Nearly every prediction market, sports betting app, and crypto trading platform leads with upside. The promise is usually some version of "turn $10 into $500."
The principle is built around a concept from Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory (1979). The idea is simple: losing something feels about twice as painful as the good feeling you’d get from gaining the same thing. So the moment you imagine winning $500, you’re moved to act because you start feeling like you’re losing money you should have already, vs. just passing on a nice opportunity.
When I signed up for Kalshi, I was expecting to see some variation of the same type of tactics deployed. But that’s actually not what I saw. And I was really surprised. Here’s what they do instead in their nine-email activation sequence.
Kalshi’s website
The number they always show
The first six emails focus on getting you to use the product and make a deposit. Each email serves a specific function to resolve a different objection the customer might have to using the app.
The first six emails of Kalshi’s activation sequence
In pretty much every email, you'll notice a really similar theme where most (if not all) of the messaging subtly drives home trading volume. And the reasoning is pretty simple: for a first-time user and depositor, one of the main objections fintech platforms face is legitimacy (i.e., “Is the platform real?”). This is a really simple approach and smart use of product data to reinforce core messaging and tackle subtle objection handling.
The number they never show
Every competitor leads with upside, but Kalshi never does. This is because leading with returns puts them in the same bracket as every app they're trying to differentiate from. They spent years getting CFTC approval to be a legitimate, regulated exchange, so showing potential winnings would hand skeptics the exact ammunition they need to walk away and undermine everything that makes Kalshi different.
The second phase of the sequence makes this even clearer. Where most lifecycle teams would escalate pressure on users who haven't converted, Kalshi does the opposite and tries to build goodwill with their users and differentiate from the industry as much as possible.
The last three emails of Kalshi’s activation sequence
The next three emails are all framed around helping you act responsibly. That means things like a risk management guide and a responsible trading email, which points to a custom landing page with a whole bunch of awesome resources that once again differentiates the company from all the other platforms.
Kalshi spends the back half of the sequence proving they have your interests in mind before they ever ask for anything again. For a user (like myself) who still hasn't deposited a single dollar, it feels like they're prioritizing my well-being over the conversion (which is honestly really refreshing to see). Then, with the last email, they circle back one final time with a “trending now” message, ending the sequence exactly where it started, driving home the legitimacy of the platform.
This is the playbook most traditional banks run, but very different from other gaming-type fintech companies. So I decided once again to bring in my friend Dio Favatas, fintech expert from Capgemini, to get his perspective as someone who has spent years seeing every aspect of the fintech world, to share a bit of context on Kalshi’s lifecycle program.
“When you've spent years in a regulatory fight to become the first CFTC-approved exchange for event contracts, the first-time depositor doesn't need to be sold on upside. Rather, they need to be sold on safety, and what Kalshi figured out is that most of my fintech and financial services clients haven't is that compliance and marketing actually have to be in the same room when that onboarding sequence gets designed. Traditional financial institutions with decades of regulatory history have far more material to work with than Kalshi ever did, and most of them still haven't figured out how to tell that story.”
Why safety is the whole strategy
So much of marketing is about removing friction for your customers so they can make decisions more easily. And so often, as marketers, we want to say everything, but in many cases, less is actually more. Narrowing your focus to a single value proposition that is deeply tied to an to your specific product is incredibly powerful because it provides immediate clarity and ensures that your entire lifecycle engine is rowing in the same direction.
In Kalshi’s case, the entire email sequence is built around one goal: making you feel safe to move your money. Phase one removes the reasons not to act, and phase two helps eliminate the reasons not to trust. While many lifecycle teams optimize for conversion, Kalshi optimizes for trust first and lets conversion follow.
There's a real cost to this approach because delaying conversion means delaying revenue. Every email in that second phase is a goodwill investment with no guaranteed return. Kalshi is absorbing the CAC on users who still haven't deposited, betting that a trusted user is worth more in the long run than a quickly converted one.
Kalshi can play a different game because they have the runway to do it. They raised $1B at an $11B valuation in December 2025, and another $1B at $22B in March 2026. When you have that kind of capital behind you, you can afford to spend 30 days building trust before you ask for a dollar. For Kalshi, that seems like a trade they’re willing to make.