are just 5 apps that have used gamification features to enhance the user experience:

Headspace will make you a master of meditation

Headspace is a meditation app that wants to improve the mental health of its users (and there are over 2 million of them). Gamification elements help the app achieve this! Streaks encourage daily usage that hopes to install the habit of meditation. In addition, hitting milestones earn users rewards and a digital confetti page will congratulate them.

Headspace uses a streak feature to visually represent a user's consistent meditation practice, motivating them to continue.

Fitbit’s leaderboard encourages users to run harder

Fitbit is a health & fitness app used with a wearable wrist device. The app tracks daily steps which buy your way up the leaderboard. This creates a sense of social connection; a place to compete with friends and share the results on social media, which we call a positive intensifier. It must work, as Fitbit has over 29 million weekly active users. Studies show that the leaderboard alone leads to a 15% increase in daily steps!

This leaderboard from Fitbit fosters a sense of competition and community, encouraging users to increase their daily step count.

LinkedIn improved its onboarding with this 1 gamification feature

LinkedIn’s profile creation is subtly gamified. A colorful progress bar shows how far you are to finishing, which creates a clear goal. As well, users receive positive feelings when they reach the color green! With this feature, profile completion shot up 55%!

LinkedIn's profile completion bar is a simple yet effective gamification element that guides a user toward a fully filled-out profile.

Setting targets with SWEAT creates goals to strive for

In setting exercise goals and time targets, users create ownership over their fitness journey. Studies show that adding a deadline greatly helps goal pursuit! The app supports these targets by aligning them with workout programs, encouraging 12-week deadlines. Just long enough to make a difference, not too long to seem daunting.

The SWEAT app uses goal-setting and program timelines to provide structure and motivation for users' fitness journeys.

The Starbucks loyalty program that truly rewards

A staggering 16 million users are signed up to the Starbucks loyalty program. The app rewards users with stars for their orders, which can be redeemed for free food and drinks. The program has tiers that reward the most loyal customers the most. As a result, Starbucks can thank the program for 40% of all US sales!

Starbucks' loyalty program visualizes rewards with 'stars,' making the path to a free item tangible and engaging for customers.

As you can see, depending on your business goals, gamification features can enhance the user experience and drive more of the customer behavior that you want to promote. If you would like to start on your journey, the Strivecloud gamification app software can assist your needs and help you overcome the challenges facing your app.

Recap

Launching a new app is becoming even harder than before! Apps are facing three major challenges:

First off, app discovery is getting harder and harder. Think about it! Getting on the front page of the app store is not easy! You already need thousands of downloads to get there in the first place, and the competition is steep!

With millions of apps to choose from, grabbing and (even more important) keeping the attention of users is nearly impossible. That leads us to the second challenge: low user retention.

To add to all these struggles, user acquisition costs are also rising. Which makes it a lot harder for apps to be profitable enough for sustainable growth.

So what do the most popular apps like Fitbit or Headspace do differently? Well, they leverage the psychology behind the world's most popular apps: games!

No, they don’t turn their app into a game. Instead, they use the features and underlying psychology of games to nudge user behavior their way. For instance, by using leaderboards, badges, or points reward systems.

Would you like to see how gamification could work for your app? Learn more →

How to develop the best app gamification strategy - everything you need to know!

Just like you wouldn’t expect to fit a square peg in a round hole, a gamification strategy is not one-size-fits-all. In fact, what makes gamification so powerful is because it is personalized! Given that, the shape of your gamification strategy depends on what you are trying to achieve. From mobile app engagement to user retention, you will need to decide what your goals are and which gamification features will get you there.

In this article, we’ll cover how to develop your own gamification strategy, as well as briefly touch on some gamification examples from apps that have successfully pulled it of.

• What is an app gamification strategy?
• Why gamification is an effective strategy for mobile app engagement
• 5 gamification examples you need to know
• How app gamification strategies vary by app category
• How StriveCloud can help you find the right gamification strategy
• Recap

What is an app gamification strategy?

Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts. To go into more detail, gamification leverages the data mined from user behavior to incentivize user actions that align with your business goals. Essentially, it’s a means of persuasion!

Are you still learning the basics of gamification? Get all the info you need right here!

But what makes it so persuading? Gamification taps into the deepest parts of our psychology and makes using an app fun and rewarding. It does this by exploiting both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. To clarify, intrinsic motivation means that the app is naturally satisfying to use. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is persuasion by means of tangible rewards, such as prizes or visual progress.

Of course, gamification features vary depending on what you are offering your users, who those users are, and what you are trying to persuade them to do. For example, a fitness app and a banking app will require totally different solutions! Equally, certain gamified elements affect a 20-year-old differently than a 50-year-old.

With that in mind, you will need to develop your own app gamification strategy. This requires a few considerations:

• What is your goal? Is it retention, activation, or mobile app engagement?
• Who is your audience? Research shows that young people react more positively to intrinsic motivation than older people, who tend to prefer extrinsic motivators.
• What is your data? Simply put, what are you gathering from your users? This changes what you can leverage. Without data, you have nothing to gamify!

Why gamification is an effective strategy for mobile app engagement

Engaged users will bring your business many benefits. An analysis by Gallup found that genuinely engaged customers are more loyal to your brand, and more profitable than the average customer by a 23% margin!

In concrete terms, here are a few places where that 23% rise comes from:

A boost in organic installs. A genuinely fun app to use will prompt users to recommend the app to their friends and family. Studies find that gamification can increase referral traffic by as much as 250%!

An enjoyable onboarding process reduces user churn. Across all apps, Day 1 user retention never rises above 33%. That means 2/3 of those who install your app will have already dropped it within 24 hours! To combat this, a gamified and user-friendly onboarding process makes the process enjoyable. Case studies show that a gamified onboarding experience can affect engagement and retention with a 50% increase.

Higher levels of mobile app engagement result in more efficient marketing. For instance, if you know more about your audience because they use your app more, a push notification promoting an offer is more likely to find the right audience! This effect is like a positive feedback loop, as it needs the initial boost to work its magic. Case studies show that the engagement gained through gamification results in a productivity boost in R&D and digital marketing.

Enrich your own app with fun elements. You bring the data, we bring the tech! Check out our app gamification software.

5 gamification examples you need to know

You will certainly recognize some of the most popular gamification examples, which have wide-ranging applications and are excellent at creating customer motivation:

#1 Progress bars

The profile set-up progress bar on LinkedIn boosted profile completion by 55%!

Progress bars are so simple but so powerful. Its have been found to reduce the ‘cognitive load’ of a loading screen or during onboarding. In other words, it makes things easier for the user by providing information in steps, and rewarding users throughout completing them. The process requires less effort on the user’s part, resulting in higher levels of completion.

#2 User rewards

The Starbucks user rewards program is responsible for an incredible 40% of all US sales.

Rewarding your users is one of the best ways to make your app ‘sticky’ and keep customers coming back for more. This is the key to creating loyal customers who not only recommend your brand to others but spend almost 3x as much as the average user.

#3 Leaderboards

A study found that the Fitbit leaderboard led to a 15% increase in daily steps.

A leaderboard motivates both yourself and your peers! By introducing an element of social interaction into user activity, your app will feel far more real. Research confirms that feeling part of a larger community leads to long-term mobile app engagement.

#4 Badges

The Duolingo badge system boosted user referrals by 116%!

Badges are an easy way of giving your users instant feedback. Immediately, users will feel like their tasks have meaning. In addition, the rush of receiving a badge will push them to achieve the next one. The science shows that it works - studies into the gamification of the Nike Run Club showed that badges ‘sustain engagement’.

