How QIC uses stories, gamification, and in-app messages to drive loyalty and action across its app ecosystem

Qatar Insurance (QIC) has been operating since 1964 and today describes itself as Qatar’s first online insurer and a leading insurer in the GCC. Beyond insurance, QIC App also extends into lifestyle offerings, including hotel booking, experiences, a car market for buying and selling vehicles, car care services, and more, turning it into an all-in-one platform for everyday interaction with the app.

That creates a specific engagement challenge. Users primarily associated QIC with insurance, and insurance is naturally episodic. Users do not buy a policy, renew insurance, or file a claim every day. But the app still has products, services, rewards, and content worth discovering between those transactions.

QIC uses InAppStory to build several layers of communication inside the app: stories for discovery and explanation, gamification to connect post-purchase journeys with loyalty, and in-app messages for short, action-focused prompts.

Across the formats analyzed for this case, QIC saw different types of measurable user behavior. A post-purchase gamified campaign helped increase the loyalty program redemption rate by 16%. An in-app message promoting a loyalty-related offer achieved a 29.0% click-to-open rate. Localized English and Arabic stories also performed differently at the open, read, and click stages, showing that multilingual content needs to be optimized across the full funnel rather than judged by a single CTR. 

QIC uses stories to showcase the full ecosystem

QIC publishes stories in English and Arabic across insurance, travel, policy management, QIC Coins, referrals, car services, local recommendations, quizzes, and utility content.

This extends communication beyond infrequent purchase and renewal moments: stories help users discover services, rewards, and useful content across the wider QIC ecosystem.

English and Arabic stories perform differently across the funnel

We compared three pairs using the same reporting window for both language versions of each campaign.

There was no single language that consistently performed better.

For Now’s the best time to Coin!, the Arabic version generated a 66.7% open rate, compared with 57.7% for English. But once users opened the story, the English audience progressed further: read-to-open was 20.4% in English versus 15.7% in Arabic.

At the click stage, the difference almost disappeared. Click-to-open was 7.06% for Arabic and 7.04% for English.

The same pattern changed again in Protect your car. Arabic attracted more opens — 13.2% versus 8.7% — while English generated the stronger click-to-open rate: 15.5% versus 11.0%.

And for Reward inside, open rates were almost identical at around 12.5%, but Arabic produced a 38.3% click-to-open rate compared with 20.9% in English.

The useful finding is not that one audience is “better.” It is that localization can affect different parts of the funnel differently.

For QIC, a language version that attracted more opens did not necessarily generate stronger progression or more clicks after the story was opened. That makes opens, reads, and clicks separate optimization signals, rather than three versions of the same engagement metric.

For another example of how story performance changes between local audiences, see the Leroy Merlin multi-market case study.

Gamification helped increase loyalty redemption by 16%

QIC introduced an in-app game as part of the post-purchase journey: users could access it after buying an insurance policy. This gave the company a natural moment to introduce customers to the QIC loyalty program immediately after completing the core insurance transaction.

According to QIC, the gamified campaign increased interest in the loyalty program and helped raise the redemption rate by 16%.

For an insurance app, this gives gamification a clear business role beyond entertainment. QIC used the game to connect a completed policy purchase with the next customer action — discovering and using loyalty rewards.

A loyalty bottom sheet converted 29% of opens into CTA clicks

QIC also added in-app messages, including bottom sheets, to its communication mix.

In one loyalty-focused campaign, 29.0% of opens resulted in a CTA click across more than 20,000 opens between August 2 and 20, 2026. Daily CTA conversion ranged from 20% to 33%.

The campaign was published in English and Arabic. In the supplied exports, both language versions have identical daily performance data, so there is no measurable EN/AR performance gap to report for this campaign. We therefore treat the files as localized versions of the same campaign and do not add their volumes together.

For QIC, the result shows where in-app messages can complement stories: instead of explaining a product or benefit across several screens, a bottom sheet can present one relevant offer and move the user directly to a CTA. In this campaign, nearly three in ten opens led to that action.

For a controlled comparison of stories and in-app messages using identical creative, see the InAppStory telecom case study.

What QIC achieved with a multi-format in-app communication strategy

The strongest result from the QIC case is not one isolated CTR. It is that different formats generated different measurable behaviors inside the same app.

Stories created a discovery and education layer across insurance, loyalty, referrals, services, and evergreen content. The bilingual campaigns also showed why localization should be evaluated through the full funnel rather than one headline metric.

Gamification supported post-purchase loyalty engagement. By placing the game after policy purchase, QIC connected the insurance transaction with its loyalty program and helped increase redemption rate by 16%. 

In-app messages shortened the path to action. A QIC Coins bottom sheet generated 6,051 clicks from 20,901 opens, producing a 29.0% click-to-open rate.

Together, these formats let QIC communicate with app users outside the relatively infrequent moments of buying, renewing, or claiming insurance.

For an ecosystem app like this,that is the practical value of a broader in-app communication layer: stories can explain and surface what the app offers, games can connect post-purchase journeys with loyalty, and in-app messages can turn a relevant moment into a direct action.

InAppStory brings stories, in-app messages and gamification into the same in-app communication layer, so teams can match the format to the job instead of forcing every campaign into the same placement.