“Wait, did you check in on Facebook?”, asked my sister as we dawdled through the streets of Brigade Road, one of the busiest shopping areas of Bangalore.

“Oh right, I almost forgot!”, I replied and took out my phone to check in on Facebook.

You see, back in 2013, checking into the nearest locations on Facebook was a thing. Did Facebook ever ask people to check in explicitly? Not really but we’d still do it regardless.

However, I wanted to find out the reason behind the Facebook check-in craze and decided to travel back in time to understand the thought process of a 19-year-old.

“Why would I want to simply share a status on Facebook, check-ing into cool places, restaurants, malls, airports etc?”, I asked myself and here’s what I could devise —

Flaunt: I wanted to show it off to my friends that I’m hanging out and having fun which kind is fundamental to social media

Memory journal: I wanted to be able to go back and look at my check-ins, feeling happy. This purpose was actually served when Facebook came up with the Memories feature.

Catch up: Every time I checked in, I also hoped that it’d give me a chance to meet with friends in case they see my status and end up being in the same area.

Come to think of it, Facebook gamified check-ins.

Check-ins gave users a sense of satisfaction and further motivated them to check into new places, and this psychology is what drives retention.

Yup, companies can apply the same logic to give customers something meaningful to come back to their platform on a regular basis.

One powerful way to implement this is via Streaks and here’s how some of the coolest apps make the most of daily streaks to retain users.

Don’t Break the Streak!

This a reminder I get at least once a week from my Snapchat friends because I end up breaking streaks and that’s why one of my friends called me Streak Breaker.

For those of y’all who don’t know, Snapchat is an instant messaging social media app which is mostly used by youngsters to stay close to each other via daily snaps.

While daily snaps are only one of the many uses of Snapchat, I mention snaps for a reason.

Snapstreaks (images/videos) encourage users to maintain Snapstreaks by snapping each other within a 24-hour window for more than 3 consecutive days.

If you take a look, you can see that I’m quite bad at maintaining Snapstreaks.

But unlike me, there are people who are dedicated to it with 2794+ being the longest Snapchat streak in the world.

Why Snapchat Streaks Work?

Snapchat doesn’t really Reward users for ,maintaining streaks and yet users are themselves motivated to do it intrinsically.

I found this fascinating and upon researching, I realised that it’s because of a mix of pressure and pleasure. Let’s see how.

1. Pressure

1a. Don’t be a spoilsport

Remember when I said that I’m called a Streak Breaker? Well, that’s what you get when you don’t send a snap back to your friends, creating a feeling of guilt and pressure.

Furthermore, when one receives snaps, they are kind of obligated to send one in return due to the strong connection and friendship.

1b. I can’t lose my streak

Streaks are time-sensitive. This gamification element taps into users’ fear of loss since they don’t want to ruin something they invested time and effort in (sunk cost fallacy).

So even though it’s a task to send a snap daily, users do it regardless because the fear of losing a streak is larger than the pressure of maintaining it (loss aversion effect).

2. Pleasure

2a. Checkout out my snap score!

The longer the streak, the cooler it is seen in the Snapchat community. Hence, users try to maintain a streak to be able to surpass their folks, increase their snap score and boast about it.

This not only reflects a sense of achievement but also shows their consistency, ,loyalty and dedication to the app and to the friendship.

2b. I feel good

The satisfaction of sending and receiving snaps hits differently. On top of it, seeing your streak number increase and thereby snap score only adds to the overall happiness.

This is because such activities cause users’ brains to release dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward.

Not to mention, the daily streak of app cause ,habit formation. Sending and receiving snaps every day leads to a daily behaviour which turns into a habit and can be difficult to break.

For instance, without the app telling me, I end up clicking something random and sending a snap to my friends because I’ve now gotten into a habit of sending daily snaps.

What a cool way of hooking users without even an external reward, right?

Snapchat has surely aced gamification through streaks but now, let’s see which are the other apps that use streaks or daily check-in gamification.

Apps That Use Streak Gamification

1. OnePlus community daily check-in

OnePlus community app lets users check into their app daily via a calendar feature and win Experience Points (XPs).

Each day’s check-in rewards a user with 1XP which gets added to Raffle Points (RPs) and can be redeemed during Raffle contests.

Additionally, OnePlus also rewards users with achievement Badges once they complete 14, 30 and 90 days of check-in.

2. Headspace run streak

Most of us know how important it is to practice self-care activities for our own well-being but is it easy to adopt them? Be consistent with them.

Well, you know the truth and the credit goes to “I’ll start from tomorrow”.

But thanks to apps like Headspace, a meditation and mindfulness app that has over 2 million paying subscribers, they make it easier to build healthy habits.

But how? One feature that stood out to me is their gamified run streaks feature.

Headspace lets those meditating maintain a daily streak and share it on social media which motivates users to keep going.

That’s not all.

The mindfulness app rewards meditators with free 15 or 30-day Headspace access via email which they can only share with a friend upon achieving 15 or 30-day streaks.

Through this, Headspace creates a small ,referral without incentivizing the meditator directly but rather instrumentally.

This motivates a user to meditate consistently and reach a 30-day streak (Endowed progress effect)

Time to Bring Those Users Back

Retention is hard, let’s face it. Whether a user that came to an app once will come again is highly doubtful given the low attention span, competition or product itself.

That’s where a gamification campaign like daily streak stands important as it helps users come back every day, take action if needed and win rewards whether intrinsic or extrinsic.

Now, I’m not going to further explain the significance of daily streak rewards because isn’t it everywhere? You play games and get daily login rewards.

It’s simple. Yet, how does one implement it? Create a daily streak campaign within their app. Well, Flyy’s gamification is the answer.

Yes, using Flyy’s gamified dashboard, you can create a daily check-in campaign in 5 min!

Here’s how.

How to Launch Daily Streak Campaign Using Flyy

Step 1: Go to ‘Create Campaign’ under ‘Retention’ and select the offer type as ‘Daily Check In’. After this, select whether you want to reward daily, weekly, or monthly.

Since I’m going with a daily check-in campaign, I want to reward my users on the 5th, 7th and 14th day, with ‘Virtual Currency’ for simply clicking on the check-in button and checking in.

Step 2: Now say you want your user to do an event on your app on a daily basis like a transaction. In this case, you can select/create an event and add a condition for users to win rewards.

Post this, you can set the rewards for each day along with the total campaign budget.

However, in my case, I’m going to avoid an event and go with simply checking in to win rewards.

Step 3: By step 3, you can set the content and style for your gamified streak campaign by adding a title, description, banner and offer details.

Step 4: Here, all you’ve to do is select the campaign schedule, user segment and number of scratch cards you want to generate per user and your streak campaign will be ready upon saving.

Take a look at what your users will see once your campaign goes live.

What say? Ready to gamify your user retention efforts and bring them back to your app? ,Book a free demo with Flyy today to learn more.