In late 2023, the music-streaming service Spotify launched the “daylist” feature, which quickly boosted user interaction by providing playlists that dynamically shift themes throughout the day, reflecting various moods and activities. This innovation drove daily engagement by encouraging users to check back for fresh music suggestions, reinforcing a personalized experience that fostered greater customer retention.
As users encounter a growing array of new apps and brands daily, it’s vital for companies to create hyper-personalized, gamified experiences that enhance customer engagement. However, most struggle to systemize these interactions across multiple touchpoints in a way that truly feels customized. Kalder’s loyalty management platform addresses this challenge with its advanced gamification tools and card-linking technology, enabling brands worldwide to activate customized membership-based partner rewards programs that increase engagement and build lasting loyalty.
Offer Rewards and Incentives to Retain Active Users
Kalder’s white-labeled card-linking technology empowers brands and communities to create their own AMEX-style partner rewards programs. Customers earn rewards from an anchor brand when shopping at partner brands, creating a commission for the anchor while driving engagement with customers’ individual interests.
This seamless integration outside the anchor brand’s ecosystem allows users to feel recognized and valued as they pursue their unique preferences, driving engagement and boosting customer loyalty.
Create Loyalty Programs
For a brand that onboards onto Kalder’s partner rewards program, the brand’s users earn rewards by using their everyday debit or credit card at partner brands.
Users link their card securely through Kalder’s whitelabeled platform, enabling automatic cashback when they shop at designated partner locations. As a surprise and delight, this makes earning rewards seamless, as users don’t need separate loyalty cards or promo codes—just their linked card being used according to their own preferences.
When customers make transactions at partner brands, the anchor brand generates commissions on the transaction for bringing a customer to their partner.
Kalder’s platform makes onboarding partners simple - by only using an application form that generates an offer request to the anchor brand, potential partners have full control over their offer and commission percentages. As customers are brought to them by the anchor brand, partners will experience greater brand visibility and sales volume.
Customers are encouraged to return to partner brands, as now they receive rewards for doing so. The rewards they receive are only spendable at the anchor brand, encouraging customers to return and spend more within the ecosystem. Kalder’s infrastructure is a great tool, not just for generating additional revenue, but for customer retention as well.
Kalder’s complete customizability makes it even easier for brands to target customer groups more specifically. As brands are able to create multiple tiers and levels of memberships on Kalder’s loyalty program builder, they can also curate offers available only to specific tiers, personalizing each member’s experience even further. As users find and activate offers exclusive to them, brands can tap into a more emotional engagement with their customers.
Implement Gamification Elements to Engage Users
Gamification is also a great way to engage and retain customers. By gamifying elements of a membership program, customers can have a more interactive experience with the brand, Gamification leverages concepts like rewards, challenges, and leaderboards to make interactions more enjoyable and engaging.
By associating a joyful emotion with the brand, customers will continue to engage with the brand and therefore have a higher likelihood of spending more with the brand or within the mobile app.
Not only does gamification create customer retention, but it also can create a sense of community, as users have the opportunity to enjoy friendly competition against other users in their daily challenges and leaderboards, encouraging them to interact with the brand even more to rank higher. Challenges and experiences can come in many different shapes and forms - Kalder’s community tools hosts an array of gamification features that are fully customizable out-of-the-box to support in gamifying any touchpoints a brand may have.
There are 80+ Gamification Experiences powered by Kalder, some of which are:
Points based loyalty
Members only discounts and products
Cross brand collaborations
Referrals
Community content
Curated shopping
Apple Wallet for event, store, ticketing check ins
VIP clientele tiers
Chat, threads, Q&As, Live shopping
Co-creation and first party data collection
Content sharing
Monetization and reward redemption
Leaderboards
Product upsells
Badges for immersive loyalty
Personalize User Experience Through Customization
Kalder’s platform allows both the admin and the end user to customize their experience extensively. Admins can create custom offers and experiences to target specific customers, whereas the end user is also able to customize their own profile to express their individual style, making the app experience feel tailored and unique to them. This personalization often leads to a deeper connection and more time spent in the app.
Membership Levels
Kalder’s community tools allows admins to create unlockable tiers within a membership. Tiers increases engagement by motivating users to reach higher levels for exclusive rewards and benefits, fostering a sense of achievement and progress. Users feel rewarded not only for their purchases but also for their activity within the program.
Each tier offers increasingly valuable perks, which encourages members to keep interacting with the brand to unlock these advantages. This structured incentive model boosts engagement, as members are more likely to stay active, purchase more, and participate regularly to maintain or elevate their tier status to boost their user experience further.