#5 Challenges

In just two weeks in 2018, Adidas Running raised $1 million with their Run for the Oceans challenge.

Challenges give users a clear purpose within your app. It’s a great way to get users started. Think about all the “30 days of...” programs! Research by Mckinsey shows that challenges create a flow-like state where people are more productive and motivated. The logic behind it is that people are more motivated to work and progress towards a goal, rather than completing separate grunt tasks without a purpose.

Bonus tip: Group challenges fulfill your users’ need for competition and community by giving them an opportunity to flex their muscles! People love to show off their efforts or work together to achieve a common goal.

How app gamification strategies vary by app category

Whatever your app does, these gamification examples can be adapted to your niche!

Gamification in fitness apps

Did you know that over half of all fitness apps contain at least 1 element of gamification? For sure, gamification continues to be an important consumer trend in fitness. Creative gamification examples include SWEAT’s before-and-after photo function, which encourages users to share a side-by-side photo of themselves before a workout course, and one following it, to show off their progress!

CEO Kayla Itsines credits this as the biggest reason her app became the #1 most profitable fitness app in the world.

The SWEAT app's before-and-after feature provides a powerful, visual testament to user progress, encouraging social sharing and user acquisition.

Gamification in banking apps or fintech

Digital banks are thriving! Gamification has been instrumental in creating the mobile app engagement that has made Revolut the biggest fintech app in Europe. Their leaderboard is combined with a prize pool, where the leaders get a chance of winning a piece of the £250,000 grand total. To gain points, users have to make transactions and refer friends!

Revolut's leaderboard combines competition with tangible rewards, motivating users to increase their transaction activity and refer friends.

Gamification in learning apps

Believe it or not, but a virtual alien can help encourage you to learn a language. Memrise, for instance, starts off your course with a little story. To begin, you are an astronaut with a pet alien, trying to learn a new language. As you study, your alien grows up! It is an inventive way to reward users for completing courses and creates a fun and visually clear way to track your progress. Gamification examples like these are instrumental in habit formation, which is essential in order for educational apps to maintain customer motivation.

Memrise uses a narrative approach, where growing a virtual pet visualizes the user's learning progress and builds an emotional connection.

How StriveCloud can help you find the right gamification strategy

Tired of users churning? Does it feel like nothing you do actually keeps users engaged for longer? Do you want to follow in the footsteps of these successful apps, without feeling like a copycat?

If you want to gamify your user experience, but have no idea where to start we have the solution for you!

Every app requires a different gamification strategy. StriveCloud specializes in gamification for apps to lift up customer motivation and increase mobile app engagement and retention. We have worked with clients across banking, mhealth, mobility, and many more industries!

In StriveCloud’s custom gamification workshops we focus on developing your own gamification strategy, tailored to your app, audience, and business goals. Together with our gamification experts, we focus on crafting a user experience that is engaging for your user, while also driving the behaviors that make you grow.

First, we take your user data to pinpoint your biggest levers for growth. Is it engagement, retention, or activation? Then, we create a concrete plan with tactics you can leverage to achieve your goals. Finally, you implement the action plan, making your app so great, users won’t even want to put it down!

If you want to learn more about how behavioral psychology can be leveraged for your app, take a look at our workshop offering.

Recap

A gamification strategy is not one-size-fits-all. In fact, what makes gamification so powerful is because it is personalized! Given that, your gamification strategy will be unique to you and your business goals. Here is how to make gamification work for you!

What is an app gamification strategy?

Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts.

Your own strategy for how to use the elements depends on what your app does and who it is for. Finally, a personalized gamification strategy requires a few considerations:

• What is your goal?
• Who is your audience?
• What is your data?

Why gamification is an effective strategy for mobile app engagement

An analysis by Gallup found that genuinely engaged customers are more loyal to your brand, and more profitable than the average customer by a 23% margin! Here’s how:

#1 A boost in organic installs. Studies find that gamification can boost referrals by 250%!

#2 A fun and easy onboarding reduces user churn. Research shows that gamified onboarding affects engagement and retention with a 50% increase.

#3 Higher mobile app engagement results in more efficient marketing. Case studies show that increased engagement results in a productivity boost in R&D and digital marketing.

5 gamification examples you need to know

#1 Progress bars. This little feature helped LinkedIn boost profile completion by 55%!

#2 User rewards. Starbucks’ loyalty program is responsible for 40% of all US sales.

#3 Leaderboards. A study found the Fitbit leaderboard led to a 15% jump in daily steps.

#4 Badges. The Duolingo badge system boosted user referrals by 116%!

#5 Challenges. Adidas Running raised $1 million with the Run for the Oceans challenge.

How app gamification strategies vary by app category

Gamification in fitness apps

Over half of all fitness apps contain at least 1 element of gamification. For example, SWEAT, the world’s most profitable fitness app, has a before-and-after workout photo function that users can share. This makes the customer value obvious to newbies!

Gamification in banking/fintech apps

Digital banks are thriving! On their way to becoming the biggest fintech app in Europe, Revolut rewarded users with points, and those at the top of a leaderboard won prizes.

Gamification in learning apps

In the language app Memrise, you grow your pet alien as you study! Gamification examples like this are a fun and visual way of tracking your progress and forming a habit.

How StriveCloud can help you find the right gamification strategy

Are you inspired by these successful apps? StriveCloud specializes in the gamification of apps and can help you develop your own gamification strategy.

Start off your journey with our gamification workshop. Together, we analyze your app data and craft gamified actions that make your data work for your business goals!

If you’re not quite sure that your app is ready for our workshop, or you simply want more information, you can of course sign up for a free consultation with us.

Your goals will be unique to your app. Find out what behavioral change tactics might work for your users in a custom gamification workshop!

4 gamification features that make Headspace worth it (according to 2 million users)

Headspace has become a leader in the wellness app market by effectively using gamification to encourage meditation habits and build a massive user base.

What started in a small London apartment is now a global phenomenon! Headspace, the meditation and wellness app, is today trusted by the likes of Google, LinkedIn, and Adobe to give their employees peace of mind. With gamification features that make meditation a habit, the app built a reward system that gives its users exactly what they’re looking for: peace of mind.

Not to mention, over 2 million paying subscribers use the app regularly.

Let’s take a look at what made Headspace so successful, and what you can learn from their success!

• 3 trends that define the Headspace success story
• How Headspace uses these gamification features to grow
• Create your own gamification strategy in 3 easy steps
• Recap

3 trends that define Headspace success story

Get this - 1 BILLION people will download wellness apps in 2021. That’s up 42% from last year, which itself was a record number! Clearly, mobile wellness is booming, and Headspace is riding that wave. In the first 3 months of 2021, Headspace brought in over $16 million - more than any previous quarter. So what is causing this enormous success?

#1 A growing awareness of mental health and wellness

Today, people are more likely than ever to discuss mental health, according to the New Economics Foundation. Unfortunately, the increase in attention might be linked to the increase in affliction. To demonstrate that, the rising cost of poor mental health on the world economy is set to more than double between 2010 and 2030, ballooning to $6 trillion a year. Given that, apps like Headspace fulfill a wellness need that is emerging with a higher priority each year that passes.

This graph illustrates the growing economic impact of poor mental health, a key driver behind the rising demand for wellness apps.

#2 Personalization is becoming a priority

According to the consulting firm McKinsey, now more than ever consumers want personal solutions. For instance, people want videos or courses tailored to their meditation or nutrition needs and habits. In the US, UK, and Germany, more than 88% of wellness consumers prioritize personalization over privacy. With the gamification features implemented by Headspace, such as custom meditation packs and the ability to add wellness ‘buddies’, the app has successfully tapped into this customer priority.

