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I hadn’t opened Duolingo in three months.

But with a trip to Spain looming, I tapped the green owl — expecting the same experience as before. But something had changed. Instead of the normal homepage, I got a new reactivation experience: a cute sleeping owl, a check-in, personalised copy and a CRM series.

There’s two types of people in this world: those who can keep a duolingo streak and those who can’t. I’m the latter.

When I re-opened the app, I saw:

• A cute little ‘welcome back’ flow
• A check-in on where I’m at (including which language I want to learn — which was great, since I needed to switch from Italian to Spanish)
• An interesting push notifications strategy
• A personalised ‘welcome back’ email

The reason this is so interesting to me is because lot of reactivation literature talks about how to get users back, not about what happens after that. It’s as if you’re at one of those tourist restaurants: the waiter hard sells to get you in the door. Then, once you’re sat down they take ages to serve you. It’s the same with reactivation.

Many products invest in retargeting, offers, and churn flows but drop the ball on retention. Not Duolingo. With 300 million users and 7 billion exercises completed a month it’s had its fair share of churn. But unlike most, Duolingo doesn’t just work to get you back — it designs the experience to keep you there.

Let’s dive into how Duolingo turns reactivation into retention — starting with the 2025 welcome back flow which, interestingly, seems to have changed since 2024 👀

Stage 1: Welcome back UX
Eight weeks before my Spain trip 🇪🇸 I head back into Duolingo.

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