Blog 67: Duolingo push notification ... why it works?

In blog 65, we looked at the importance of lifecycle marketing; in blog 66 we looked at two such popular touchpoints email marketing and push notifications. A product that really leveraged the power of push notifications is Duolingo. A popular language learning app with over 500 million registered users, and 37 million monthly active users.

While the product surely solves a pain point and has got them a lot of loyal users, it is the gamification strategies and push notifications that have gotten them a lot of rave reviews. For the purview of this blog, we will focus only on the push notifications.

The push notification system was so popular that as an April Fool’s prank the company launched a dedicated page called ‘Duolingo Push’(https://push.duolingo.com). A new in-person notifications system. Wherein, a cute little owl will show up at our doorstep if we miss lessons. This page included subscription plans too (see screenshot below).

Push notifications include daily reminders to users to open the app and act. These notifications are external triggers to encourage users to act and engage with the product. Converting this action into a habit (refer blogs 22 to 27 for more on the Hooked model – build habit forming products).

Several mobile apps have push notifications, what made Duolingo’s notification system special?

Firstly, great copywriting. Simple but effective. They are persistent and often guilt trip users into doing a lesson. Quoting from Duolingo’s blog post, “We use a variety of pre-written notifications for our practice reminders, and we personalize them based upon a variety of factors such as the language you're studying and your current streak. We periodically update these to keep things fresh and engaging.”

At times, when users are not responding to daily reminders, passive aggressive notifications are sent.

Secondly, the notifications sent were not just marketing campaigns to bring users back to the app. The notifications were strongly in sync with the product features. They were personalised and relevant. Through user research, the product team found out that the product usage improved if users were simply reminded of their current learning streak, and if it’s at risk (refer blog 64 for more on user research methods).

Soon, these notification messages became viral and a popular internet meme. Resulting in more organic growth. Daily active users grew by 4.5x over four years and eventually going public (IPO) in 2021.

Thirdly, the team carefully threaded the line between nagging and engaging. If the notification messages failed to connect, users will go ahead and opt-out of notifications. If several users opt-out, then this acquisition channel will die a natural death. Never to recover again. As users are unlikely to opt-in.

Jump to blog 100 to refer to the overall product management mind map.

Source:

https://blog.duolingo.com/hi-its-duo-the-ai-behind-the-meme/

https://blog.duolingo.com/widget-feature/

I wish you the best for your journey. 😊