#3 The rise of services over products

For a long time, health and wellness companies have relied on the sale of products to generate revenue. However, recent advances in mobile access and digital literacy are drastically shifting the market. While products still dominate wellness spending, services (such as a Headspace subscription) are on the way up.

The chart highlights the market shift towards wellness services, a trend Headspace has successfully capitalized on with its subscription model.

What is gamification? Learn everything you need right here!

Anticipating these trends, Headspace has prepared itself for the future. Clearly, it is working. Not only did the app add 1 million paying subscribers between 2018 and 2020, but Headspace is increasingly popular with business customers too. In that same two-year time period, Headspace doubled its business customers from 300 to 600. Particularly given the rise in home-working, organizations are looking to install wellness programs to keep up employee satisfaction and productivity.

In the general wellness market, this success is being seen too. Business involvement in wellness shot up in 2021, achieving a record $4.2 billion across 153 deals. In conclusion, more companies want in!

How Headspace uses gamification features to grow

Whilst meditation is physically easy to practice, the biggest barrier to actually doing it is internal: a lack of motivation! How then, does Headspace motivate its users to meditate? By creating a habit! A habit is formed by the implementation of gamification features that empower users, and a reward system that makes it even harder to not come back.

Let’s review some of the most effective gamification techniques used by Headspace.

Enrich your own app with fun elements! Check out our app gamification software.

A fast and easy onboarding process makes users feel safe

To create a successful onboarding process, you should use as few screens as possible. Headspace manages to get it right in just 5 screens! When moving quickly, the user sees the value of the app faster. This is important, or else you may find you have a problem with early user churn!

To prevent that from happening, Headspace has a progress bar that shows how long until users can start using the app freely.

Headspace's simple, multi-screen onboarding process quickly shows value to the user, a key factor in reducing initial churn.

Free content for beginners entices users to join and pay

At a glance, giving things away for free might not make immediate sense. However, it is true that offering gratuities results in a more likely conversion. To explain, there are two underlying mechanics that make this a winning feature - reciprocity and constraint.

Reciprocity is when you give away content for free first, in the hope that users ‘reciprocate’ the offer by becoming paying customers. Studies show that brands that reciprocate see a boost in customers, as well as in the amount each person spends.

The other mechanic is ‘constraint’. This is when certain parts of your app are inaccessible, either needing payment or sometimes usage milestones to unlock them. It pays to know the psychology behind why constraint is so powerful. Simply put, people don’t like to miss out!

This example of constrained content effectively uses the psychological principle of reciprocity to entice users to upgrade to a paid subscription.

A leaderboard with ‘no leaders’ encourages socialization and habit formation

Above all, Headspace wants you to take it easy. For sure, this approach is followed by a leaderboard function. While it looks like a leaderboard, there are no leaders. Instead, you can only see who among your ‘buddies’ has used the app today. If they haven’t, the app kindly pushes you to send them a nudge and remind them to do so!

Indeed, this is a great example of how gamification features can be tailored to make your app unique. Headspace’s leaderboard is appropriately low stress and low stakes, and it retains all the benefits of a conventional leaderboard! Firstly, users will profit from the social interaction that a leaderboard fosters. As well, the focus on daily usage encourages subscribers to form a habit for both themselves and their buddies.

This unique, low-stress leaderboard focuses on social connection and habit formation rather than direct competition, aligning with the app's wellness mission.

Streaks and badges form a reward system that gives users positive reinforcement (and why they can’t share them)

Ultimately, Headspace wants you to form a habit. A fantastic way of doing that is with the streak feature. Just 15 sessions earn a month’s free subscription for a friend! This prize and positive validation give users good feelings, a reward system that makes the app intrinsically motivating to use.

By celebrating achievements early on, users feel what is called the ‘endowed progress effect’, which notes that when people feel they have made progress towards a target, they will become more motivated to achieve it.

The badge system is also built to give users positive emotions. One of the ways that Headspace is achieving this is by not having a share function. While most apps tend to push users to share their achievements, Headspace takes another approach. Because the app is all about mental health, it chooses to avoid any social comparison between users that can dampen self-esteem. In this way, users can see their badges and feel like they have achieved something, without needing to measure themselves against their peers.

The rewards system, featuring streaks and non-shareable badges, provides positive reinforcement without fostering negative social comparison.

How to set up your own gamification strategy in 3 easy steps

In just 3 hours and 3 easy steps, StriveCloud workshops can map out the perfect journey for your custom app gamification strategy. Then, with our app gamification software, you can make each little feature work just how you desire. It’s simple to get started:

1. Book your workshop. Together with your team, our gamification experts will explore your app, its functionality and target audience, your growth goals, and the obstacles currently blocking your path.
2. Bring your data. We’ll help you analyze your user journey to discover where the biggest wins will be. This will depend on what you prioritize: activation, retention, or engagement. Of course, we’ll tell you what you need in advance.
3. Make a plan. Once the key elements of your app have been analyzed, and we have discussed how your product can harness the benefits of gamification, it’s crunch time. We’ll show you the exact tactics we’ve previously used to boost daily active users by 58% and increase user retention by as much as 23%.

With this plan, you’ll know exactly which next steps to take to drive user motivation and retention of your app!

Rev up your app growth strategy with an interactive gamification workshop tailored to your business needs!

Recap

What started in a small London apartment is now a wellness app trusted by the likes of Google, LinkedIn, and Adobe to give their employees peace of mind. Not to mention, Headspace has over 2 million paying subscribers who use the app regularly!

How did Headspace do it? By aligning with today’s trends:

#1 A growing awareness of mental health and wellness. Society has never been more aware of mental health. In fact, it costs the world economy $6 trillion a year. That’s more than a double increase between 2010 and 2030.

#2 Personalization is becoming a priority. More than 88% of wellness consumers prioritize personalization over privacy. This includes tailored courses and videos.

#3 The rise of services over products. Increased access to mobile apps has created a new platform for wellness services. Spending on services is rising, compared to products.

In anticipating these trends, Headspace is excelling - prepared itself for the future. The app doubled both individual and business customers between 2018 and 2020!

How Headspace uses gamification features to grow:

• Simple onboarding gets users to value faster. The Headspace onboarding process only consists out of 5 screens and a progress bar. Keeping it simple allows them to decrease the ‘cognitive load’, making the onboarding process feel even smoother.
• Free beginner content entices users to start meditating and eventually upgrade to paid plans. Offering gratuities prompts users to ‘reciprocate’ by becoming paying customers. Studies show that brands that reciprocate see a boost in customers!
• A low-stakes leaderboard encourages socialization. On this kind of leaderboard, there are no rankings. Instead, you can only see which of your ‘buddies’ has used the app today. If not, the app asks you to remind them! Although this is low stress and low stakes, users still profit from social interaction and habit formation.
• Badges give users positive reinforcement (and they can’t share them). The badge reward system is built to give users positive emotions. By not having a share function, Headspace ensures users avoid any social comparison between peers that can dampen self-esteem.

Create your own gamification strategy in 3 easy steps

In just 3 easy steps, a StriveCloud workshop can map out your gamification strategy:

1. Book your workshop with us. Our experts will explore every aspect of your app.
2. Bring your data. We’ll analyze how to optimize the user journey to suit your goals.
3. Make a plan. We’ll show you some gamification examples and tactics from leading apps, and teach you how to execute them correctly!

