Impact of Gamification Rewards Program in Increasing Sales
There has been a time where all of us have been hooked to those video games and screens for hours. But have you ever wondered what was the reason behind that? The adrenaline rush, exciting graphics and details, better storyline, challenges- may be all of these.
Similar gamification concepts have been introduced by various brands as a part of their sales promotion or other marketing activities. Reason behind this is to provide the reward-winning experience to the customers which will push them to make more purchases.
What is a Gamification Rewards Program?
As already mentioned that brands are also incorporating similar aspects, here are few things that you need to understand about the gamification rewards program, and its benefits along with impact on the industry.
Gamification is the process that is introduced in the rewards program to make them more interesting for the customers and make them feel involved in the whole process. Gamification can be done in different ways such as spin the wheel, scratch cards, or treasure hunts, referrals, badges etc.
All these activities makes the customer feel more involved in the entire process of making the purchase and tends to remember the brand as the overall shopping experience is being uplifted here.
Some of the benefits of introducing gamification to rewards programs are:
- Brand Recognition & Awareness
When you introduce gamification in sales activities, buyers tend to remember your brand as the gamification process has enhanced their overall experience and made it interesting. This will help them remember your brand for a long time and generate more brand awareness & recognition.
- Increased Customer Engagement
Interesting gamification processes will intrigue your customers to get involved in the process which will increase customer engagement in your brand. This will eventually get your brand more customers and help you expand your customer base.
- Appealing for Customers
Gamification process is appealing for customers, and the reward-winning adrenaline rush pushes them to make a purchase to see the reward they might get. This makes the overall experience for the customer interesting and satisfying.
- Increased Sales & Revenue
Because the overall process is made interesting for the customers, this can enhance the sales and earned revenue. Once customers are intrigued they will keep on making purchases due to the reward addiction and hence, your brand will have increased sales and revenue.
- Word of Mouth Brand Marketing
When the overall sales process is made satisfying and interesting for the customers they will be referring the brand to their peers and hence doing a cost-effective word of mouth marketing for your brand.
Additionally, gamification rewards program can be incorporated into any brand’s strategies by partnering with the right loyalty program provider such as RewardPort whose wide range of products and services can be implemented to introduce gamification in sales process and hence increasing the sales.
RewardPort offers Gamification to introduce different types of processes such as spin the wheel, treasure hunts, slot machine pop ups, etc, to make the process interactive for the customers.
How to Integrate Gamification Rewards Program?
Before starting on the how, you need to answer a few questions for a better understanding and vision of the gamification process.
- What are your goals?
- What is your target audience?
- What is your objective?
- What is your budget?
Once you have answered these questions, you now have a clear understanding of the basics of the gamification process and what to expect out of it. Let’s dive into the process of integrating the gamification rewards program into your brand strategies.
- Identify the audience
- Understand their needs and requirements
- Identify the interest areas of the audience
- Figure out what kind of gamification activities interests the audience
- Introduce an element of surprise
- Make the reward worth the gamification process
Following the above-mentioned process, once you have developed the initial gamification for your audience, based on the constant feedback and activities you can alter the process and make it more interesting for your audience.
Different Gamification Reward Programs
Although the need to introduce the gamification process entirely depends on the needs and goals of the brand, here are some of the most common gamification introduced in the reward programs.
- Badges
For making a fixed number or amount of purchases you offer the customers with different badges and showcase their journey with the brand. This allows them to bond with the brand and form a sense of belonging and makes them feel a part of the family, hence, more purchases. It further intrigues the customers to reach the highest badge and have the sense of winning.
- Gamified Surveys and Quizzes
You can make data collection gamified and interesting for the customers, this way they will provide their data and won’t feel bored. Making this process interesting you can add certain pop ups to select the items from, and portray it in a story form which is interesting for the customer.
- Treasure Hunts
Be it online or offline, you can incorporate treasure hunts for customers to put in some extra efforts and win the rewards. This will make the customers feel involved in the entire gamification process and hence, form a bond with the brand.
