Overview of this campaign

The Context: The "Free" Fatigue: As a leading Swiss news platform, growing our First-Party Data (logins) is critical. However, we hit a "Loyalty Wall" with casual users. Our standard approach was rational and generous: a Control Group offer giving every user immediate, guaranteed access to a 7-Day Free Trial of Blick+.

The Problem: Paradoxically, giving access away for "free" devalued the product. Users perceived the "7-Day Free Trial" as just another banner to be ignored or a "trap" requiring effort. The perceived cost of typing an email address outweighed the perceived value of the free trial. We needed a strategy to manufacture value and urgency without changing the content itself.

The Behavioral Strategy: We hypothesized that we could increase conversions not by improving the offer, but by changing the frame through which users received it. We moved from a Passive Gain (Control: "Take this 7 Day free trial") to an Active Win (Variant: "Spin to win access") with introducing the wheel of luck directly on our pay- / registration wall.

This leveraged three powerful behavioral heuristics:

1. Idiosyncratic Fit (The "Lucky" Effect): In the Control group, the offer is generic. In the Gamified group, the result feels personal ("I got lucky"), making the user feel special.

2. The Endowment Effect: Once a user spins and "wins" a month of access, they psychologically "own" that prize.

3. Loss Aversion: In the Control group, declining the offer feels like saving time. In the Gamified group, declining the registration means losing a prize they just won. People fight harder to avoid losing a win than to gain a freebie.

Goal: Outperform the static "7-Day Free Trial" benchmark and prove that psychological engagement drives higher conversion efficiency than rational generosity.

Results for this campaign

The "Wheel of Luck" campaign did not just generate clicks; it fundamentally changed user behavior across the entire funnel, delivering growth in three distinct areas.

1. Tripling New User Acquisition (+181%) The Control Group’s rational "7-Day Free Trial" stagnated at a 0.16% registration rate. The "Wheel of Luck" variant shattered this ceiling, achieving a 0.45% registration rate. By framing the access as a "win" rather than a "gift," we nearly tripled the efficiency of our inventory.

2. Drastic Improvement in Funnel Completion (+71%) Crucially, the motivation to finish the signup process improved as well. The General Completion Rate (users who started vs. users who finished) rose by 71%. This proves the Goal Gradient Effect: Users were more willing to endure the "friction" of a form to secure their prize than they were for a standard free trial.

3. Re-Activating Dormant Accounts (+26%) The effect even spilled over to users who already had an account but were not logged in. The Login Rate for existing users increased from 0.35% to 0.44%. The gamified trigger was strong enough to overcome the inertia of simply clicking "Login."

Conclusion We proved that in a market saturated with "free" offers, psychological ownership is the key differentiator. By letting users "win" their access, we turned passive readers into

Contact

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