Entrepreneurs would solve a lot of their headaches if they could make their business more addictive.
Churn too high?
Keep getting ghosted by new clients?
Free trial users disappearing without upgrading to a paid plan?
Your products and services aren’t addictive enough.
Fortunately for us, we can learn how to make our business more addictive by studying Luis von Ahn - the mastermind who got millions hooked on language learning with his genius habit-forming strategies.
Who is Luis von Ahn?
You might not know who he is, but you’ve certainly used (at least) one of his products.
Luis von Ahn, ladies and gentlemen:
- Invented CAPTCHA, those little security tests that over 200 million people solve every day to prove they're human.
- Founder of ReCAPTCHA, crowdsourcing around a billion internet users to help digitize millions of books (using CAPTCHA).
- Sold 2 companies to Google before most people move out of their parents’ house.
- Co-founder of Duolingo, the most downloaded and highest grossing education app in the world.
- Took Duolingo public and is still running the show at this $10 billion NASDAQ-listed company.
Interesting fact: Every time you complete a reCAPTCHA by selecting the pictures of bicycles or traffic lights, you’re training a self-driving car algorithm.
Luis has assembled some of the world’s greatest minds to achieve one thing: make language learning as addictive as social media. By studying Duolingo, we can discover the hidden tactics that turn casual customers into loyal advocates.
But you’re a founder. You don’t have the hours to reverse-engineer what makes Duolingo so sticky… So our researchers at Hampton have done the digging for you.
4 Strategies to Make Your Product and Services as Addictive as Duolingo
Duolingo leverages powerful psychological tactics to bake Duolingo firmly into the daily routine of its users.
Most entrepreneurs don’t think these kinds of strategies apply to their business… they’re wrong.
Any entrepreneur can use these four strategies to make customers keep coming back:
Strategy 1: Habit-Hacking
Why is it you manage to brush your teeth every day but can’t stay consistent with your mobility and posture routine?
Habit.
Duolingo isn’t just an option for its users… It's second nature.
Pre-commitment
Before you even start learning, Duolingo asks you to make a commitment:
- “How much time will you practice each day? 3, 10, 15 or 30 minutes a day?
- ”How long will you keep your streak going? 7, 14, 30 or 50 days?”
It’s a clever trick rooted in psychology—when we make a promise, we feel compelled to stick to it. It’s Cialdini’s principle of ‘Consistency’ to the T.
By setting clear goals, Duolingo turns a vague idea into a daily habit.
Streaks
Duolingo keeps track of how many days in a row you’ve practiced. Over 3 million users have streaks longer than a year - read that again and think about how wild that is for a few seconds.
It’s a powerful motivator that brings you back to the app every single day so you don’t break your streak.
How to use it in your business
- Commitments: Get your customers to declare a small, specific commitment upfront like a daily or weekly task. It sets the tone right away and turns vague intentions into real action.
- B2B Saas: During onboarding, ask users to commit to a specific goal they want to achieve using your platform within a certain timeframe. For example: “Which key metric will you commit to improving this quarter? Let’s set up a dashboard now, and we’ll send you automated progress reports at the end of each month”.
- Courses and Coaches: During sessions, ask clients to commit to applying what they’ve learned in each coaching call. For example: “What’s one key action you can commit to completing after today’s session? Let’s follow up next week to see how it’s helping you achieve your larger goal”.
- Streaks: Keep your clients updated on their consistency by tracking how long they’ve stuck to their commitments. Whether it’s a weekly check-in or a monthly report, highlight their progress and celebrate when they hit a milestone.
- E-commerce: Use personalized email updates to track how many months in a row they’ve made a purchase, or kept up their subscription.
- Agencies: Track the client's progress toward their goals by focusing on consecutive successful results or milestones. For example: “We’ve consistently hit your monthly lead generation targets for the past 5 months, adding over 300 qualified leads to your pipeline. You’re on track to exceed your annual goals”.
Strategy 2: Triggers
In Atomic Habits, James Clear explains that all habits begin with a cue. The best way to develop a new habit is to pick a trigger that is very specific and immediately actionable.
Duolingo uses various triggers to encourage its users to complete their daily lessons.
Push notifications
Duolingo has mastered the ping.
They’ve turned reminders into an art form, using a sophisticated AI algorithm to send just the right message at just the right moment.
This is important: They know when to quit. If you don’t respond after 7 days, they back off with one last passive aggressive message:
According to Luis, this final message led to a 3% increase in retention.
Social content
Duolingo has one of the most unhinged content strategies you could feasibly imagine… and people love it (they even won brand of the year in 2024).
