Top 3 Reasons Why Gamification Works

Gamification has been used across a wide variety of business processes, from sales to training and recruitment strategies, and now, marketing has come out to play (pun intended). 

Brands are looking to engage their customers and stand out from the competition, simply put, gamification marketing is one of the most effective ways for brands to do so!

Marketing agencies used to be intimidated by the large budgets and time needed to develop custom video games for their clients, but now, with apps like Gizmo by Gamify, anyone can create their own branded mini-game with absolutely no coding involved. The team at Gamify has personally seen thousands of companies, from small local businesses to some of the world’s largest brands, like KFC and Wendys, utilize gamification to launch a new product, or simply reward their customers for their customer loyalty.                

Now let’s go over exactly how it works, the benefits of gamification, and quick rundowns over some of our favorite examples to date.

Before we begin let’s clarify: Gamification is simply adding game mechanics to non-game elements, to specific tasks, processes, and systems, and simply makes everything more fun and enjoyable.

Gamification has grown to be a normal part of our day-to-day lives, whether we realize it or not. Simple integrations such as badges, progress bars, and earning points are quite popular, rewards on fitness apps for completing a workout, or even customer loyalty giveaways for free coffee given by Starbucks on their loyalty app, gamification is here to stay.

How does this apply to your marketing strategy?

There are a few proven and effective ways that you can add gamification to your marketing or business strategy. A few elements you can add, include:

• Leaderboards

• Badges

• Random Rewards

• Quests

• Points

These just a few examples of gamification elements that you can provide to your users to help elevate a marketing campaign. 

What type of marketing campaign is appropriate for gamification?

At Gamify, we’re always gonna say that any marketing campaign is an opportunity to utilize gamification, but some of the most popular reasons include:

• New product launch

• Giveaway

• General brand awareness

• Special announcement for and by the company 

• Educate users on company products or values

Branded mini-games, or adding in gamified elements will help elevate the campaign and raise awareness and engagement overall.

Here are a few ways “how” Gamification helps your company

1) Raises engagement
2) Builds brand loyalty
3) Collect valuable data

1) Raises Engagement

At Gamify, we are all about raising engagement. Engagement builds awareness, and positive awareness builds loyal customers and raises employee engagement, which in return brings in more profit for you and your company. Paid ads are simply measured by click-through rates and conversions, but engagement using gamification leaves a user with a dopamine hit following their experience with your brand, and you are sure to be top of mind when they are ready to buy your product.

An example of this is Gamify’s campaign with Resmed. Resmed was looking to raise awareness and engagement around sleep apnea, a common sleeping disorder. Not many people are aware they might have this disorder, and Resmed approached Gamify to build a campaign around first engaging the users, and then asking them to take a sleep apnea quiz at the end of the campaign.

Inside the campaign, users were asked common questions about sleep. Resmed also partnered with Koala Mattresses to giveaway weekly prizes. 

The campaign was 6 weeks long, and Resmed ran awareness campaigns via email marketing and social media. The CTA click-through rate at the end was at a staggering 50%! A success to say the least.

2) Builds Brand Loyalty

Gamification is an excellent way to build brand loyalty. As previously mentioned, when a user plays a game and wins a badge, prize, or a certain number of points, dopamine, a “feel good” brain chemical is released which gives them a sense of accomplishment that really can’t be recreated with anything else. So when it comes time for your customers to buy your product, you are head and shoulders above the competition.

An example of this is IMB Bank, which launched a mini-game at a sponsored outdoor movie cinema night within cities across Australia. The audience was given a QR code before the movie began, and got to play a fun endless runner game. A couple of minutes before the movie started, the game would finish, and the top 5 players were announced and won free snacks for the movie.

Through this, IMB was collecting data (more on that on our next point) but as a result, email marketing campaigns were activated and many of the players that evening signed on and opened up bank accounts for IMB, resulting in amazing brand loyalty and return rates. 

3) Collects Valuable Data

Last but not least, gamification allows you to collect data. Data is arguably the most important part of any gamified marketing campaign, measuring users’ engagement rates such as drop-offs, unique players, return rates, as well as collecting email addresses and names for later email marketing campaigns. As a marketer, you will need to provide your team with data to prove that the campaign was a success, and our platform Gizmo provides a full dashboard of data-rich analytics for you to report to your team.

An example of this in use is Entenmans, a fun snack company that was looking to give away a vacation for a family of four through their marketing campaign. They created a fun basketball game that users could play, and they had to submit their email addresses in order to enter the chance-based competition. Engagement rates soared, and the campaign received thousands of entries, and a lucky family won a free vacation! This campaign was incredibly fun, memorable, and successful.

Conclusion

When you implement gamification correctly, it provides a unique and memorable user experience which results in building incredible brand loyalty. Platforms like Gizmo also allow you to capture and report on valuable data to show the analytics and completion rates of the campaign. 

We have also partnered with Mailchimp, and you can set up an integration to automate email marketing campaigns off of Mailchimp’s platform as soon as a user enters their email address inside of your game campaign. You can start for free here today.