Love On the Rise: Paired Increases App Engagement and Retention using Amplitude

Insight/Action/Outcome: Despite the Paired app’s strong initial interest and impressive download rate, behavioral data showed that some users were not using the app regularly. Using Amplitude Experiment, the product team tested small tweaks and larger-scale new features to optimize the user experience, resulting in a decrease in trial cancellations and an increase in key engagement metrics.

What makes a good romantic relationship? There are many definitions out there, but we believe it is the small daily actions and moments of connection that support long term love.

Many people hear the terms ‘relationship app’ or ‘couples app’ and think, “Another dating app?!” But we are, in fact, forging a new vertical in the relationship space. Paired is not about connecting strangers—it is giving users in an established, romantic relationship a platform to maintain and deepen their connection. It is about diving deeper with your partner, having those conversations that you might otherwise never have, and having fun while you do it.

When our founders, Kevin Shanahan and Diego Lopez, started Paired, that was the vision: to improve the happiness of couple relationships.

We help couples engage in ongoing, meaningful conversations by answering fun, research-based questions, games, and quizzes to bring them closer together. In order to create these meaningful experiences, we have to understand our users inside and out. That’s where Amplitude comes in.

Going from sign up to aha

Every relationship is an ongoing journey. We aim to help couples maintain a strong foundation to face the ups and downs together while making their journey to lasting love more enjoyable. This includes prompting couples with daily conversation starters and activities to deepen their intimacy and understanding of each other.

To design and deliver activities that will have a positive impact on relationships, we’re always seeking to understand:

• What are the key activities in our app that people engage with?
• What key activities provide the most value? To which users?
• How easy is it for users to find the activities that are relevant and valuable to their relationship?
• How do users really feel, beyond what the raw numbers tell us?

We are constantly talking to our users, and are able to turn qualitative insights into quantitative data with Amplitude Analytics and Experiment. First, we define our primary metrics around early cancellations. Then, using Amplitude, we are able to identify indicative proxy and leading metrics to allow us to be more agile with experimentation.

We set targets and visualized our data in dashboards. Comparing control and variant groups enable us to test our hypotheses about how we could increase engagement and decrease cancellations.

More love from day zero

One of our biggest successes this year has been around increasing engagement and reducing drop-off at the very start of the user journey. After defining the problem statement, we started with the question, ‘How can we help new users engage with the app?’

Using the proxy and leading metrics we had defined, we set the targets that we wanted to meet through this phase of experimentation. We knew that, like any app, the first engagement with the core functionality of the product is a key moment in the user journey, and so we brainstormed around that.

In order to inform the brainstorms, and later constrain the ideas as we honed them, we collated qualitative user feedback with quantitative data in Amplitude. For example, if our qualitative feedback indicated a particular hurdle in the user journey, we were able to back this up with charts in Amplitude, such as funnels. By pinpointing the steps that were or weren’t providing the user with what they needed, we were able to more accurately define solutions to the problems.

And the solution we tested in this case was a resounding success. We ran an AB test, which showed that users in the treatment group were displaying much stronger engagement on D0. That means they are spending more time engaging with our app and, more importantly, engaging in meaningful conversations with their partner.

Meaningful conversations lead to strong bonds—and decreased subscription cancellations

Of course, any app’s success depends on ongoing user engagement, not just new sign-ups. So, our next question was, ‘How do we keep couples using the app on a regular basis?’

The answer? Find the balance between fun and depth. Some couples on Paired are in a really happy place in their relationship, and want to keep their bond strong. Others have maybe lost the ‘spark,’ or are experiencing challenges in their partnership.

Our goal was to provide all our users with the experience they and their partner need at that stage of the relationship. By tracking user engagement in Amplitude across different cross-sections of our user base, we were able to highlight what each group is most interested in.

Importantly, we were also able to see what areas each group might be missing that were relevant to their needs. After all, Paired is supported by experts, and their guidance is vital in helping users have happy, meaningful relationships.

Using the insights of what was a part, and what was missing, from the user journey, we were unleashed to get really creative with finding potential solutions. We tested various options to give all users the meaningful conversations they need—whilst keeping it fun—before landing on the one that worked. In this AB test, the treatment group saw an increase in total engagement at the scale we had not seen in any previous experiments!

However, for us it is about more than just the numbers. We consider this experiment a ‘big hit’ because of the feedback from users. They feel closer with their partner, are having better conversations outside of the app, and feel better able to start those meaningful discussions.

Unifying people and data

This year alone, we have run 13 experiments with Amplitude Experiment. Our growing experimentation culture has empowered us to implement significant changes and launch bold new features—and it is working!

We have already seen a 5% increase in free-to-paid trial conversion rate and our overall in key engagement metrics have soared by 40%.

Amplitude does not just help us connect couples; it connects our internal teams, too. Everyone at Paired now uses Amplitude, and it’s become our go-to data tool.

Designers and engineers use Amplitude to get fresh ideas and develop new features. They can pull data instantly without needing to check with me, making them more self-sufficient. I rely on Amplitude to improve our product, and even our technology-enthusiast CEO uses it to experiment and better understand data.

We accredit much of our data proficiency to Amplitude’s wonderful team, especially our customer success manager, Jose Martins. He's always on the ball, ready to answer questions and update us on the latest and greatest with Amplitude and the industry. We appreciate his proactive approach, sharing best practices and even connecting us with similar businesses to learn and grow from their experiences.

One vision, one love

Now that our teams use a unified data platform, we share a common language when talking about data. We no longer pull information from different sources that lead to different data stories, and when we present data from Amplitude across teams, we don’t waste time explaining analyses because everyone is familiar with the platform. Uniform data, united vision, unified people—it’s one of the best things about working at Paired.

And what do I love about Amplitude? It makes it so easy to tweak things and experiment, trying different approaches in an agile way. For example, there’s a seemingly simple feature in Amplitude that makes a major difference in our efficiency: every change you make in an Amplitude chart updates the URL and generates a new one. You’re not editing other people's work directly, which can be frustrating. Instead, you can easily draw inspiration from their charts and data without the hassle of duplicating, copying, and saving. You can immediately start tweaking and experimenting.

The team at Paired does exactly that. They explore different angles and uncover new insights by experimenting with the data, encouraging creativity and adaptability. This helps us go beyond current solutions and find the best options for our users.