- Spin the Wheel
This tends to be one of the most basic and commonly used gamification tactics. Once the customer spins the wheel and it lands on a certain prize, the customer is awarded that price. This is interesting as it keeps up the suspense and intrigues the customer about the prize.
You can introduce Spin the Wheel Gamification Rewards Program by RewardPort for a more effective process.
Gamification with RewardPort
With RewardPort you can also include processes such as scratch cards with their Scartch2Win program and also incorporate the leaderboard which shows the top winning customers. This makes other customers buy more products from the brand and see their name on top of the leaderboard.
Furthermore, once a customer reaches the top of the leaderboard they are given an additional reward which creates a sense of victory for the customer and hence, they form a loyalty bond with the company, also referring the same to their peers.
For more information you can get in touch with the experts here at RewardPort and get your gamification rewards program customised as per the needs of your brand.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Integrating gamification rewards programs in the brand can help engage the customers in a better way and enhance their purchase experience. It also provides the customers with a sense of winning while being provided with any reward.
Gamification rewards programs can be incorporated into any brand and industries to make the overall experience enhanced. This allows the customers to get engaged with the brand in a better way.
Gamification rewards programs are effective to attract more customers and retain customers as well. This allows more engaging and involving experience for the customers which provides more sales for the company and hence more revenue and more profit.
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
7 Gamification Ideas for Your Loyalty Programs to Excite Your Audience
A loyalty program is a powerful tool in itself as it helps companies in attracting and retaining customers. When combined with gamification strategies, a loyalty program becomes even more effective and exciting for the customers. As per a study, consumers engage with only half of the loyalty programs they enroll in. This is major because the loyalty programs are not interesting enough to keep the customers engaged for a long period of time.
This is where gamification acts as a powerful tool. By incorporating gamification strategies in your loyalty program, you can keep your customers engaged and boost loyalty. The following are some most effective gamification ideas for your loyalty programs:
1. Streaks & Milestones
Loyalty programs based on streaks and milestones are different from the regular rewards programs. In these programs, customers receive rewards or benefits after achieving certain milestones and not for performing a single task. For example, you can offer a discount coupon to your customers for logging in to your website/app for 30 or 60 days in a row. If they skip even one day, they lose the reward. Similarly, you can offer a free gift on completing a certain number of purchases with your brand.
Through milestone-based loyalty programs, you can ensure that your customers do not forget about your brand even when they are not making a purchase. This also helps in boosting customer engagement. As your customers engage more, they are more likely to stay loyal and purchase frequently from your brand.
2. Levels and Tiers
Including different tiers in your loyalty program is an effective way to constantly encourage your customers to purchase more. With each upper level or tier, customers get better rewards and benefits. You would have seen rewards programs where companies have two or three tiers, including bronze, silver, and gold tiers. You can also run similar loyalty gamification programs for your customers. As soon as they make their first purchase, they enter the first, i.e. the lowest tier, which has the most basic benefits.
After making a specific number of purchases or spending a certain amount on your brand, they move to the next tier and become eligible for higher rewards and benefits. This is how tiered loyalty programs work. When customers get basic rewards after entering a tier, they are automatically encouraged to purchase more often in order to get promoted to the upper tiers and receive higher rewards.
3. Code Words
This is quite a unique yet effective loyalty program idea that can help you retain most of your customers and turn one-time buyers into brand loyalists. You can convert online engagement of customers into sales by providing them with access to a rewarding ‘code word.’ By applying this code word, your customers can get a discount or rewards on making a purchase from your brand. For customer retention and loyalty, you can make this ‘code word’ accessible only to the registered users of your website/app. With this, you can not only motivate more customers to register on your website but also boost sales by offering rewards and discounts.
