Case study: European dating app Lovoo turns to Leanplum for A/B testing

Lovoo, the number one dating app across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, has been expanding greatly since its acquisition by The Meet Group in 2017. Although The Meet Group is based out of the US, Lovoo’s core markets reside in Europe, with users interacting with the app in 10 different languages. The Meet Group has a monthly active user (MUA) count of 15m, with Lovoo being the greatest contributor to that metric.

Although Lovoo is most popular in German-speaking countries, the dating app wanted to not only increase new user subscriptions, but also retain those new users, especially in Spain and Italy. To do this, Lovoo turned to Leanplum, a mobile engagement platform, to conduct more A/B testing for marketing techniques including push notifications, in-app notifications, and email campaigns.

Lovoo differentiates from popular US dating apps in a few ways because it does not just include a ‘Match’ feature. Lovoo users can see other users that are nearby, they can message people they haven’t matched with using ‘Icebreaker’, and they can live stream. Lovoo’s revenue model is currently reliant on paid subscriptions for premium features, in-app purchases, and ads. Lovoo does offer female users most of the premium features for free.

“We turned to Leanplum because the Lovoo product team wanted to ship more experiments based on hypothesis, do more extensive A/B testing, and impact engagement and retention. It’s very difficult to conduct those experiments and execute those growth campaigns in-house, since it requires an immense product effort and rollout without the certainty of success. Leanplum’s extra care allowed us to experiment and ship fast, gain results and add to the product,” said Saket Toshniwal, senior product manager, Lovoo.

Using Leanplum’s push notifications, A/B testing capabilities and data analytics, Lovoo saw an increase in subscriptions by a double-digit percentage and an increase in successful registrations by a double-digit percentage. Lovoo was also awarded Google’s Fan Favorite App in 2018.

“Our role is help brands like Lovoo create relevant campaigns that actually increases the lifetime value of their customer, whether it’s through email, in-app notifications or push notifications. They can retain the customer, they can attract the customer, and ensure the customer is served through a long period of their journey with Leanplum. We help test and personalize messaging and application features, while also letting customers do A/B testing to see what message resonates the best, and optimize that. We help enable brands to do very targeted personalized multichannel marketing and customer engagement,” said Marjaneh Ravai, global head of communications & analyst relations, Leanplum.