Push notifications were noise.
A 60-second daily quiz built the habit.
Newslaundry replaced its newsletter-and-push stack with a streak-based daily news quiz, podcast-minutes badges, and a top-reader leaderboard inside the existing app.
Push fatigue, falling DAU, and a podcast no one finished.
Newslaundry had thousands of paid subscribers but the daily return rate sat flat. Push notifications competed with twenty other news apps, and most readers churned the moment a story ended.
The podcast had loyal listeners but no completion signal — episodes were started in droves and finished by few. The team needed a habit loop that worked across articles, audio, and the app shell — not three disconnected streams.
Three primitives, one daily ritual.
A streak that compounds, badges that map to coverage, and a leaderboard that surfaces the most-read minds — all hung off the existing reading and listening signals.
A 60-second news quiz that resets at midnight.
Five questions pulled from yesterday's lead stories. Miss a day and the streak breaks — the simplest habit lever a news app has.
- Daily quiz, auto-curatedQuestions auto-generated from tagged stories. Editorial reviews in five minutes, not an hour.
- Streak rewards every 7 daysBonus points and a badge at 7, 30, 100 days. Readers don't want to lose the run.
Badges for articles read and podcast minutes listened.
Coverage-based badges — politics, climate, media, tech — plus podcast-minutes tiers reward readers for breadth instead of just frequency.
- Genre-coverage badgesEarn the Climate badge after 10 climate-tagged reads. Editors decide the threshold per beat.
- Podcast minutes tiers30 minutes for Bronze, 5 hours for Gold. Episode completion finally has a reward.
A weekly top-reader leaderboard that ships in the app shell.
Reader, listener, and quiz scores combine into a weekly ranking. Top 50 are featured in the Saturday wrap newsletter — social proof that pulls everyone else up.
- Weekly reset, season totalsWeekly leaderboard for short-term competition. Season standings keep long-term readers invested.
- Public, opt-in profilesReaders choose to appear publicly. Drives a second wave of profile completion.
What changed in 90 days.
Streak, badges, and leaderboard launched in a single sprint. Readers stopped opening for the headline and started opening for the streak.
Embedded as a tab in the existing Newslaundry app.
The quiz, badges, and leaderboard sit behind a single 'Today' tab in the iOS and Android shells. Bricqs reads existing read and listen events — no new instrumentation in the editorial CMS.
- JWT signed with tenant key
- Existing user_id reused
- POST /events (read + listen taps)
- GET /participant/state
- Redis ZSET leaderboard
- Webhook · weekly leaderboard
- Article tag dictionary (badge thresholds)
- 1EmbedBricqs SDK in a 'Today' tab
The mobile team dropped the Bricqs React Native component behind an existing tab. Web uses an iframe on /today.
- 2IdentifyExisting user_id passed via signed JWT
Auth is the same JWT the app already issues. Bricqs verifies it server-side and creates a participant on first interaction.
- 3EventsArticle reads and podcast progress forwarded
The app forwards the existing analytics taps for article views and podcast progress as Bricqs events. Streak, badges, and leaderboard scores derive from the same stream.
- 4OutputsSaturday wrap fed by leaderboard webhook
Each Saturday, Bricqs posts the top-50 leaderboard to the newsletter pipeline. Editorial doesn't curate by hand.
“We used to write five push notifications a day. Now we write zero, and the streak does the work.”
What they shipped next.
Once the first campaign was live, the same Bricqs primitives unlocked three follow-on plays in the next two quarters.
Sunday long-read recap quiz
A weekly 10-question quiz built from the long-form essays.
- Doubles the long-read finish rate
- Top scorers get the next podcast episode early
- Bonus week-streak unlock for participation
Election-week prediction contest
A 7-day prediction contest for high-information readers.
- Daily questions on race calls and turnout
- Live leaderboard during result night
- Anchor's pick spotlight for top 3
Patron tier with reader-level perks
Streak length + badges feed into a tier ladder for paying patrons.
- 100-day streak unlocks event invites
- Gold-genre badge unlocks editor AMAs
- Tier shown in comments and forums
Other teams shipping with Bricqs
Click a logo to see how a different team chose its primitives, wired its events, and shipped in days.
“We turned a chore into a leveling system. Gamers complete in one sitting what used to take three weeks of email nudges — and brands finally have profiles rich enough to spend on.”
Why teams don't rebuild this twice
Under the hood, Bricqs runs a production-grade engagement infrastructure — so you don't have to build it.
Deploy once. Run everywhere.
Multiple deployment paths. One platform. Zero compromises.
Branded campaign pages
Custom domains, SSL, SEO-ready. Launch standalone experiences in minutes.
Headless & flexible
OpenAPI 3.0, webhooks, real-time events. Build anything custom.
Drop into any app or site
One snippet. Widgets or modals — adapts to your platform.
<script src="cdn.bricqs.io/v2" />
<div
data-bricqs="campaign-id"
data-mode="modal" />Full control, native feel
Build deeply integrated experiences that feel native to your app.
Built for teams driving continuous engagement
Bricqs is for teams building engagement systems, not running one-off campaigns.
Lead Capture & Conversion
Spin, quiz, instant rewards to capture and qualify users
Retention & Habit Building
Daily challenges, streaks, and milestones that keep users coming back
Product Engagement
Onboarding flows, feature discovery, and usage nudges
Campaign Launches & Events
Time-bound campaigns, launches, and live activations
Loyalty & Rewards Programs
Points, tiers, reward catalogs, and repeat engagement systems
Community Engagement
Participation loops, contributions, and gamified group actions
If engagement matters after day one, you need a system.
Start building your first campaign in minutes. Design, launch, and scale - with rules, rewards, and fairness built in.