5 eCommerce Gamification Marketing Solutions to Power Up Your Sales

Considering that the gamification market value will triple and be more than 30 billion dollars in 2025 (!!!), the time for action is now! 

In this article, we will discuss the importance of eCommerce gamification marketing and give you concrete tips on selecting the right solution to help your online store grow more revenue by implementing mini-games into your campaign.

What is eCommerce gamification?

Gamification is a term that describes integrating games or game-like activities into your marketing and sales cycles. The idea is to grab the attention of leads and potential buyers by offering them something fun to interact with, gradually pushing them down your marketing funnel and eventually making a conversion.

As such, gamification is a perfect companion of eCommerce – because you interact with potential customers digitally, sending them simple and fun games is super-easy. You can put them on your eCommerce website, send them via email or promote them through your social media campaigns.

Plus, the prizes players can win are another way to convert them into customers or upsell and cross-sell products. You can offer discount codes, vouchers and bundles as prizes, which are all evergreen tactics for making more sales.

See also: Gamification in retail

What to look for in an eCommerce gamification marketing solution

Here are some tips on what to look for when choosing your go-to gamification app:

• Ease of use: Let’s face it: you are not a video game developer  – you run an online store. As such, no matter how advanced the tool is, it’s no good if it is not simple to use and intuitive. Therefore, pick a tool with an intuitive interface and plenty of templates to get you started quickly.
• A large number of games to choose: While you might have a particular game in mind for an eCommerce store campaign you plan to launch, don’t pigeonhole yourself by focusing only on that. Gamification is universal and flexible and can become integral to your marketing and sales activities. Because of this, you want a tool with as many games as possible to keep things fresh in years to come.
• Using your brand elements: While it’s important to have many fun games, the goal here is to promote your brand and increase the effectiveness of your sales and marketing activities. That way, even if you don’t make a sale now, a branded campaign will raise brand awareness, improving conversions in the long run.
• Different ways to promote your products: The gamification app you choose should allow you to offer prizes to winners, including vouchers, discount codes and similar promotions. These prizes will trigger sales even in the short run, making gamifying your marketing activities extremely valuable.
• Analytics: Lastly, the eCommerce gamification marketing solution you pick should not only let you create and execute fun-to-play games but also give you a good amount of analytics. With those, you will be able to examine the effectiveness of your campaign and have practical information on how to make your future gamification efforts even more successful.

Choosing the best eCommerce gamification marketing solution: Top picks

Now that you have a better idea of what to look for, let’s present you with five of the best eCommerce gamification marketing solutions you can try today.

Adact

First and foremost, we have Adact. Here’s why:

Ease of use

Not only is it fun to play Adact games, but building them is super easy too. We have templates for each game, so you won’t have to design anything from scratch. The menus are very intuitive, and you can edit everything to your liking without consulting help files.

That doesn’t mean advanced configuration isn’t there – on the contrary. Adact allows you to design your campaigns from top to bottom, making them just how you want them.

Games selection

With as many as 35 games to choose from, Adact has all your gamification marketing campaigns covered for the foreseeable future.

All the favorites are on the list, from Wordle, trivia and puzzles to personality tests and surveys you can use outside of your promotional activities to collect customer feedback.

Brand elements and customization

With Adact, every game you create will contain brand elements, as you can easily incorporate your logo, change backgrounds and use color patterns from your brand book. All of that will increase brand visibility and recognition.

Promotional options

Besides incorporating brand elements, Adact offers several ways to include promotions as game prizes. You can use vouchers, discounts and gift cards. Plus, you can set the probabilities and win chances for each game, making them as easy or challenging as you want.

Additionally, you can distribute your game in several ways:

• Integrate it on your own website
• Use Adact to host it
• Send it via newsletter
• Put it on banners
• Use apps

Because it is so easy to create and tweak game mechanics, Adact is a perfect companion for your sales and marketing efforts and rewards customers every step of the way.

Analytics

As for the analytics, Adact will give you insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns so that you can improve on the go. You will see if your game is getting traction by analyzing the number of players, those who complete it and, ultimately, winners.

Pricing

You can start Adact on a free trial and see how the app works for the first 14 days. Afterward, you can switch to a paid plan starting at €6,800 per year or get a custom pricing plan, including campaign-based pricing.

dot.vu

Image source: GetApp

dot.vu is an interactive content designer and sales gamification platform that lets you create modern pieces for your marketing and sales campaigns without coding. It has a sleek interface, is very intuitive and can serve as the central building point for many marketing and sales activities. 

Ease of use

dot.vu has a very modern design and is straightforward to use. There are plenty of templates categorized into different groups and everything is easy to find.

Games selection

The marketing games library is very rich and you will find 50+ templates. These templates will get you going and make running out of ideas hard. The only trouble with so many elements to change is that it can feel overwhelming, as it will be hard to implement your branding elements without disrupting the feel of their templates.

Brand elements and customization

While dot.vu games look great even without changes, the app offers many customization options. You can choose your brand elements, change backgrounds and alter the entire look and feel of the game. 

Promotional options

This platform has several promotional options, letting you use interactive content in several parts of your sales funnel. You can use it for scratch cards, discount coupons, hourly surprises and more.

Analytics

Analytics in dot.vu will give you more info about your campaign, giving you a better understanding of each click. You’ll see conversion rates, drops and insights about each interaction.

Pricing

While there is a free version to try, beyond that, pricing increases with unique monthly visitors. The cheapest plan is $200/mo and goes up to $1,600/mo, with enterprise plans only available upon request.

