Gamification is the act of turning something into a game. A game has points, interactions, rewards, and way to “win” the experience. Almost anything can be gamified to make it more fun and interactive for those involved. You can gamify your loyalty program, gamify a survey, or even gamify a loading screen. Google gamified its own “internet outage” screen on Chrome – just hit the space-bar when you see the dinosaur.
Gamification makes something normal or even boring into something fun and memorable. Customers often remember when a typically tedious task is made into a game. They are motivated by earning points and they enjoy turning everyday tasks into an opportunity for scores and wins. Many people like playing together in a social way but even a tiny interactive widget can make an experience more fun.
Gamification for Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are the most popular way to gamify. If your company currently has a loyalty program or is preparing to release one, consider the opportunities for gamification. Your loyalty program already has all the essential elements: points, rewards, and ongoing engagement. Now all you need are the elements that make it fun.
Give your customers small interactions to earn points. Add mini-games that allow them to click for rewards – or deals that allow them to strategise getting more points based on how they shop. Add visual elements that provide an emotional reward for “winning behaviours” and progress bars to encourage customers to reach their reward levels.
This will not only make your loyalty program more enjoyable to interact with, it will increase customer engagement and even the rate of purchase as customers reach for their goals and rewards.
Gamifying Customer Interactions
What other ways can you gamify the customer experience to increase enjoyment, memorability, and revenue? Consider making other customer interactions into game experiences. For example, offer customer surveys in the form of a game. Ask one question a day and give points for answering. Or provide fun graphics for every question answered in a survey sequence. Entertainment is its own inherent value, which means making a survey, form, or assessment quiz fun actually adds value for the customer.
Duo Lingo is a great example of gamifying everything customers do on the site. Every interaction earns points, which unlocks more lessons to play with. In fact, gamification turns Duo Lingo into a playground of language learning instead of a chore.
Gamification of Digital Marketing
You can even gamify your digital marketing. Banner ads don’t have to be irritating or inert. They can be alluring and fun instead. Clickable banner ads with small gamified content are more likely to earn attention than both types of typical banner add – invisible or flashy. Instead offer an add that responds to mouse movements and provides some small enjoyable interaction before passing customers through to your landing page.
Some ideas include a wrench-and-pipe game for plumbers, or a small memory card game for cloud services.
Include more of the game to play on the landing page and you’ve practically created a trail of breadcrumbs for both bored and interested leads.
Little Games Where it Counts
Finally, don’t forget to gamify where it really matters. Remember the Google dinosaur? If you have a page or tool that takes a while to load, a mini-game is even better than an animation for promoting patience. Any “dead time” in your customer experience or any point that could be slow on a poor internet connection should have a locally loaded minigame interaction ready to go. Just popping bubbles is enough to keep many customers entertained for those critical few additional seconds.
You can also use miniature games to help customers through typically tedious parts of your funnel, or to break up a long onboarding experience. Just a little gamification – like levels and points – can help customers not to “bounce” during online intake and to remember your service as more considerate and entertaining than your competition.
Is your brand ready for gamification? Is gamification a good way to engage your customers and promote your brand experience? One of our digital marketing workshops will help you figure out the answer and more. Here at Oracle, we are experts in all things digital marketing and are ready to get your game on. Contact us today to discuss the best ways we can help your brand and audience.
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