4. Referral Challenges
Referral loyalty programs have also gained very much popularity and are considered an effective way to expand the customer base of a brand. By running ‘refer a friend’ challenges, you can encourage your customers to recommend your brand to more and more people. This enables you to get access to many potential customers that you would have never known without running a referral contest. Different brands run referral contests in different ways. For example, you can offer a 50% discount coupon on five successful sign-ups or offer a free gift on the first successful purchase made by your customer’s friend.
5. Scratch-to-Win Games
These types of loyalty gamification programs are very effective in retaining customers and keeping them engaged with your brand. You can add a ‘scratch-to-win’ feature on your website or app and encourage your customers to log in every day in order to get a chance to scratch. Make sure that you offer valuable rewards/gifts in scratch cards so that your customers don’t lose interest in the contest. You can include different options, such as a certain number of reward points, a discount coupon, or a free gift. Make sure that your customers get at least some reward points every day that they can accumulate over time and redeem for some discount coupon or free gift.
6. Seasonal Challenges
To ensure that your customers don’t lose interest in your loyalty program, you can come up with seasonal challenges. Keep launching different contests or reward programs for a certain period of time. If the challenges are really exciting and you offer valuable benefits under them, your customers will see each challenge as an opportunity to win a reward. You can make the challenges more interesting by including qualification criteria. For example, a customer becomes eligible to participate in a challenge only if he/she makes a purchase after its launch.
7. Quizzes and Leaderboards
You can even run quiz challenges on your website, app, or social media platforms, and give a shoutout to the winners through leaderboards. You can add questions related to your products, services, or your industry, and update the leaderboard on a daily/weekly basis. This type of loyalty programs helps keep customers engaged and encourages them to learn more about your brand. Make sure that you keep the quiz interesting and engaging for your customers
Include Gamification in Loyalty Programs with RewardPort
RewardPort is one of the top loyalty solution providers in India and is trusted by a number of businesses. If you want to make your loyalty program more engaging by combining it with gamification strategies, RewardPort is the right company to partner with. The team of marketing experts at RewardPort analyzes your business requirements deeply and comes up with an effective gamified loyalty program that works for your brand.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
An example of a gamified loyalty program is a ‘Spin to Win’ program through which brands encourage their customers to log in to their website/app every day in order to Spin the Wheel and earn some reward.
Combining gamification strategies with loyalty programs makes them more interesting for the customers to participate in. Along with boosting customer loyalty, gamified loyalty programs help you improve customer engagement and satisfaction.
By incorporating the right gamification strategies in your loyalty programs, you can see a boost in customer loyalty and retention rates for your brand.
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
5 Gamification Ideas for Sales & How To Implement The Rewards
The concept of including gamification in sales has become very popular among businesses these days. Gamification includes gaming techniques, such as badges, competitions, leaderboards, etc, which encourage customers to make more purchases in order to win prizes. In short, gamification can be defined as including gaming techniques in non-gaming fields, such as sales and marketing. By implementing it properly, you can boost your sales and make your business more successful in short periods of time. Other sales gamification benefits include increased brand awareness, higher customer engagement, etc. Let us help you understand what are some top gamification strategies and how you can implement them in your business.
Best Gamification Ideas to Boost Sales
Here are some top gamification sales strategy ideas to boost sales and improve customer engagement in your business:
1. ‘Spin To Win’ Contests
The ‘Spin to Win’ contests are among the most simple yet effective gamification strategies to attract more customers and boost sales. In this, customers can spin the wheel containing different reward options and win prizes. This type of contest works for online as well as offline retail businesses. Offline stores can place a physical wheel at their store and allow customers to spin it every time they purchase something from the store.
You can include discount coupon options (like 5% discount, 10% discount, 20% discount, and so on) in your physical wheel and allow customers to spin it before billing. For example, suppose a customer purchases items worth Rs. 2,000 from your store. Before billing, you ask them to spin the wheel and they win a 20% discount coupon. You apply the coupon and your customer gets a 20% discount, which means they can now get the same items at Rs. 1,600.
