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STANDALONE MARKETING PLAY / RETURN
Reward the return after a miss
When someone misses a planned session or comes back after a long gap, make the return itself earn a small bonus — or open it into an easier session with a gift.
+0.40 visits/weekA 125-point bonus (about $0.09) for the planned gym visit after a missed one added 0.40 weekly visits over four weeks — 27% above the placebo group's 1.48. Milkman et al. megastudy, 24 Hour Fitness members.
+0.40 visits/weekafter a missed gym visit
Product screens: Duolingo via Clubic ↗. Screens illustrate the product; the number is sourced in the evidence below.
SOURCED
Built from published experiments and company reports across several products. Nobody has checked the screens on a dated day, so read each number with the caveat printed beside it.
THE PLAY
One move, with enough context to use it well.
When someone misses a planned session or comes back after a long gap, make the return itself earn a small bonus — or open it into an easier session with a gift.
Coming back after a long gap can feel like starting over. Duolingo found about 5% of its daily users on a given day were returning after 30 or more days away, and they were roughly 20% less likely than new users to still be using the app 7 and 14 days later (Duolingo, 2017).
This play is not tied to a full playbook. Use it for this decision alone.
THE EVIDENCE
2 sourcesWhat the research does, and does not, establish.
A tiny bonus for returning after a missed workout raised gym visits.
STRONGWhat it does not show The authors state that top performers' estimates are probably inflated because they were selected from a distribution; p-values are unadjusted across 53 conditions. The comeback conditions paid half for unscheduled visits and sent 8 texts rather than 2, so the comparison with the baseline condition is not the bonus alone. The megastudy itself was not preregistered, although each substudy was. Bonuses were cents; gym members, not app users.
Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science Milkman et al. · 2021
A returning Duolingo session was crowded with prompts, and the habit lapsed again.
UNTESTEDWhat it does not show One person's session; the author attributes the second lapse to a busy trip, not to the product. No measured outcome; a reported concern, not measured harm.
Duolingo's User Retention: 8 Tactics Tested On 300 Million Users Growth.Design · 2019
What the evidence as a whole does not establish
- The only outcome evidence is one megastudy of gym members over four weeks, with bonuses worth $0.09 and $0.16. The authors say top-performing estimates are probably inflated and need replication.
BORROW WITH INTENTION
A good fit starts with good judgment.
Where it can help
- Products where users plan sessions, so a missed one can be detected
- Products that record the behaviour automatically, like a check-in
- Paying the bonus only for the planned session right after a miss, not as a higher payment on every session
Use the play for this decision alone, or combine it with an existing product strategy after checking for conflicts.
Where to be careful
- Avoid stacking extra prompts — a progress quiz, a content suggestion — into the first returning session before the goal is reached.
- A product without planned sessions has to decide what counts as a miss; the evidence does not settle it.
- A gift on return can read as a sales prompt if it shares the look of the paywall, as Strava's free preview did for one returning user.
HOW THIS GOES WRONG
Ways a correct-looking build still does harm.
A reward that fires only after a miss could teach users to lapse in order to earn it. No source measures this, and none describes a limit on repeat eligibility.
If the product also penalises a miss, the penalty and the comeback bonus act on the same event and can cancel each other out.
THE BUILD RECORD
This page helps you decide. The record helps you build.
In the record, not on this page
- The screen spec: the mechanism, what goes on screen, and what it should change
- 2 findings in full, with every number the source gives
- 3 ways to adapt it to your product
Plus everything above, as plain text for your coding agent, with a short instruction on top: check the fit, say what the evidence doesn’t support, and adapt it rather than copy it. Paste it and you get an answer, no prompt to write.
One megastudy of gym members, plus design teardowns of Duolingo and Strava · evidence reviewed 25 September 2026.
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