Insight/Action/Outcome: Relationship-building startup Vespexx found unprecedented user visibility through Amplitude that boosted monthly active users (MAU) of their Signaling app by 9x. Among their insights, they discovered that users who schedule an event with their partner in their first session had significantly higher retention. Optimizing their onboarding to guide users to this milestone raised their one-month retention rate to 54%.
It’s hard to find meaningful connections with others—and it’s even harder to maintain them. We started to create a digital space where couples can stay connected and build stronger, healthier relationships. For a couple struggling to balance busy lives with quality time together, our Signaling app (, ) helps manage shared schedules, remember important days, and eliminate misunderstandings.
We have ambitious goals, including global expansion into Japan and the United States. Achieving this growth across different cultural contexts requires a data analytics platform that does everything we do for couples: present a clear view of the current situation, highlight key areas for improvement, and keep all parties aligned.
We found our perfect match in Amplitude. The platform offered everything we needed to address these challenges, and the insights helped us implement targeted acquisition and retention strategies that lead to a 9.5x increase in cumulative downloads of our Signaling app and a 9.3x increase in monthly active users (MAU).
Finding happiness with a new partner
As growth manager at Vespexx, I lead growth initiatives for our Signaling app, blending data insight with innovative marketing strategies. My ultimate goal is to create a product that couples find indispensable. The greatest difficulty is ensuring that we acquire users effectively and retain them over time. Doing that requires a deep understanding of user behavior so we can identify moments that drive meaningful engagement.
Unfortunately, our previous analytics tool couldn’t deliver. Instead, we dealt with a few major challenges:
- We had limited visibility into user behavior. We didn’t know how users interacted with our Signaling app or which specific actions led to higher engagement.
- Our data was fragmented and scattered across various platforms. We had to manually gather data, which slowed our decision making and led to the possibility of basing decisions on inaccurate information. It felt like we were making decisions in the dark.
- We struggled to identify the key moments that drive long-term retention. Without these insights, we couldn’t optimize to guide users to these key milestones or form a cohesive growth strategy.
Retaining users long term requires a deep understanding of user behavior so we can identify moments that drive meaningful engagement.
Finding Amplitude was love at first sight. In addition to the platform’s global analytics capabilities, intuitive interface, and real-time data processing, it directly solved our previous challenges:
- Amplitude delivers detailed information about user actions, giving us more visibility into how users move through the Signaling app.
- By centralizing our analytics onto a single platform, we gained a unified picture of our product, enabling us to make faster and more accurate decisions.
- With increased visibility, we could identify the key moments in the user journey and optimize the experience to keep users returning.
It’s been so ideal for our growth plans that the entire growth and product teams now use the platform. Features like funnels, cohorts, event tracking, and retention reports help us map user journeys, spot drop-off points, and understand user segments. I use it to analyze user journeys, identify pivotal moments, and optimize onboarding funnels, while our product managers measure feature adoption while our designers refine UX based on real-time feedback.
Every decision is now backed by data, resulting in faster decisions, aligned goals, and continuous improvements to the user experience.
Amplitude has fostered a data-driven culture across Vespexx. Custom dashboards give us an at-a-glance view of our KPIs, making it easier to act quickly. Granting everyone access to actionable insights means every decision is backed by fact, resulting in faster decisions, aligned goals, and continuous improvements to the user experience.
Creating deeper connections leads to a 9x boost in MAU
Some key metrics we use to measure performance of our Signaling app include download growth, retention rates, and a custom “couple connection” rate. The couple connection rate is the percentage of users who successfully connect with their partner after registering—since our app’s core value is helping couples coordinate and communicate, a high couple connection rate indicates that users experience that benefit. We also look to CPI and activation rates as crucial indicators of success.
A big aha moment for us was the discovery that users who schedule and share an event with their partner in their first session have significantly higher retention. Knowing this, we optimized our onboarding flow to guide users toward this milestone. We've definitely seen improvements: Our one-week retention rate climbed from 57% to 69%, our one-month retention rate went from 46% to 54%, and our three-month retention rate improved from 33% to 42.5%.
Within months after adopting Amplitude, we achieved phenomenal results in other areas, too:
- 9.3x increase in monthly active users
- 9.5x more downloads
- Increased activation rate: We consider “activation” complete when a user schedules an event. Initially, our activation rate was around 40–50%, which jumped to 67%.
- Improved signup rate: When I first joined the company, the signup rate hovered around 75%. It has since climbed to 91%.
- Rising couple connection rate: This metric rose from 60% to as high as 77%, and we recognize an opportunity to foster even more growth by tailoring the app’s UI/UX and marketing strategy for each country.
- Drop in overall CPI: Our overall marketing CPI was between $1.70 and $2, and it's dropped to around $1, with Meta’s CPI falling between $0.40 and $0.45.
Understanding what drives user behavior and retention has enabled us to scale efficiently, improve marketing ROI, and build a product that resonates deeply with our audience. Amplitude delivers the information we need to optimize every stage of the user journey, from acquisition to long-term engagement.
... and we will live happily ever after
Amplitude is essential to my role at Vespexx. Without it, we couldn’t create a product that resonates with our audience or scale globally.
We’ve been using the program and will soon be transitioning to a paid contract. We’ve found Amplitude to be extremely helpful in accelerating product development, and we have greatly benefited from the support of , head of Amplitude Korea. His guidance and insight have helped us maximize the platform’s potential and leverage features for our growth initiatives.
Amplitude is a growth catalyst that has helped Vespexx turn insights into impact and ideas into innovation.
Our achievements with Amplitude so far have already opened doors: Vespexx recently participated in , capitalizing on an opportunity to showcase our products to a global audience and set the stage for international growth. As Vespexx continues to scale, we look forward to an even deeper collaboration with Amplitude and the opportunities that will result.
Amplitude is more than just an analytics platform. It’s a growth catalyst that has helped Vespexx turn insights into impact and ideas into innovation.