If you run an online business, you can also include a digital wheel on your website. Online stores can use this wheel in more creative ways. You can either keep it similar to the example mentioned above, i.e. add discount options to the wheel, or run a different contest. You can encourage your customers to log in to your website/app regularly by offering one chance to spin every day. By this, you can boost your website log-ins and also drive more sales. Customers will more likely make a purchase when they get a discount coupon, a BOGO deal, or any such prize by spinning the wheel.
2. Scavenger Hunts
Organizing scavenger hunts is also an interesting and unique way to boost customer engagement and drive sales to your business. This gamification strategy works better for online businesses but can be effective for offline ones as well if implemented correctly. In a scavenger hunt, you ask your customers to find a hidden word or object on your website (or in your offline store) and reward them if they are able to find it. This is a great way to get your customers to explore your website and look into the sections they might not notice otherwise.
To make a scavenger hunt successful, make sure that you keep great prizes that are exciting enough for your customers to participate in the contest. To make your customers aware, you can announce the contest on your social media accounts, send personal SMS/email to all your customers, and add a banner on your website as well. Make sure to define the terms and conditions while launching the contest, such as the number of winners and the process of finalizing winners, etc.
As many participants will be able to find the hidden clues, you might not be able to offer premium prizes to each customer. What you can do is include multiple hidden clues in the contest and the more clues a customer finds, the better the chances of their winning. Even after this, if multiple participants find the clues, you can select the top winners randomly or just offer some basic rewards or coupons to all of them.
3. Top Spender Leaderboards and Prizes
Everyone loves to see their name on top of a list when the list is related to some positive reinforcement. You can run a top spenders contest for a week, a month, or even a longer period. Adding a leaderboard to your website or giving social media shoutouts to the top spenders is a great idea to encourage your customers to spend more. Allow your customers to track real-time top spenders via the leaderboard or just update it on a daily basis. To make the contest more interesting, you can add filters to check top spenders of the day, week, and month, on the leaderboard. Add different rewards for daily, weekly, and monthly winners.
For example, daily spenders get basic rewards or discount coupons, weekly top spenders get a Buy 1 Get 1 deal, and monthly top spenders get the most premium prizes. Keep exciting prizes for monthly top spenders, such as complementary merchandise, up to 70% discount coupons, free movie tickets, complimentary lunch/dinner coupons, etc, for monthly top spenders. If the prizes are exciting enough, your customers will definitely try to become top spenders and as a result, they will spend more on your brand.
4. Tiered Reward Programs
Tier-based programs are one of the most popular ways of including gamification in loyalty programs to retain customers. These do not just boost loyalty but are also very effective in boosting sales for a business. In a tiered rewards program, there are multiple tiers with different types of rewards and benefits. As a customer gets into a higher tier, he/she becomes eligible for more premium rewards. With such a rewards program, customers are encouraged to make more purchases to get promoted to higher tiers and get more rewards.
Let us help you understand this with the help of a simple example. Suppose you run a tier-based rewards program with three tiers. Your customers enter the first tier on making their first purchase and they get a 5% discount on every purchase under this tier. After making 10 purchases, they enter the second tier and get a 10% discount coupon after every purchase in this tier. Finally, they enter the third purchase after making 25 purchases (or achieving a certain spend threshold) and in this tier, they get a 20% discount coupon after every purchase.
5. Referral Contests
Referral contests are one of the greatest ways to boost sales and attract new customers. You can encourage your customers to recommend your brand to their friends and offer them exciting rewards for the same. Acquiring new customers can be very expensive otherwise, but using your existing customers for this purpose makes it much more cost-effective and convenient. Many businesses run such contests under which the customers as well as their friends get rewarded after a successful referral.
You can even divide your referral contest into different stages in order to make sure that your customers’ friends don’t just sign up but also make purchases. For example, offer some basic rewards or a 5% discount coupon to your customers when they refer a friend. Once their friend signs up, your customer as well as their friend gets a 25% discount coupon. By offering this discount coupon, you can ensure that the friend makes a purchase to redeem this coupon. Once they make their first purchase, offer the final reward or discount coupon to both of them.
