You've probably heard of Duolingo, a free language-learning platform that offers courses through its app. Its designed to make language learning accessible, fun, and effective, and is well known for using gamification elements, such as points, streaks, and leaderboards, to motivate users to practice regularly. In this article we look at some of these elements, and the strategies Duolingo uses in its push notifications.
One of the critical aspects of Duolingo’s push notification strategy is to protect the push channel. Its is easy to game A/B tests by sending more messages, but overwhelming users can lead to them opting out of these communication channels altogether. As a result if a user stops interacting with Duolingo's push notifications it does eventually stop sending them. This is the first and most important part of their strategy. These are the last notifications Duolingo sends before stopping sending more.
Duolingo primarily utilizes three types of push notifications to keep users engaged and motivated in their language learning journey. Each type of notification serves a specific purpose. The first is encouraging daily practice, the second is to remind users of their streaks, and the third are leaderboard notifications
Daily practice reminders are one of the most effective tools in Duolingo’s push notification strategy. These reminders are designed to prompt users to complete their language exercises every day, helping to establish and maintain a habit of consistent learning. By sending these notifications at times when users are most likely to engage—such as during their typical study times—Duolingo maximizes the chances that users will return to the app regularly.
Streak alerts are another powerful feature in Duolingo's notification toolkit. They gamify the learning experience by encouraging users to maintain a daily practice streak. Streak alerts are complemented by various engaging elements, such as calendar views that show streak history, animations celebrating streak milestones, and notifications about streak freezes and rewards. These notifications create a sense of accomplishment and motivate users to continue their daily practice to keep their streaks alive.
Leaderboards are a powerful feature, duolingo uses to keep people motivated. By creating leaderboard with other duolingo users, or with your friends you are motivated to finish specific lessons and challenges. Here is an example of a notification for a leaderboard:
Duolingo is a massive publicly traded company with the engineering resources to build out the internal tooling it needs to master the strategies described above. Most regular apps need to use a customer engagement / push notification platform like Laudspeaker to allow the creation of push notification journeys, as well as segments . If possible you should also use a tool with features that allow timed notifications in the users' timezones, as well letting users set their own messaging preferences