With this plan, you’ll know exactly which next steps to take to drive user engagement and retention of your app!

How to shape your app so users can’t put it down? Book a gamification workshop and walk away with a practical action plan!

5 ways Revolut creates the best banking app with gamification

This image introduces Revolut, a leading digital bank that has mastered user engagement through gamification, fueling its rapid growth.

The growth of digital banks over the past decade has been unstoppable, both in terms of speed and ferocity. In a 2015 survey, only 18% of digitally active adults used digital banks for money transfers. In 2019, that number was a staggering 75%! Riding this wave is the market leader Revolut, which has become the fastest-growing tech company in Europe.

In just 6 years, Revolut has built up a base of 15 million customers! The story behind their success is one with great gamification examples to learn from. The app uses gamification features like raffles and leaderboards to ensure a fun and engaging customer experience.

• Competition is hot, but Revolut is hotter
• 5 features every banking app needs
• 5 gamification examples for banking from Revolut
• StriveCloud specializes in customer experience optimization
• Recap

Competition is hot, but Revolut is hotter

Globally, there are over 25,000 fintech startups, with nearly 10,000 of those in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. To be sure, this makes for a highly competitive market. For emerging startups, the saturation of the fintech market is an obstacle to growth. However, for leaders like Revolut, it marks a constant potential threat. In essence, if a competitor can manage to grow like Revolut, which saw a 45% increase in customer base between 2019 and 2020, the expansion could be too fast to react to.

Indeed, if any company knows what it is like to have their market disrupted, it should be Revolut, who are themselves the disruptors. It is important to realize that their meteoric growth was earned at the expense of traditional banks. The threat of digital banks to established institutions explains why 80% of banking executives want to improve their digital customer experience. Companies like Revolut are showing the way forward!

Revolut was created by CEO Nik Storonsky to enable customers to avoid transaction fees when traveling abroad. In today’s interconnected world, with more being spent by international tourists each year, Revolut tapped into a growing customer need. Since then, the mobile app has been at the forefront of the company strategy: customer experience optimization.

By making the app highly engaging, Revolut has captivated 15 million users across 37 countries. How did they achieve this? Well, they followed the advice given in one of their blogs: “gamify the experience!” with gamification examples such as weekly prize draws.

New to gamification? Get started on our what is gamification page!

5 features every banking app needs

Before you even embark on making your app special, it has to be functional. As they say, you need to learn the rules before breaking them. Every bank app needs these 5 features:

#1 Sign-up and intuitive profile set-up

When asked about digital banking, people say their biggest concern is security. During the sign-up, there are opportunities to present how secure your platform is. Features like biometric scanning and multi-factor authentication can calm worries about misuse.

#2 A clear and motivating onboarding process

For digital banks, Day 1 user retention is just 30%. Given this, you must create customer value in the onboarding process. In particular, you should use as few screens as possible and avoid long tutorials. Instead, introduce features both gradually and subtly.

#3 Payments

Of course, this is an essential service. As well as payments, you should allow things like user communication, easy donations, and savings features. For instance, how fintech app Chip uses gamification to help users save by stashing spare pennies taken from transactions.

#4 History of transactions

Displaying past transactions is essential to giving users a sense of control. This is a basic need your app needs to fulfill to be valuable. Transactions should be able to be organized by type of expenditure, whether it be food shopping or eating out. It should also detail where the transaction took place to help avoid forgotten ‘mystery’ payments.

#5 Push notifications

Out of all app types, fintech has the highest engagement rates for push notifications. This is because finance notifications have the power to be genuinely personal and urgent. By providing real-time information about payments, reminders for scheduled payments, and messages about new features, you create customer value.

5 gamification examples for banking from Revolut

Likewise, Revolut provides users with these 5 basic features. However, using the power of gamification, the app puts focus on customer experience optimization.

#1 A sign-up process designed for user retention

To prevent the 70% drop-off in users over the first 24 hours, the sign-up video is presented like an Instagram story, with a progress bar clearly displayed at the top. Studies show this is effective, as 3/4 of people like to have an indication of progress. (Also, notice how they boast about their security!)

This example from Revolut shows how a progress bar during sign-up provides a clear sense of completion, which helps with user retention.

#2 A leaderboard that motivates students to complete onboarding

When starting out, Revolut had university leaderboards that encouraged students to sign up. This taps into the need for social relatedness. Simply put, competition is fun. In addition, the prize of free premium is enough to keep users around for the long haul!

Revolut's university leaderboards are a powerful example of using social competition to drive user acquisition and onboarding completion.

#3 Lotteries and raffles incentivize payments

When you make transfers and payments, Revolut rewards you with points. These points enter you in a raffle to win up to £10,000! In addition, a leaderboard shows how close you are to both the top and your friends.

This raffle system, complete with a leaderboard, effectively gamifies transactions by introducing an element of chance and social comparison.

#4 Progress bars and goal-setting give users control over transaction history

When it comes to people’s money, it is essential to create a feeling of control. Of course, nobody wants to give an invisible hand power over their savings. As such, by letting users set budget goals, they gain ownership over the process. Progress bars then keep them up to date in a visually pleasing way.

By allowing users to set budget goals and visualize them with progress bars, Revolut gives users a tangible sense of control over their finances.

#5 Personalized push notifications grow the customer relationship

Have you hit a milestone or just came back from vacation? Then Revolut will send a quick message to welcome you home. Given Revolut’s selling point of hassle-free travel abroad, this is especially relevant for their users. That’s smart customer experience optimization!

This personalized "Welcome home" notification is a prime example of how Revolut uses relevant, timely messaging to build a stronger customer relationship.

StriveCloud’s 2 cents on gamification for mobile banking apps

If Revolut inspires you to make your banking app as engaging as possible, you’re not alone. StriveCloud can help you implement your own gamification strategy in three simple steps:

1. Start with an interactive workshop built around improving your app experience. We’ll explore your goals, target audience and dive into key milestones in your user journey. Finally, we bundle it all in 1 gamification design plan.
2. Based on the plan, our team will add a gamification layer to your app, and help you start changing and motivating desired user behaviors.
3. Lastly, we onboard and train your team to manage the gamified experience to fit entirely your wants and needs.

All these gamification examples aren’t new to us. We’ve worked with apps in the banking industry and across many other sectors. Along the way, we managed to get insane results like a 23% decrease in churn and a rise in daily active usage by 58%!

Enrich your own app with fun elements. Check out our app gamification software!

Recap

The growth of digital banks has been thick and fast. In 2015, only 18% of adults used neobanks for money transfers. In 2019, that number was a staggering 75%!

Revolut is the top company in the game, with 15 million customers. How did they do it?

Competition is hot, but Revolut is hotter

With over 25,000 fintech startups worldwide, digital banking is highly competitive. The reason for this is just how popular mobile app banks are for their ease of use. For example, Revolut saw a 45% increase in customers between 2019 and 2020.

The threat of digital banks to established institutions explains why 80% of banking executives want to improve their digital customer experience!

5 features every banking app needs (and how Revolut improves it with gamification examples)

#1 An intuitive sign-up. A great time to talk about how secure your app is (a huge consumer concern about fintech).

Revolut: To prevent the 70% drop-off in Day 1 user retention, the sign-up video is presented like an Instagram story, with a progress bar clearly displayed at the top.

#2 A clear and motivating onboarding process. Use as few screens as possible.

Revolut: When starting out, Revolut had university leaderboards that encouraged students to sign up. This fulfills the need for social relatedness, and competition is fun!

#3 Payments. Consider things like user communication, easy donations, and savings features, such as how fintech app Chip uses gamification to help users save.

