The past few weeks, I’ve spent a significant amount of time experimenting with and studying the growth tactics used in different health & fitness applications.

One experience that stood out to me during this experimentation was the way that Gymstreak uses streaks. Streaks and other forms of gamification are a common growth tactic for driving engagement and retention within a consumer app. That said, the mechanism in most apps works such that you start at zero and build your way up via usage of the product over time. Gymstreak does things a little bit differently, and I think it’s brilliant.

I downloaded the Gymstreak app for the first time, turned on the Apple Health integration, and this was the experience I was met with:

Notice that it says I have a 26-week streak even though I’ve never used the app before. They backfilled my streak based on my Apple Health data. This does a great job of:

1. Incentivizing me to use their app to keep my streak going.
2. Creating a sense of stored value even though I’ve never used their product before.

This is an extremely clever way to make me feel like I have a streak that I don’t want to break even though I haven’t done a workout in their app yet. I’m willing to bet this drives significant increases in initial engagement vs. an experience that starts everyone’s streak at zero.

If you use gamification in your app, how could you replicate an experience like this? The answer might be obvious if you ingest Apple Health data!

You’re going to want to check these out…

1. This Podcast Episode - By Alex Hormozi goes over a tactical strategy for how to get your first five clients.
2. This Twitter Thread - By Mac Martine goes over the learnings he had after failing a SaaS startup and working with a startup incubator.