This episode is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat’s State of Subscription Apps report.

On the podcast: Keeping users engaged through habit-forming experiences, Duolingo’s approach to reactivating churned users, and why building daily habits is the foundation for long-term retention success.

Top Takeaways:

🏎️ Act fast - most users don’t come back after a week
The best time to re-engage a churned user is within the first three to four days. Duolingo found that users who stay away for longer become significantly harder to bring back. They send daily reminders for up to seven days, stopping when effectiveness drops.

📅 Use behavioral signals to personalize timing
Instead of relying on fixed schedules, time win-back messages based on past engagement patterns. Duolingo schedules reminders 23.5 hours after a user last engaged, ensuring notifications land at a moment when the user is most likely to take action.

👥 Use social connections for long-term reactivation
For users who have been inactive for weeks or months, social reactivation beats app-driven outreach. Duolingo prompts active users to bring back their friends, which consistently outperforms standard win-back campaigns - even leaderboard competitors drive higher reactivation rates than app reminders.

About Jackson Shuttleworth:

🌟 Head of Retention at Duolingo, focused on keeping users engaged and driving daily habit formation through innovative features and thoughtful strategies.

📈 Jackson brings expertise in user reactivation, data-driven experiments, and crafting experiences that foster long-term loyalty and growth.

💡 "The easiest way to retain a user is to never let them churn. It’s all about building habits and delivering value consistently."

👋 Connect with Jackson on LinkedIn!

Resources:

Duolingo’s Website

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David Barnard - @drbarnard
Jacob Eiting - @jeiting
RevenueCat - @RevenueCat
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How to Time Reactivation Campaigns for Maximum Impact — Jackson Shuttleworth, Duolingo

Sub Club by RevenueCat