Revolut: When you make transfers and payments, Revolut rewards you with points. These points enter you in a raffle to win up to £10,000!

#4 History of transactions. Displaying this is essential to giving users a sense of control.

Revolut: Users can set budget goals and progress bars that keep them up to date on their history in a visually pleasing way. In the process, they feel ownership over the app.

#5 Push notifications. With real-time information about payments, reminders for scheduled payments, and messages about new features, you create customer value.

Revolut: Personalised push notifications, such as a quick message to welcome you home from travels, grow the customer relationship. Makes sense for Revolut’s userbase!

StriveCloud’s 2 cents on gamification for banking apps

Following the formula of Revolut, StriveCloud inspired a Belgian bank on their gamification journey. The expert team helped them gamify their app in 3 easy steps:

1. A strategy workshop filled with tons of gamification examples, leading to a custom gamification design plan.
2. Based on the design plan, we add a layer of gamification to your app.
3. Onboarding & training on how to use the gamification software to create engaging experiences.

Want to improve your mobile app experience? Accelerate your growth with an action-packed gamification workshop tailored to your app goals!

How Insight Timer has the best user retention in wellness apps with gamification

This article explores how Insight Timer uses gamification to achieve impressive user retention in the competitive wellness app market.

Meditation apps are more than just another hype. In fact, the sector’s revenue is expected to jump 22% each year. That translates to a double increase between 2021 and 2025! In reality, however, those benefits will be most felt by Headspace and Calm, who together share 60% of the market for meditation apps. However, there are some apps out there, giving these giants a run for their money when it comes to user retention.

One of those apps is Insight Timer. A free meditation platform with over 70,000 tracks in collaboration with teachers, experts, and even celebrities. There is something for everyone! In 2020, users spent 10,000 years (yes you read that correctly) inside the app. That’s 5 times more than Calm, the #1 meditation app when it comes to revenue.

In this article, we’ll be looking at some gamification examples from Insight Timer, and how they drive user retention!

• User retention at the core of Insight Timer’s success
• 4 gamification examples from Insight Timer
• Set up your own gamification roadmap with these 3 easy steps!
• Recap

User retention at the core of Insight Timer’s success

When talking about meditation apps Headspace and Calm are often the ones that come to mind. With a combined 34 million users these two companies generate over 100 million (Headspace) and 150 million (Calm) respectively.

Placed down the list, Insight Timer is only the 10th most profitable meditation app with over 48 million dollars in revenue. However, they are the number one at user retention.

Insight Timer boasts a crazy 16% Day 30 user retention. That might sound low, but it’s almost double compared to the market leaders, neither of whom reach above 8.5%. In other words, Insight Timer gets more bang for their buck!

So, why is user retention so important? There are many bonuses to having a high user retention rate:

• Increased customer lifetime value. This means more purchase opportunities and more touchpoints for your marketing.
• Long-time users are 4 times more likely to refer friends and family.
• Referred users have a 37% higher user retention rate, further pushing the rate up!
• Loyal customers are more profitable. The top 10% of customers spend almost 3x more than the bottom 90%.

Without a doubt, Insight Timer’s user retention rate is a wonderful achievement. In the US, Insight Timer makes up a whopping 63% of all time spent on meditation apps!

This graph illustrates Insight Timer's dominant share of time spent on meditation apps in the US, highlighting its superior user engagement.

The dominance of Insight Timer in both user retention and attention shows that the app’s skill of habit formation is a crucial part of boosting its retention rates.

4 gamification examples from Insight Timer

Insight Timer leverages gamification to form habits within its users. That doesn’t mean their app is a game. Instead, the app uses elements and psychology from games to keep users entertained and engaged.

Let’s look at 4 gamification examples from Insight Timer, and how they contributed to the highest user retention in the industry!

Feeling a little lost? Catch up to speed with our What is Gamification page!

#1 A customizable meditation timer helps users reach their targets.

One of the signature features of Insight Timer is the timer itself. The goal of this timer is to replicate the experience of meditating in a Buddhist temple. Users can set their own timers which empowers them to take autonomy over their own meditation regimen. Besides autonomy being crucial for creating ownership and long-term engagement, it is also fun!

Insight Timer's customizable timer is a prime example of giving users autonomy, a key driver for engagement and habit formation.

#2 Progress statistics give users positive validation and illustrate their growth.

If people are going to invest lots of time in your app, they need to know what they are getting out of it. A page of progress and usage statistics does exactly that! Insight Timer has one of the most comprehensive examples among meditation apps. In essence, by allowing users to see their achievements, they fulfill the basic needs of competence and accomplishment.

The comprehensive progress statistics page visually confirms a user's growth and achievements, satisfying the psychological need for competence.

What this really means is that people want self-growth, and they want to see it visualized! Scientific research is clear that performance graphs positively affect competence need satisfaction.

How to enrich your app with gamification, without spending months in development? Check out our app gamification software!

#3 Streaks that reward participation instead of completion

Streaks are a popular gamification feature often used to boost user retention. But Insight Timer’s streak feature is unique. Rather than setting a static target to hit every day, such as meditating for at least 10 minutes, Insight Timer allows users to mark their meditation as complete, no matter if they quit halfway through the session.

When you think about it, this makes sense. Meditation is a deeply personal activity, and it’s not up to the app to judge when the user has derived enough enjoyment from it! To sum up, this feature rewards users for their efforts and creates a clear visualization of progress, as well as fulfilling the need for autonomy and giving users ownership over the app.

This milestone tracking demonstrates how streaks can reward participation over completion, which encourages consistent effort.

#4 Social interaction makes meditation a more powerful experience

The home screen of Insight Timer features a world map that shows who is meditating at that very moment. Not only is this impressive, it immediately makes the user feel like they belong to a greater community.

In short, studies show that social relatedness is a powerful motivator. For this reason, the app allows users to connect and chat with those meditating in the same session as them, as well as auto-posting when you are about to start meditating - encouraging others to join! In addition to social relatedness, having what the app calls an ‘Insight Circle’ serves to build accountability and good habits.

The live meditation map fosters a sense of global community and social relatedness, powerful motivators for continued participation.

Set up your own gamification roadmap in 3 easy steps!

Creating a new habit is not an easy job. So how can you leverage gamification to make it work on your own app? It all starts with a plan, tailored to your app. Our team of gamification experts has set up 3 simple steps to your own gamified app!

Step 1- Book your workshop

Our expert-led gamification workshop is open to as many team members as you’d like, and focused 100% on your app. We focus on your goals, target audience, and what’s stopping your app from growing.

Step 2 - Bring your data

We’ll analyze your user journey to pinpoint the most important moments. That way, you’ll know whether to focus on acquisition, activation, or retention. Data is power! Once you understand user behavior, forming habits that drive retention will become way easier!

Step 3 - Pour it into a plan

Now that you understand gamification, the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and of course the most important game mechanics, it’s time to set up your plan! You’ll go home with an actionable roadmap, filled with tactics from proven gamification examples to achieve your goals!

Want to create your own gamification roadmap? Kick off the process with a custom gamification workshop led by our experts!

PRO TIP: STEP 4 - Implement & improve

Depending on your internal capabilities you might implement the tactics yourself, or work with gamification software like StriveCloud. Our motivation platform allows you to gamify any data point in the user journey, without an endless amount of coding!

Finally, you optimize, analyze, and repeat! Don’t forget, relentless optimization is what made Duolingo the #1 educational app in the world.

Recap

The mediation app market is expected to grow by 22% each year. That means the sector will almost double between 2021 and 2025!

