By injecting serious behavior science into their product, the Ladder app has drastically reduced churn.

For the past 3 months, I've paid $29.99/mo for a workout app called Ladder that provides me with fool-proof workouts, 5 days a week. It's great app, user-friendly, and I love it.

I also gained seven pounds since the beginning of June (BBQ cookies are undefeated), which led me to start asking very normal human questions:

• Do I really need this app?

• I’m not working out as much as last month…

• It’s summer. I’m busy.

• Maybe I’ll cancel and come back later.

If you’re a marketer, you know exactly where this usually goes.

Churn, Baby, Churn

Churn is one of the biggest problems in the app world.

(Read the full article here.)

According to global retention research:

• Average Day 1 retention across mobile apps: 25.3%

• By Day 30: 5.7%

That’s brutal.

And what makes it worse is that churn often has nothing to do with product quality.

In Ladder’s case:

• The product works

• The brand is solid

• Customers are happy at purchase

Yet many users still leave weeks—or even days—later.

I didn’t.

I did something stranger.

I upgraded to their most expensive plan.

And there’s very real psychology behind why.

The Anti-Churn Secrets of the Ladder App

Ladder operates in a category that’s notoriously high-churn. People will always choose cookies over compound movements eventually 😅

Instead of fighting that reality, Ladder designed their product around human behavior.

Here’s how they do it.

STEP ONE: They've made it psychologically painful to leave.

Ladder doesn’t trap you with dark UX patterns or force you to call a human (thank god).

Instead, they introduce a perfectly placed “Danger Zone.”

This is a masterful use of:

• Association (danger zones = bad outcomes)

• Availability Heuristic (the brain recalls vivid negative experiences more easily than neutral ones)

When you approach cancellation, the interface subtly triggers anxiety. Your brain starts surfacing images of:

• Losing progress

• Falling off track

• “Failing” again

Nothing explicit needs to be said.

The discomfort does the work.

STEP TWO: They made it psychologically fun to stay.

Ladder assigns every user a coach (leveraging Authority Proof), which many apps do.

But here’s the differentiator:

They also assign you to a team.

Each week, teams compete against each other by logging workouts. Points stack up. Rankings shift.

This taps directly into:

• Competitiveness

• Social identity

• An irresistible us-versus-them dynamic

More workouts → better results
Better results → more motivation
More motivation → more app usage

Then they layer in rewards (like swag for top teams), which reinforces the loop.

App use → app use → app use.

It’s elegant. And dangerous (in a good way).

STEP THREE: They've engineered their app to provide massive amounts of dopamine.

Ladder’s most addictive feature might be the simplest one.

After a workout, you can send someone a “cheer.”

This triggers:

• A rain shower of emojis (👏 🔥 🦍 🌶️) on their profile

• And a matching emoji explosion on your screen

This is pure dopamine design.

Dopamine is a motivation neurotransmitter. It doesn’t just feel good—it makes you want more of the behavior that triggered it.

I now send emoji rain showers even when I’m not working out 😂

It’s especially powerful for users who crave encouragement and social reinforcement. Give support → receive support → come back to check.

This is a brilliant feature, especially for the audience who looks for moral support during their workouts. The more support you give, the more you get, and the more you'll return to the app to see if someone sent you a high-five shower today.

Why This Works

Ladder doesn’t fight human nature.

They design with it.

They:

• Attach pain to leaving

• Attach pleasure to staying

• Reinforce identity through community, competition, and recognition

That’s how you reduce churn in a category that should be impossible to retain.

How to Reduce Churn Using Psychology

If you want to borrow from Ladder’s playbook:

Make it mentally painful to leave
Not physically painful. Psychologically painful. Associate churn with loss, regression, or discomfort—without manipulation.

Make it mentally satisfying to stay
Identify the emotions customers feel when using your product and amplify them. Competition. Belonging. Progress. Recognition.

Inject dopamine into interaction
Small rewards go a long way: emojis, notes, videos, acknowledgments. Dopamine keeps people coming back.

TL;DR

Customers don’t churn because products stop working.

They churn when the product stops supporting who they want to be.

Ladder succeeds because it protects identity, reinforces progress, and makes quitting feel like a step backward: not a neutral choice.

This is exactly the type of pattern CIM is designed to surface. CIM maps emotional drivers, identity threats, and motivational loops so brands can understand why customers stay—and design experiences that make churn psychologically unlikely.

If this challenge is showing up for your team, you can book a call. We can help you apply the right parts of this system inside your business.