Hi, I’m Lennart Schneider, Founder of Subscribe Now, helping decision-makers in the subscription economy attract subscribers and keep them happy.
In this article, we look at Duolingo – a leading e-learning app that has mastered the art of habit-forming, something that’s essential for subscription success.
> Duolingo's streak counts consecutive days with at least one exercise and resets if you miss. Nine million people hold streaks of a year or more, and the feature has run through 600 tests in two years > They optimise for CURR, the share of today's active users who were also active in the past week, rather than daily actives. Focusing on it since 2018 grew daily actives 4.5 times in four years > The wins are often tiny. Changing a commitment button from "next" to "I'll commit" measurably lifted retention, and reminders fire 23.5 hours after the last lesson > Streak Repair used to cost money. It is now free but requires extra exercises, choosing long-term loyalty over the easy revenue > Lennart Schneider's warning matters more than the tactics. Streaks work because every Duolingo user shares one goal. News audiences don't, and a comic animation rewarding an article on the Middle East confuses rather than delights
Duolingo, a rapidly growing language-learning app with a market capitalization of almost $15 billion, owes a large part of its success to its streak feature. A streak is a count of consecutive days a user has completed at least one exercise. If a user misses a day, their streak resets to zero. This simple feature has made Duolingo one of the apps with the best retention, with an impressive 9 million people maintaining a streak of at least one year.