Include Gamification in Your Sales Promotions with RewardPort
Gamification makes your sales promotion strategies much more interesting for your customers to participate in. It builds healthy competition among your customers and they are encouraged to spend more to win more rewards. To include gamification in sales promotions, you can connect with top reward companies like RewardPort. RewardPort has a team of experienced marketing experts who keep every detail of your business into account and run sales promotions accordingly. By combining sales gamification benefits with the best strategies, you can achieve your business objectives faster.
Frequently Asked Questions: -
Yes, gamification strategies can be very effective in improving sales productivity and boosting customer engagement for a business. Instead of running traditional loyalty programs or sales promotions, you can make your marketing strategies more interesting and effective by including gamification. Gamification in loyalty programs can also be equally effective.
Some of the best examples of gamification in sales include referral contests, Spin to Win contests, Scavenger hunts, Leaderboards or top Spender contests, tier-based reward programs, etc.
Some key elements of a successful gamification sales strategy include: reward points, leaderboards, badges, timers, etc. A gamification strategy for sales should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound).
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
Gamifying your workforce: How to make employee engagement fun?
Gamification is a popular method for making the user experience more engaging and enjoyable. Over the past decades, gamification has entered almost every people’s engagement process including the workplace. Managers are realizing that internal gamification can promote employee loyalty, productivity, and engagement.
Businesses have discovered that by incorporating game elements into the standard employee-manager dynamics, employees are more likely to stick around, especially in a remote setting. Here’s how to use gamification to benefit your employees.
What Is Gamification?
Gamification is the process of incorporating game elements into non-game activities such as working or studying. Gamification in the workplace can boost employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. This is particularly crucial for businesses with a remote workforce who want to provide a positive employee experience.
Benefits of Gamification
Gamification has enormous potential benefits for any workplace, particularly when used in workforce training. Gamifying employee onboarding and introductory training can reduce employee turnover and create a more engaged workforce.
Gamification could be especially beneficial for the remote workforce. Gamification can instantly connect the dispersed workforce around a single point of reference everyone can relate to.
- Makes the learning process enjoyable and engaging
Gamification techniques such as interactive visuals and infographics can help people retain up to three times more information than they would otherwise. Gamification increases a person’s willingness to study and learn more enjoyably and interactively.
Getting personally interested in the content is a significant barrier to learning. Pacing is provided by gamification, allowing students to process information comfortably. - Reduces employee stress
Gamification, according to employees, makes them happier and more productive at work. Stress contributes to negative work environments, an unhappy workforce, and increased job dissatisfaction.
Employee performance improves when employees are less stressed and more relaxed. Gamification in the workplace can significantly improve employee outcomes.
- Attracts a younger workforce
When it comes to onboarding a digitally native workforce, gamification is especially effective. Younger generations have distinct motivational and behavioural patterns, necessitating a set of techniques that better align their learning and skill development styles with business goals.
Gamified onboarding is a natural, enjoyable, and effective solution for a changing workforce.
Where to Use Gamification?
It is always more fruitful to focus on the areas where gamification has a greater effect on the desired outcome. Gamification systems can help an organization in a variety of ways:
- Development and Learning
Games can help both new and experienced employees learn new skills. Gamification of learning platforms has the potential to improve retention and results.
- Customer Service
Gamification achievements and rewards can motivate employees to provide better service to customers. They also encourage employees to share new solutions and ideas with their colleagues.
- Improving Sales
Gamification can boost salespeople’s collaboration. It rewards not only the final sale but also all the steps that lead up to it.
- Teamwork
Games can help teams share information and learn from one another even if they are in different offices around the world.
- Marketing
Employers can encourage employees to share company information on social media.
- Inventory Management
Gamification encourages efficient processing and shipping.