The current leading apps Calm and Headspace own over 60% of the market share. With over 34 million users combined they generate over 100 million (Headspace) and 150 million (Calm). However, Insight Timer beats them in retention!

User retention at the core of Insight Timer’s success

In 2020, over 10,000 years were spent on Insight Timer. That’s 5 times as much as Calm, the most profitable mediation app out there.

Insight Timer is prominent in both user retention and attention. The app makes up for 63% of all time spent on meditation apps in the US.

This is a huge competitive advantage for multiple reasons:

• A boost to customer lifetime value.
• Long-time users are more likely to refer friends and family.
• Customers acquired by referrals have a 37% higher user retention rate!
• Loyal customers are more profitable by almost 3x.

4 gamification examples from Insight Timer

• A customizable meditation timer helps users reach their targets. Studies show that personalized tools are more effective at helping users achieve goals.
• Progress statistics show user growth. Letting users see their achievements fulfills the needs for competence and accomplishment. Scientific research says that performance graphs positively affect competence need satisfaction.
• Streaks reward participation and encourage habit formation. Streaks fulfill the needs for autonomy and competence, and the self-judged nature of Insight Timer’s streaks gives users ownership over the app.
• Social interaction makes meditation a more powerful experience. In brief, studies show that social relatedness is a powerful motivator. As such, Insight Timer allows users to connect with those meditating in the same session.

Set up your gamification roadmap in 3 easy steps

Step 1- Book your workshop

Our expert-led gamification workshop is open to as many team members as you’d like, and focused 100% on your app. We focus on your goals, target audience, and what’s stopping your app from growing.

Step 2 - Bring your data

We’ll analyze your user journey to pinpoint the most important moments. That way, you’ll know whether to focus on acquisition, activation, or retention. Data is power! Once you understand user behavior, forming habits that drive retention will become way easier!

Step 3 - Pour it into a plan

Want to create your own gamification roadmap? Kick off the process with a custom gamification workshop led by our experts!

5 Gamification examples that improve the fintech user experience

The fintech landscape is rapidly evolving, with innovative apps like Cake leading the charge in user engagement through clever gamification.

While physical visits to the banks are decreasing by 36%, mobile transactions jumped by 121%. The future of online banking is undeniable and new fintech solutions create new opportunities for banks to engage with their customers.

One such example is Cake, a banking app that shares its revenue with its users! Even though they only started in 2020, Cake already acquired over 120,000 customers. How did they grow so fast?

Let’s take a look at how Cake built its own reward system to boost mobile app engagement with its users!

• 3 fintech trends to watch in 2022 (and how Cake is ready for them)
• 5 gamification examples that enhance the user experience
• How to gamify your fintech app like Cake
• Recap

3 fintech trends to watch in 2022 (and Cake is ready for them)

94% of finance companies surveyed in 2019 said they were confident emerging fintech will drive future growth for the industry.

Let’s take a look at the trends driving this transformation:

#1 An unstoppable rise in digital-only banking.

Soon, the brick-and-mortar approach to banking will seem just as outdated as a checkbook. Research shows that between 2017 and 2022, physical visits to bank branches are decreasing by 36%, while mobile transactions will see a 121% increase!

#2 Artificial intelligence is making banking more efficient.

By 2035, experts expect that AI will increase fintech profits by 31%. This rise will be in part due to a growing ChatBot market, that is estimated to reach a CAGR of 29.59% between 2022 and 2027! Additionally, 95% of all customer interactions are predicted to be powered by AI by 2023. Ahead of the curve, Cake already uses artificial intelligence to analyze users’ finances and recommend personalized rewards.

#3 Collaboration over competition.

When Revolut started in 2015, the company’s motto was ‘disruption’. However, traditional banks and fintech startups quickly found out how they could help each other. In fact, 82% of traditional banks say they wish to increase collaboration with fintech organizations. For example, Cake has partnered with Belgian bank Argenta to create a fully integrated cashback platform.

This shift is here to stay - aside from seeing the growth in fintech, another reason for the change is new European legislation called PSD2 that facilitates greater collaboration between banks.

#4 Bonus trend - the need for privacy.

Cake clearly understood how privacy is becoming an increasingly bigger topic in society. While all the big brands are trying to maximize their profits from consumer data, Cake is actually bringing the value back to its users. The fintech app analyzes your purchasing behavior and sells those to companies. Don’t worry, everything is anonymized!

In return, users get their monthly piece of... cake! The best part in our opinion? They’re 100% open with it!

5 gamification examples that enhance the user experience on Cake

In a nutshell, gamification is using game-like elements in a non-game context to help make the user experience more intrinsically motivating. That means building an app that is fun and satisfying to use!

Gamification examples in banking apps are shown to improve metrics across the board. Spanish bank BBVA, for example, boosted mobile app engagement with a points system that earns users a place in giveaways and raffles.

Cake also has some great gamification examples to show! Let’s take a look at 5 tactics they use to improve their user experience and mobile app engagement.

What is gamification & how does it work? Learn all the basics right here!

Community statistics motivate people to save more money

Cake wants to help you take control of your finances. A great example of that includes their spending statistics and graphs that show not just your own spending, but also compare it to other users! These comparisons are made with people in a similar demographic to you, to ensure that the feature is relevant.

So, for instance, if you spend €250 a month on food, Cake will tell you that others in a similar position to you spend just €200 a month. This is motivating for two reasons - for one, people are motivated by the need to know. Secondly, seeing the progress of others makes saving almost a sort of competition!

Not only does the social competition make it more fun, but research also shows that an in-app community can make 60% of users more loyal to your app.

Customized tags for transactions give users ownership

Personalization is an important part of motivating your customers. In fact, 94% of businesses say that customization is crucial to their success! This is because personalized features give customers ownership over the user experience.

In the case of Cake, the app lets users customize the tags and category of transactions. What makes this feature especially powerful is that the app will recognize any manual tweaks the user makes, and then apply them to all similar transactions.

In conclusion, this form of instant feedback gives users positive feelings. It’s nice to be listened to, and a great gamification example!

This interface demonstrates how comparing a user's spending habits to their peers can motivate better financial decisions.

Digital confetti celebrates your onboarding process

This one is simple but highly effective. People cannot help but react positively to digital confetti. Amazingly, it is both cheaper and more motivating than offering cash prizes.

In Cake, the feature acts as a form of instant feedback, but also as a little fun reward that recognizes the effort of completing the onboarding process. When you consider that Day 1 user retention in digital banking is just 30%, then every little thing done to boost the mobile app engagement of users during their first moments is effort well spent.

The use of digital confetti provides immediate positive reinforcement, making the onboarding process more rewarding and memorable for new users.

Want more results with less hassle? Discover our app gamification software!

Personalized cashback rewards boost mobile app engagement

Business magazine Forbes said that ‘cashback is king’ - and they’re right. In particular, younger customers love cashback. Research shows that 74% of those aged 18-23 would spend more if they were to receive at least 5% instant cashback.

Cake takes this a step further by personalizing cashback rewards and tailoring them to customer spending habits. This way, conversions are more likely to happen and Cake’s marketing becomes more efficient! For example, case studies show that personalized push notifications see a 54% conversion rate, compared to just 15% for mass messaging.

Personalized cashback rewards, like the ones shown here, are highly effective because they are directly relevant to the user's spending patterns.

Monthly payouts let users form a community that shares in value

Without a doubt, this feature is the star of the show. Every month, users are rewarded with a share of the app’s revenue! Not only does this create fantastic customer value, (the payments have an average of over €2, almost 250K of total shared income), but it strengthens the community bond.

