User Anniversary Messages to Re-engage Inactive Users
KEN -20 -1591Last modified on December 19th, 2025 at 10:39 am
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Abstract
PxD operates the MoA-INFO platform in collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture to provide free agricultural recommendations to farmers via SMS messages. To re-engage inactive users and acknowledge long-term users in a personal way, PxD sent an anniversary message showing appreciation of the user one year after the user’s registration. This A/B test compared two message variants—one asking about phone type and the other about land size—to assess which type of information request is more effective in prompting a user response.
The phone-type information request elicited a stronger response than the land-size question. The anniversary messages achieved much higher response rates than previous information requests, which suggests that milestone-based, personalized messages can be an effective strategy for re-engaging dormant users and collecting valuable demographic information. We recommend further testing to explore the broader impact of such nudges. -
Status
Completed
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Start date
Q4 Dec 2020
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Experiment Location
Kenya
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Partner Organization
Kenya Ministry of Agriculture
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Agricultural season
Short Rains
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Experiment type
A/B test
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Sample frame / target population
Inactive MOA-INFO users who have previously attempted the registration process
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Sample size
2,664
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Outcome type
Information access
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Mode of data collection
PxD administrative data
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Research question(s)
Are inactive users more likely to respond to information requests about their phone type or about their land size, when asked after the anniversary message that shows appreciation of the user?
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Research theme
Communication technology, Message framing, Service design
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Research Design
Inactive MoA-INFO farmers (n = 2,664) who had previously initiated the registration process were randomly assigned to two groups.
Treatment group 1, demographic information request (50% of sample): Message requested users to indicate the type of phone they use,
“Congratulations! You’ve been a great MoA-INFO farmer for a year. To serve you better, tell us, what is your phone type? a) Smartphone b) Brick phone.”Treatment group 2, agronomic information request (50% of sample): Message requested users to indicate the size of their farm,
“Congratulations! You’ve been a great MoA-INFO farmer for a year. To serve you better, tell us, what is the size of your farm in acres? a) 0–2 b) 2–5 c) Above 5.”No group received the questions without the anniversary messages.
Our outcome of interest was SMS response rates to the information request message, which we measured with PxD administrative platform data.
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Results
The demographic information request had a higher response rate than the agronomic information request (statistically significant at the 5% level). Response rates were 52.4% for Treatment group 1 (phone-type question) and 45.5% for Treatment Group 2 (land-size question).
We observed positive engagement levels in the previously inactive users, which suggests that personalized anniversary messages with information requests can be used effectively in re-engagement efforts. This A/B test had more than double the response rates when compared to a previous SMS data collection exercise which had a 22% average response rate. This increase could be attributed to the personal appreciation at the start of each of the messages. Further tests would be useful for assessing the effectiveness of personalized nudges on response rates and re-engagement of inactive users.