- Human Capital
HR professionals can use gamification to track performance reviews, develop leadership skills, provide peer appreciation, engage applicants, and increase referrals.
- Product Development
Games can help employees finish projects on time, collaborate more effectively, and be more efficient.
- Creativity
Employers can reward employees who come up with novel ideas.
- Corporate Culture
Gamification can help promote the company’s culture through various projects and programs. It can assist employees in identifying opportunities to participate in shaping the company culture. Furthermore, it can improve access to information about the company and its values.
Why Does Gamification Fail & How to Avoid Failure?
Gamification in the workplace frequently fails due to internal communications’ inability to connect gamification in the workplace to their company’s business objectives. Furthermore, many managers fail to listen to their employees’ unique needs and motivations.
This often results in gamification projects that are not valued by the employees.
Internal communications professionals and business leaders should keep the following tips in mind to ensure their gamification efforts truly create engaged employees:
- Define the goals and objectives you hope to achieve by implementing gamification in the workplace. Do you want to increase employee engagement? Attained specific business objectives?
- Learn to listen to and comprehend your employees’ specific needs. What motivates them? What drives them?
- Create a gamification program that is tailored to your employees’ specific skills and motivations.
- When implementing gamification in the workplace, make sure to communicate the activity’s purpose to your employees.
- Experiment with the gamification process. Analyze what works and what doesn’t and adjust your gamification strategy as needed.
Ensure that all internal communications about the gamification process truly measure and gauge employees’ reactions.
Are they reading the emails you sent about implementing gamification in the workplace?
Are they reacting?
You can determine whether your employees are on board with the idea in the first place by measuring employee communications with email tracking tools.
Things to Keep in Mind
Gamification is effective when used correctly, but it can backfire if used incorrectly. It is critical to foster a healthy sense of competition, but not so much that your employees become demotivated. Sims reminds employers that people learn at different rates and that competition can be discouraging for those who don’t progress as quickly.
Another issue to be aware of is employees becoming complacent with your gamification program and settling into a consistent, comfortable routine.
It is critical to introduce new internal contests and real-world rewards regularly to reignite excitement and boost employee motivation; otherwise, you risk a fall in employee engagement and overall performance.
You should also exercise caution when using external incentives such as gift cards and products. While these things are nice to include as a perk or contest prize on occasion, using them as your sole incentive sends the wrong message about why people should be motivated to do a good job.
Employees aren’t training for a gift certificate; they’re training to add professional skills for long-term advancement. True business gamification emphasizes intrinsic rewards and benefits. It assists employees on their long-term path to greater success.
Draft Expert Gamification Programs
Gamification is a popular approach for a manager with a remote workforce that can make employee engagement fun. Including game elements in routine workplace activities can boost productivity, especially when combined with immediate feedback and the use of public recognition and rewards to further motivate a changing workforce with help of RewardPort programs which will provide you features such as scratch cards, spin the wheels, and slot machine pop-ups.
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
How Does Gamification Increase User Engagement
Incentives and reward schemes may be approached in a novel way with gamification. Gamification can enhance consumer engagement and improves relationships.
Gamification strategies are being accommodated by businesses all around the world in their online training program for staff members. Gamification has proven to be a successful strategy for engaging users and getting them excited about your brand, goods, and services. This helps to build stronger relationships with customers and entices them to use your products and services repeatedly.
How Does Gamification Work?
Gamification is often known as the integration of game aspects into company plans. Marketing initiatives like consumer incentives often produce superb results for the user and the brand with gamification strategies.
The concept is that clients and staff would participate in a game-like activity, where they accumulate points through purchases or other desired actions. If they achieve a specific level or objective, they receive incentives like discounts or free items.
Brands now have even more opportunities to include gamification into their outreach initiatives as a result of rising digital engagement. Customers can become involved via the business’ website or through an app, for instance. The use of gamification by companies to engage consumers on social media is another common trend nowadays.
How Does Gamification Increase Engagement?