People are strongly motivated by the need to belong - and being a part of a community where everyone shares their benefits is a great way to do it.

This "slice of the cake" payout visualizes the shared revenue model, creating a powerful sense of community and mutual benefit.

How to gamify your fintech or banking app like Cake

Are you thinking of upgrading your app’s user experience? Then gamification will help you achieve just that! Whether you’re in fintech, banking, or any other kind of app, here are 3 steps that will help you take action:

Step 1 - Join us in a fully remote & interactive app gamification workshop

And bring your entire team! Our workshop is led by gamification experts and is 100% tailored to your app. First, we analyze your audience, goals, and the obstacles stopping you from getting there!

Step 2 - Bring your data

Knowledge is power. To understand where opportunities lie in your user experience, we perform a behavioral audit. Where are you losing engagement? What actions are interrupting the user experience? Once we understand the user journey, we can start reforming user habits.

Step 3 - Get a tailored gamification report & an action plan to drive user engagement back on your app

After having covered the science and theory behind gamification, it’s time to make it actionable! You’ll go home with a tailored, action-packed report to implement gamification in support of your strategy.

Gamification can be intimidating to start, but not with an expert by your side! Get a workshop and learn how you can slash churn by 23%!

Recap

Growth in digital banking has outstripped traditional banks by an amazing 300%. Innovative fintech apps like Cake are showing finance the way forward.

3 fintech trends to watch in 2022

Surveyed in 2019, 94% of finance companies said they were confident that emerging fintech will drive future sector growth. These 3 trends will underpin that growth:

#1 An unstoppable rise in digital-only banking. Between 2017 and 2022, physical visits to bank branches will decrease by 36%, while mobile transactions will rise 121%!

#2 Artificial intelligence is making banking more efficient. 95% of all customer interactions are predicted to be powered by AI by 2023. Ahead of the curve, Cake uses artificial intelligence to analyze users’ finances and recommend personalized rewards.

#3 Collaboration is becoming more enticing than the competition. 82% of traditional banks say they wish to increase collaboration with fintech organizations. This is due to the faster growth of fintech, but also new European legislation called PSD2 that facilitates greater collaboration between banks.

5 gamification examples that enhance the user experience on Cake

In a nutshell, gamification is using game-like elements in a non-game context to make the user experience more motivating. Let’s look at some gamification examples from Cake!

• Community statistics make saving money motivating. Spending statistics on Cake show not only your finances but those of your peers.
• Customized tags for transactions give users ownership. Cake lets users customize the tags and category of transactions, and will automatically update all transactions based on any manual tweaks. This form of instant feedback gives users positive feelings!
• Digital confetti celebrates your onboarding! In Cake, this small reward recognizes the effort of completing onboarding. When you consider that Day 1 user retention in digital banking is just 30%, then making users’ first moments more fun is a great strategy to keep them engaged.
• Personalized cashback rewards boost mobile app engagement. Research shows that 74% of those aged 18-23 would spend more if they were to receive at least 5% cashback. Cake even personalizes cashback rewards to make conversions more likely.
• Monthly payouts create customer value and strengthen the community. Every month, users are rewarded with a share of the app’s revenue! This helps strengthen the community bond, as people are motivated by sharing benefits with each other.

How to gamify your fintech app like Cake

You can learn a lot from gamification examples like Cake. However, the key to success lies in tailoring your gamification strategy to your audience, branding, and business goals.

Don’t be a copycat. Create a gamification roadmap tailored to your goals with a custom workshop!

Top 5 gamification examples from exciting fintech apps across the world

This article explores top gamification examples from successful fintech apps around the globe, providing insight into effective user engagement strategies.

Fintech is the hottest item in the banking industry and with good reason! Decreasing physical bank visits is a consistent trend amongst all age groups. And it’s not just payments, it’s everything. Fintech allows banks to improve the customer experience and streamline, digitize or disrupt financial services. But doing it right is another thing. In fact, 75% of venture-backed fintech startups fail within the first year. However, gamification is one of the best solutions to increase your chance of being the startup that succeeds.

In this article, we’ll be looking at some gamification examples from winning fintech apps, designed to boost customer motivation and engagement.

Let’s go!

• Why fintech apps use gamification and who is doing it best
• Cake personalizes cashback rewards (subtly incentivizing app engagement)
• Ikano bank gave one lucky user a $14,000 prize for winning a mini-game
• Monobank uses a badge reward system to foster customer motivation
• Revolut successfully targeted students with a leaderboard competition
• Fortune City builds a virtual world based on customer financial data
• Recap

Why fintech apps use gamification and who is doing it best

The case for gamification is clear: gamifying your app will boost brand equity and customer engagement. Ultimately, this helps your app stand out, and that has never been more important than now! Currently, the fintech industry is growing fast and investors are jumping at the opportunity to get involved. Just take one look at the creation rate of unicorns (companies valued over $1 billion) . Almost 40% of all fintech unicorns were made in the first 8 months of 2021. This includes companies based around the globe, from the US, to France, to Singapore.

This graph illustrates the explosive growth of fintech unicorns, highlighting the increasing competition in the market and the need for differentiation.

The wild growth in fintech has many external factors, ranging from the increase in mobile phone ownership to the rising penetration of digital platforms in our everyday lives. Given this, the need to distinguish your app from others is crucial.

As such, in user engagement strategies fintech apps are turning to a gamified system. Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts. The game-like mechanics make the user experience more fun and satisfying. When done right, gamification strategies drive behavioral change and boosts customer motivation.

Common gamification examples include a badge reward system or features like progress bars. Today, gamification is surging in popularity. In numbers, the gamification market is set to rise from USD 15.43 billion in 2024, to over $48 billion by 2029!

Curious? Explore the science behind gamification's impact on behavior change here!

With this in mind, there is no shortage of exciting fintech gamification examples that boost customer motivation. These 5 apps, in particular, are super interesting:

1. Cake. A Belgian startup from 2020 that shares its profits with users!
2. Ikano bank. A Swedish bank that focuses on small savers.
3. Monobank. Get this - 10% of all Ukrainians use this cat-themed neo-bank!
4. Revolut. The UK’s most valuable fintech with over 16 million customers.
5. Fortune City. A Taiwanese city-building app that organizes your finances!

In short, these companies are using gamification to make their apps exciting. Gone are apps where bookkeeping has to be a chore! So let’s see exactly how each app does it.

Cake personalizes cashback rewards (subtly incentivizing app engagement)

Cake is a fintech startup with over 120,000 users that pays people for insights into their financial behavior. Here’s how it works: Cake’s clever AI analyzes all of your transactions and then makes an informed and personalized choice about which cashback rewards are the best for you.

This personalized reward system makes the app more relevant for every user. Irrelevant cashback rewards do not create any customer value, and soon enough users will stop opening your app if they aren’t getting anything out of it. On the flip side, users are aware that the more they use the app, the more relevant their offers will be. This incentive program clearly nudges users to engage!

Personalized features are a cornerstone of gamification and the effects are clear. With push notifications, for instance, personalization boosts your conversion rate by 40%.

The reward system also acts as a form of instant feedback. This gamification example is a form of positive reinforcement that keeps the user coming back. Imagine buying printing supplies at a stationery shop using your card. Then, the next time that you check your app, there are deals from similar vendors.

The Cake app demonstrates this principle by delivering personalized cashback rewards, which creates a more relevant and engaging user experience.

Check out our gamification software to prevent customer churn on your fintech app today!

