How gamifying loyalty can encourage engagement and sales

Imagine you’re down on the sprinting blocks waiting for the gun, the silence before you strike the golf ball or the inhale before you serve the tennis ball. The tunnel vision-like focus for that singular goal. Three different scenarios, all with the same intense concentration. It is easy to get caught up in such a manner when playing games or sports.

So, how can we harness this feeling and use it to focus your customers to buy your brand?

Gamification is a loyalty technique used worldwide to increase both customer retention and overall customer spend. It is the introduction of game-like mechanics into a loyalty programme to provide a sense of excitement and achievement for completing a task or goal. For instance, imagine that you have an unengaged customer. You introduce a game to this customer with the rules as follows:

• You give 5 virtual bulls-eye targets to your customer and assign each of them to represent a different product you want them to purchase.
• When the customer buys one of these products from you the respective target is smashed.
• When the customer has smashed all 5 targets they win a prize. In this scenario, each time the customer buys one of the products, they get the satisfaction of smashing china, similar to a fair ground game and also win a prize for smashing all the targets.

This is a simplistic example of gamification in loyalty but effective. Other examples include games of chance, simple scratchcard style promotions or a spin to win game, right up to more complex campaigns like McDonald’s where they incorporated Monopoly as a way of earning rewards every time a customer purchased. You could get customers to spin a wheel every time they hit a set goal (e.g. spend a specific amount, buy a specific product or log in) to have the chance to win a bigger prize or extra points or a surprise..

All of these examples have the same goal, to keep the customer’s interest, motivate them by offering the potential to win big and to keep the process fun so they talk about it with others. Simple game mechanics that are easy to understand and complete encourage engagement and provide a good platform for referrals. Running a short term loyalty programme like the campaigns mentioned could not only introduce a ‘quick win’ for sales but is also a good introduction to the larger loyalty world.

 Like most sports, gamified loyalty is meant to be fun and engaging. If you are new to the world of loyalty or to gamification, it can be a good idea to introduce a seasonal campaign as it is easy to understand, market and get your internal teams engaged with as well as customers. The Christmas season is fast approaching and with it comes a flood of companies trying to maximise sales and market share. With social channels becoming saturated with promotions, customers being bombarded with online marketing and almost every product in sight being sold at a discount, how can you make your products stand out?

The answer is simple: make your products fun to buy.