Customers are growing more skeptical of internet advertising as a result of either being hesitant to divulge too much personal information or having doubts about the promises being made by a business. Customers will like the enjoyable alternative that gamification offers, where they will experience a revitalizing feeling of creativity.
Gamification is a tool that brands may employ in many innovative ways to engage users or customers in interesting activities. Gamification simplifies the connection between action and reward for the users. Customers are more likely to purchase a product or engage in an activity for a clear reward.
When an incentive or reward is included as an outcome, the final product becomes more enticing. Gamification can be incredibly successful at keeping customers engaged because it appeals to their need for accomplishment and competitiveness.
Customers that take part in gamification feel more powerful and in control than they would if they were being fed into a brand’s marketing plan. They also understand how important it is to the brand that they are satisfied since the business went the extra mile to provide a superior experience.
Advantages of Gamification
Gamification allows users to advance through several “levels” of the activities depending on their effort and actions. Incentivized activities can include purchase, review, personal feedback, social sharing, etc. Users can experience a sense of satisfaction after completing these tasks and gaining the prize points.
Adding gamification to client engagement initiatives has several key advantages, including:
- Increasing user interest and involvement
- Boost awareness of your brand
- provide the business with useful client data
- Boost client retention
- Maintain relationships with consumers
- Use incentives to reinforce a behavior
Simply said, gamification raises user engagement by providing clients with distinctive and enjoyable methods to engage with their preferred companies.
Gamification In Action
What evidence is there that gamification is effective? Major corporations like Starbucks and Dominos are just two examples of the many businesses that are using similar strategies, and the outcomes have been good.
By using the Starbucks mobile app, Starbucks incorporates gamification into its rewards program. Two Stars are awarded for every $1 paid when a consumer uses the app or a registered Starbucks Card to pay for their order. Customers receive free things when they hit milestones like 25 or 50 Stars. This arrangement is an excellent illustration of how a business can utilize gamification to keep people interested in its applications and goods.
Another excellent example is Domino’s Pizza. A “Slot Machine” option was added to their mobile app a few years ago, allowing customers to shake their phone to have their pizza toppings automatically selected if they were unsure of what they wanted. Customers are more likely to want to share a novelty-driven gamification feature like this with their friends and family.
The way people engage with companies is continuously changing thanks to gamification. Improved mobile app design and AI-driven marketing methods are just two examples of the new technologies being offered that further strengthen these approaches.
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
Gamification of your loyalty program – Is it possible?
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘Gamification’? Though it is seen as a game-changing tool for brand promotions, there is more to it. Yes. Gamification, as we know is an emerging trend and some of the brands have already been using consumer loyalty programs as a part of their marketing strategies. In the context of brand promotion, gamification has become an integral part of the marketing structure with an increasing number of reward programs.
Gamification is not complex as it may sound. It only intensifies the value to an existing marketing program by using data-oriented engagement techniques to capture a customer’s attention.
Before we look at the possibilities of gamification in loyalty programs, let us go through the types of Gamification.
1. Progress tracking
This is undertaken to make people stay loyal to the brand by helping them keep a track of their performance in loyalty programs.
For example, an online program which has users to sign up for a course includes a system to track their progress until their final objective is completed. This encourages their potential leads and customers to use more content.
2. Reward level
This is an advanced version of a basic reward program. For instance, users can earn stars to win rewards at different levels of the program. Once a customer gets a specific number of stars, they become part of a special membership program where they are entitled to receive benefits throughout the year.
Now, this brings us to the possibilities of using gamification in loyalty programs and its subsequent benefits.
This is an advanced version of a basic reward program. For instance, users can earn stars to win rewards at different levels of the program. Once a customer gets a specific number of stars, they become part of a special membership program where they are entitled to receive benefits throughout the year.
Now, this brings us to the possibilities of using gamification in loyalty programs and its subsequent benefits.