This entertainment-first social media strategy gets Duolingo a lot of attention without being too sales-y.
By taking over TikTok feeds (with regular jokes about missing your streaks), these posts also act as a trigger to do your daily lessons. Genius.
How to use it in your business
- Notifications: Send timely, friendly reminders—whether it’s a quick email or push notification. The goal is to help customers form a habit, so make these nudges part of their routine, encouraging them to act consistently.
- B2B SaaS: If a user hasn’t logged in for a week, send them a nudge that highlights their goal and offers a pathway to get back on track.
- Courses and Coaches: Send reminders between sessions to encourage clients to complete their assignments or take actionable steps toward their goals.
- Social:Get your customer’s attention with content that is either entertaining or useful. Subtly (or explicitly) remind them to stick to their goals and make the most of your product and services
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- PR Agencies: Share case studies of how you’ve helped clients get media mentions.
- Recruiters: Share deep dives that highlight the importance of securing top talent and streamlining the hiring process.
Strategy 3: Gamify Progress
The only way to compete with hyper-addictive social media platforms is to make the experience fun. Duolingo makes the learning process fun by making it feel like a game…
- XP: Duolingo gives users a quick dopamine hit after every lesson by dishing out XP (Experience Points).
- Leaderboards: Duolingo has an XP leaderboard that allows users to compete. Those at the top of the leaderboard graduate into higher leagues. Research tells us that competition is an awesome way to get people to stick to healthy habits.
- Achievements and Badges: Research from IBM shows that 87% of users who earned a digital badge were more engaged as a result of their digital reward. Duolingo makes progress fun by rewarding users with Achievements and Badges.
How to use it in your business
- Turn progress into a game: Think about fun strategies to reward your customers as they take steps closer to their goals.
- Agencies: Can you send a gift when they hit a certain milestone?
- Coaches: Can you reward desired behaviors with valuable resources, a complimentary strategy session, or a mini case study feature on your website?
- Communities: Can you give them access to an exclusive group (e.g. slack channel) when they stay consistent for a certain period of time?
- Consultants: Can you connect them with other clients who have reached a similar milestone?
Strategy 4: Meaning
Luis von Ahn admits that Duolingo will never be as addictive as a TikTok doomscroll session of influencer drama, pranks and cat videos.
But what it lacks in cheap thrills, it makes up for in meaning.
When you’re learning, you get meaning out of it. These psychological principles and habit hacks work precisely because the user is internally motivated to learn.
Duolingo is helping people become addicted to achieving their goals by making the experience fun.
This is the most important one to get right.
How to use it in your business
- Help your customer become addicted to achieving their goals: Remind them of the deeper value in what they’re doing. Connect their progress to a bigger purpose. Whether it's learning a new skill, growing their business, or improving their health. Show them how each small step is contributing to something meaningful in the long run.
When people feel like they’re making real progress towards a goal that truly matters to them, they’ll come back again and again.
Now it’s your turn
Building a $10B app was no accident. Luis von Ahn has A/B tested every conceivable habit-forming strategy to the high heavens. This stuff works.
The cool part? You don’t need to be a tech genius to apply these same strategies to your business. Here’s a quick recap of the four strategies Duolingo uses to get users hooked on its product:
- Habit-Hacking: Get your customers to make a pre-commitment and track their streaks. Habits drive action, and consistency leads to results.
- Triggers: Use timely notifications and social cues to keep your customers engaged and on track.
- Gamify Progress: Turn achievements into a game. Add a little competition and reward progress to keep your customers motivated for the next win.
- Meaning: Connect everything to a bigger purpose. When people see their progress actually means something, they’ll keep coming back for more.
Now ask yourself: Which one of these strategies could you implement into your business today?
Your customers want nothing more than to stay consistent. How are you going to help them build a habit they love?
Want more success stories and actionable strategies?
At Hampton, we’re a highly-vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and these are the kinds of conversations we’re having every day.
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Personally, I find being the CEO of a startup to be downright exhilarating. But, as I'm sure you well know, it can also be a bit lonely and stressful at times, too.
Because, let's be honest, if you're the kind of person with the guts to actually launch and run a startup, then you can bet everyone will always be asking you a thousand questions, expecting you to have all the right answers -- all the time.
And that's okay! Navigating this kind of pressure is the job.
But what about all the difficult questions that you have as you reach each new level of growth and success? For tax questions, you have an accountant. For legal, your attorney. And for tech. your dev team.
This is where Hampton comes in.
Hampton's a private and highly vetted network for high-growth founders and CEOs.