Ikano bank gave one lucky user a €10,000 prize for winning a game

In 2014, the Swedish bank Ikano ran a 3-week marketing campaign with the game ‘Flappy Saver’. In the game, players control a flying piggy bank and try to protect their savings by avoiding crashing into stores where you might spend your money. The game is based on Flappy Bird, which at the time was actually the most downloaded app on the App Store.

Gamification alone makes your customer voice more positive by incorporating elements like rewards, achievements, and progress tracking, consequently enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction.

Here’s the twist, however, this game promised a €10,000 prize to the highest scorer!

Cash prizes can also be highly effective on user engagement. Research shows that performance and output improve when a financial reward is present. The study notes, however, that the effect may be detrimental in the medium or long term. With that in mind, the Flappy Saver campaign was smart to be just 3 weeks long.

During those 21 days, the game saw over 1.5 million plays! Now that’s a lot of engagement, and it seems especially impressive when you learn that just under 10 million people live in Sweden.

Ikano Bank's 'Flappy Saver' campaign shows how a time-sensitive competition with a significant prize can drive massive user engagement and brand awareness.

Monobank uses a badge reward system to foster customer motivation

An incredible 1.3 million people use the Monobank app every day. Since 2017, the app gained over 6 million loyal customers, due to catering to the significantly high demand for neo-banks in Ukraine. So, one can assume, their app must be really good - and it is!

Monobank clearly knows how to motivate people. Their badge reward system is just one of many gamification examples used to drive behavioral change. Studies are clear that achievements improve customer motivation. On one hand, receiving a badge positively reinforces your desired user behavior. On the other hand, seeing locked badges motivates users to unlock them. This mechanic is called ‘constraint’. In other words, people don’t like missing out and will be motivated to unlock any greyed-out features.

Another unique feature of the app is Monobank’s signature cat mascot. The advantages of a mascot are many. For one, the cat differentiates the user experience from other apps, making the Monobank app special and memorable. In addition, research shows that a mascot contributes to brand trust and building customer rapport. Interesting to note, however, that the cat does not feature in Monobank’s UK project, Koto. Apparently, British market experts thought the cat’s expressions were ‘too cunning’ and would turn people off. It just goes to show how gamification works differently for various audiences.

Monobank's badge system is a perfect example of using achievements to positively reinforce user behavior and motivate continued app usage.

Revolut successfully targeted students with a leaderboard competition

When expanding to Europe, Revolut organized a competition between universities that encouraged students to register and boost their university to the top of the rankings. With a goal of targeting a younger demographic, the leaderboard featured communities, rather than individuals.

This gamification feature taps into the need for social relatedness. In brief, a shared goal makes people feel like they belong and research shows that the need to belong is an extremely fundamental and powerful motivator. By the end of the campaign over 100 universities and 1000s of students signed up!

Competitions are good fun and are excellent at harnessing intrinsic motivation. This is when your app is naturally fun and satisfying to use. You can enhance this effect even more with a prize, such as Revolut offering free premium accounts to the winners.

This leaderboard from Revolut's university challenge effectively utilizes social relatedness and competition to drive a high volume of sign-ups.

Fortune City builds a virtual world based on your financial data

Gamification can go from a few light touches to a near full-on game. For certain, Fortune City is the latter. While the app promotes itself as a way to ‘track your spending’, it also functions as a personalized city builder. If you spend regularly on transport tickets, for example, railways and bus stops will appear in your city. After that, virtual sims can use your transport system to get to jobs that you assign based on their skills. Finally, all of these tasks will earn you coins to compete against friends!

To be sure, this is super creative and excellent at fostering customer motivation. Not only does the city include personalization to people’s habits and interests, but the appearance of buildings also acts as instant feedback. It’s almost like a progress bar! Instead, this progress bar is a city, and that is super exciting. Of course, there are also detailed graphs and formula sheets to really dive into the data.

Fortune City is a highly creative piece of app development, and in 2018 was given an Android Excellence award by Google Play Store. It comes as no surprise that this app boasts 5 million users!

Fortune City's interface showcases a deeply creative gamified approach, transforming the chore of financial tracking into an engaging city-building game.

This banner serves as a call to action, demonstrating how visual prompts can guide users toward desired actions like booking a strategy session.

Recap

In the past year, almost 2000 new fintech startups set up shop in America alone. With 75% of those failing, winning apps have figured out something crucial to app success: engagement. Following the example of market leaders, they leverage gamification to drive customer motivation.

Why fintech apps use gamification and who is doing it best

Gamification boosts brand equity and engagement and that’s important! Fintech is growing faster than ever. In fact, almost 40% of all fintech unicorns were made in the first 8 months of 2021. This growth is affecting markets all across the globe.

To stand out, then, fintech is turning to gamification. Gamification is the use of game-like elements in a non-game context, often used to make the user experience more fun and satisfying. Here are 5 gamification examples from leading apps in the fintech industry:

#1 Cake. A Belgian startup from 2020 that shares its profits with users!

Cake’s clever AI analyzes all of your transactions and then personalizes your cashback rewards. Why is this so good? Because irrelevant offers do not create any customer value and will turn off your users. Also, users are aware that the more they use the app, the more relevant their offers will be. This is a clear nudge to increase engagement!

Personalized features are a cornerstone of gamification and the effects are clear. With push notifications, for instance, personalization boosts your conversion rate by 40%.

Prevent customer churn on your financial platform! Check out our software here.

#2 Ikano bank (and their 3-week campaign with a €10,000 prize).

In 2014, the Swedish bank Ikano ran a 3-week campaign with the game ‘Flappy Saver’. The game dynamics included players controlling a flying piggy bank and trying to protect their savings by avoiding crashing into stores where they might spend their money. In the end, the winning user would get €10,000. Across those 21 days, the game saw over 1.5 million plays!

To be sure, cash prizes can be highly effective. Research shows that performance and output improve when a financial reward is present.

#3 Monobank. Get this - 10% of all Ukrainians use this cat-themed neo-bank!

An incredible 1.3 million people use the Monobank app every day. Customer motivation is fostered through gamification examples like the badge reward system. The effects are twofold: receiving a badge gives users positive reinforcement, and seeing locked badges motivates users to unlock them. This mechanic is called constraint. In short, people don’t like being excluded and will be motivated to unlock any greyed-out features.

This is not to mention how each badge features Monobank’s signature cat mascot. The advantages of a mascot are many. For one, the cat differentiates the user experience from other apps, making the Monobank app special and memorable. In addition, research shows that a mascot contributes to brand trust and building customer rapport.

#4 Revolut. The UK’s most valuable fintech with over 16 million customers.

Revolut has plenty of gamification examples to learn from. When expanding to Europe, Revolut ran a leaderboard campaign that encouraged students to register and boost their university to the top of the rankings. As the leaderboard featured communities, rather than individuals, this feature taps into the need for social relatedness.

In brief, a shared goal makes people feel like they belong and research shows that the need to belong is an “extremely” fundamental and powerful motivator. This must-have worked for the over 100 universities and 1000 students who signed up!

#5 Fortune City. A Taiwanese city-building app that organizes your finances!

While the app promotes itself as a way to ‘track your spending’, it also functions as a personalized city builder. If you spend regularly on transport tickets, for example, railways and buses will appear in your city. Completing tasks will then earn you coins to compete against friends! To be sure, this is excellent at fostering customer motivation.

Not only is the city personalized to users’ habits, but the appearance of buildings is also a form of instant feedback and acts as a progress bar, showing users how much work they have put in! Today, 5 million people use Fortune City. For sure, one of the most creative gamification examples!

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