- Firstly, it increases sign-ups for a program
- It increases product sales and revenue with continuous participation
- It encourages a customer’s willingness to be a part of loyalty rewards
- It brings more brand advocates who eventually become influential marketers
There is more possibility of bringing gamification to the loyalty programs as general human behaviour is tied to motivational factors. In other words, the user gains extensively through repeated efforts. If you want to retain your customers, gamification can help al it adds excitement to improve your brand’s marketing strategy.
Gamification in loyalty programs acts as catalysts to make users spend more time and effort to reach higher levels. This is probably one of the reasons why repeated discounted sales are often considered as the primary objective of a loyalty program. It makes it easier for users to express their appreciation, aiding the brand’s marketing goal. The extended reach will amplify your brand’s social worthiness along with the online ad spends.
Hence, yes gamification is possible. In fact, it brings a brand closer to its sales goals.
Whether a brand’s consumer wins a prize or gains maximum out of it, the game design inputs put in a marketing strategy brings positive feedback looping new customers. When a brand offers more than just amazing products and services with a sense of gamification in their loyalty programs, customers are sure to love the experience and be willing to come back.
Got a Marketing Challenge at Hand?
Benefits of Sales Gamification to Boost Sales
Gamification, the use of game mechanics in a non-game context to drive engagement, is becoming a standard practice in marketing and loyalty programs. The basic premise of gamification is that it uses game mechanics to leverage a participant’s sense of challenge, competition and reward to educate change attitude or behavior to inspire action.
Effective customer loyalty programs are now powered by gamification, which moves engagement beyond the transactional to create deeper, data-driven and more valuable customer relationships. To a large extent, gamification leverages the same tactics of video games and their ability to get players addicted to virtual rewards. Successful gamification finds ways to turn tasks into a competition amongst players or customers by building mechanisms for achievements and public competition.
Few pointers that businesses need keep in mind when implementing gamification:
- Set a clear goal and that goal must be aligned to the marketing or loyalty. There must be a finish line in sight, so customers know exactly what they need to do to achieve that goal.
- Decide what customers should do to progress in the game. Tasks to be aligned with the behavior you want to reward. This could include simple things like sharing the content on social media.
- Recognition is a big motivator in successful games, so it’s important to show customers how they are progressing towards earning a reward. That means structuring the levels such that they seem achievable. Leader boards can play a great part in the recognition part.
- Reward participation. Reward new members bonus points for just signing up.
- Games need to be fun and a delight to play. A very effective gamification technique is by giving a random reward or freebies at unexpected times. This will give the customer enjoyment beyond the free item.
Peppers & Rogers Group has created a proprietary methodology called the “E7 framework” as a holistic approach to both drive usage and derives benefits from gamification.
Simply stated Increase ENGAGEMENT by EDUCATING, ENERGIZING and EMPOWERING the customer while ensuring EARNING for the client, ENJOYMENT for the user and EVOLUTION of the customer relationship.”
Simply stated, “Increase ENGAGEMENT by EDUCATING, ENERGIZING and EMPOWERING the customer while ensuring EARNING for the client, ENJOYMENT for the user and EVOLUTION of the customer relationship.”
The framework balances increasing customer involvement with creating business value at each point.
Loyalty drivers:
Educate: Inform customers of products, processes, and events.
Energize: Stimulate interactions and guide customer use of more services and products.
Empower: Transform customers into proud brand ambassadors.
Earn: Create value through increased awareness and customization.
Enjoy: Users have fun and stay engaged with the program.
Evolve: Understand customers much more than through traditional CRM systems.
Gamification has its biggest impact in ensuring customers keep coming back. In addition to points for purchase, providing users with a sense of achievement and competition to keep them engaged provides real retention benefits. While gamification is a very effective tool, practitioners need to take care to use it in the correct context, and not overuse it. Gamification can be integrated to transactional behavior where it is possible to measure the direct impact of gamification on turnover. It is for this reason that gamification is playing an increasingly bigger in loyalty strategy.