Provide Exclusive Offers to Encourage Engagement
Exclusive offers can be a great way to keep your customers engaged, by incentivizing them to work towards a specific benefit. Whether that’s exclusive products, early access, special offers and discounts, or exclusive content, these experiences can provide users with a way to interact with your brand and make them feel prioritized.
Personalized Avatars
Kalder also allows users to create their own profile avatars to interact or connect socially with other members, such as through community threads, gamified experiences, or challenges. Avatars can act as a visual representation of each user within these social settings, making interactions feel more engaging and dynamic.
Allow Users to Adjust Settings to Their Preferences
Mobile notifications are an important part of improving customer engagement, especially in the digital era. With Kalder, users can opt-in to receive email notifications or mobile notifications. Mobile and email notifications are essential for customer engagement because they keep users connected and informed, even when they’re not actively using the app or platform. Notifications provide timely updates on rewards, special offers, or personalized content, prompting customers to return and interact with the brand.
By delivering relevant reminders and information directly to users, brands can reduce churn, increase app sessions, and foster loyalty. With a strategic balance of push notifications and email alerts, brands can engage customers based on their preferences and behaviors, ensuring communication feels personalized and valuable rather than intrusive.
Provide Content Recommendations Based on Behavior
Based on the membership tier, Kalder allows any brand to segment their top customers easily. By doing so, brands can send personalized and more exclusive offers to select customers to make them feel more prioritized compared to others. This creates an emotional connection with the user, encouraging them to return to engage with the brand or app more.
Simplify Navigation With Intuitive User Interface
Designing a simple user experience can make the onboarding flow of a customer much smoother, leading to less churn. Kalder’s infrastructure gives brands the option of creating either a webview membership portal, as well as the ability to embed into an app via API. This makes the customer experience seamless, as there is less friction within the interface. Naturally, this will lead to a longer session time and heavier app usage.
In-App Communication Tools
Kalder’s community features is a great way for users to connect with each other within the platform, and engage with each other as well as the brand. Kalder’s platform allows brands to create Reddit-style threads, rewarding users for interacting with the thread as well as each other. By creating a sense of community within the brand, customers feel more comfortable engaging with the brand, leading to higher engagement rates and therefore higher spending.
Integrate Social Sharing Features to Boost Interaction
UGC and social media content sharing has been key for brand growth in the digital age. By engaging with a brand’s social media, not only is the customer engaging with the brand, but they are also encouraging others to engage with it. It’s important for any brand to maintain a good social media presence, as it can be an easy way to not only keep customers updated for them to stay engaged, whilst being a channel for acquisition as well.
Rewarding customers for social media sharing can be a great way to bring impressions to your brand and app, as members are encouraged to involve themselves in the brand’s social media activities more. By using Kalder’s social media features, brands can easily set up a reward function that automatically detects social media activity of users, and rewarding them accordingly.
Increase App Engagement with Kalder
In today's competitive market, fostering strong, lasting relationships with customers is essential for brands seeking to boost app engagement. Kalder’s versatile loyalty management platform offers the tools to create personalized, rewarding experiences that keep users returning. From custom avatars and tiered memberships to integrated mobile and email notifications, Kalder enables brands to meet their customers where they are, delivering value and building emotional connections that go beyond basic transactions.
By leveraging Kalder’s unique approach to loyalty, brands can turn casual app users into dedicated, long-term members who see real benefits in staying engaged, enhancing both customer satisfaction and overall growth. Book a demo with Kalder today.
FAQs
How to increase user engagement in an app?
One of the best ways to generate engagement in a mobile application is to create a loyalty program that rewards users for interacting with the brand or app. Here are some features of a in-app loyalty program designed to boost user engagement:
Gamification Elements
Membership Tiers
Provide exclusive offers
Personalized
Exclusive offers
Personalized Avatars
User-specific Settings & Preferences
Content Recommendations
Social Media Sharing Features
In-app Communication Tools
What are the three active engagement strategies?
Three core strategies to drive app engagement are Gamification Elements, Personalized Experiences, and Incentive-Driven Loyalty Programs. Gamification, like avatars and action-based rewards, keeps the experience fun. Personalization, such as user-specific settings and custom avatars, makes interactions relevant and enjoyable. Finally, loyalty programs with tiers and exclusive offers encourage repeat interactions.
What is good app engagement?
Good app engagement means users visit the app frequently and interact meaningfully—customizing settings, earning rewards, and sharing content. For brands using Kalder, these interactions build lasting loyalty and a deeper user connection.