Qualifio

Image source: GetApp

Qualifio is a data collection, customer engagement and customer loyalty suite designed to help even the biggest companies attract attention and convert leads. As such, it is very capable but could do a better job when it comes to customization possibilities.

Ease of use

Qualifio lets you set up your campaigns quickly and easily, making it a good option even for people without technical knowledge who want to run their marketing at scale. The interface is clean, and there are many predefined resources you can quickly configure.

Game types

There are 30+ games in Qualifio’s library, which is excellent, and will give you plenty to work with in your future campaigns.

Brand elements and customization

While Qualifio does let you customize games and incorporate your brand elements, the number of changes you can make is somewhat limited by the predefined layouts. You will have issues customizing some of the games, which is integral if you want to avoid cookie-cutter solutions and repetitive campaigns and create an actual branded game.

Promotional options

Qualifio has a whole feature set for developing your customer loyalty programs. Through it, you will be able to retain customers for longer and earn more per customer.

Besides that, you can configure it to include ads, use website pop-ups and share your campaigns on social media, apps and emails.

Analytics

When it comes to analytics, Qualifio does a decent job. You can connect it to Google Analytics to get advanced traffic information. Also, there’s a convenient loyalty program dashboard where you will see in-depth stats about your customer loyalty campaign, allowing you to tweak it live.

Pricing

Qualifio pricing is available only upon request. There are several plans separated into three categories, depending on whether you are only interested in their Engage, Loyalty or both programs. 

Mambo.IO

Image source: Capterra

Mambo.IO is an enterprise gamification software solution intended even for the biggest businesses. It is a super complex platform, yet incredibly powerful, and will let you set up gamification campaigns of all kinds if you have the capacity, technical knowledge and budget to do so.

Ease of use

Mambo.IO is very flexible and powerful, but setting it up is more complex than other apps on this list. This is especially true if you go all-in and run Mambo.IO on-premise (meaning on your own computers/servers, which is something bigger companies appreciate to have full ownership of the data collected). There’s also a cloud variant, which is better suited for smaller businesses.

However, you can hardly run Mambo.IO campaigns without technical knowledge, which might be a deal-breaker for people who only need a simple solution to design fun games for their audience.

Game types

Mambo.IO has a broad spectrum of applications, allowing you to integrate games into all aspects of your business. You can use Mambo.IO for staff training, onboarding, call center engagement and nurturing employees’ healthy competitive spirit by creating leaderboards.

You can also use it to create games intended for customers, which you can use in your loyalty campaigns.

Brand elements and customization

Because Mambo.IO can run on-premise, with enough technical knowledge, you will be able to fully configure how each of the games looks and feels. But, it is predominantly intended for gamification inside your team, primarily focusing on improving performance, making brand elements less important.

Promotional options

Mambo.IO has many ways to keep your team competitive, such as you can create leaderboards, implement award systems and similar. There are also incentives for your customers, as you can create a coupon system, in-app rewards and even give VIP statuses to the most loyal customers.

Analytics

Because Mambo.IO is an enterprise-level solution, you will be right to expect detailed analytics. You will be able to see the effectiveness of your gamification activities on all levels, with good segmentation and tags that will give you a detailed look. For intra-team analytics, agents will also have a clear view of their progress bar, which will keep them going.

Pricing

Mambo only offers custom quotes based on your needs. 

Gametize

Image source: SaasWorthy

Gametize is another enterprise solution that will let you incorporate games into several business aspects – employee engagement, learning and development, talent acquisition and customer engagement. 

Ease of use

Gametize does offer plenty of templates to get you started, which is nice. However, the interface is clunky, and you will need to put in some work if you want to make your campaign look and feel how you want it.

Game types

Because it supports so many different use cases, there are plenty of game types to choose from in Gametize. You will find everything from games used to engage your store’s visitors to intra-team competitions for customer support staff.

Brand elements and customization

As noted, Gametize does allow customization, as you can start with templates and include your brand elements along the way. The issue is with the interface – finding options you want to work with can be tricky.

Promotional options

You can use Gametize to promote your products and services and engage with customers, but also as a go-to gamification platform for employee training, onboarding and even talent acquisition. But, strictly speaking, Gametize falls behind some other apps on the list for marketing and sales purposes. 

Analytics

Gametize does a decent job with analytics, as it collects user data so you’ll be able to see participation and completion rates of your games, as well as discussions and comments, all of which will give you more insights into campaign performance.

Pricing

Gametize starts at $100/mo and goes up to $1000/mo, depending on your chosen plan. However, the enterprise plan pricing is available only upon request.

Best eCommerce gamification marketing solution: Comparison table

What can an eCommerce gamification marketing solution do for your business?

While giving something fun to play with to your customer base is always welcome, incorporating games in marketing has some clear benefits for eCommerce:

• Increase customer engagement: Offering free-to-play games to your audience with a chance for them to win prizes automatically means more engagement, which is always a big plus.
• Boost brand awareness: If you design your online game right, players will get exposed to your brand elements which will stick. Even if they don’t buy now, it will be much more likely to happen the next time they come across your brand.
• Attract new leads: While it’s true that offering prizes and playing games will attract people who couldn’t care less about your brand, it will also attract potential customers that will convert.
• Boost eCommerce sales: The prizes you offer, such as time-limited discounts, vouchers and gift cards, will likely transform into made sales shortly after you finish your campaign.
• Build loyalty programs: Lastly, gamification is a perfect way to reward loyal customers, as it allows them to compete, collect loyalty points and interact with your brand over a prolonged period, which is especially useful for special events and holiday campaigns.

eCommerce gamification with Adact: Case studies

Here are some examples of how businesses in different industries used Adact as the foundation of their gamification efforts:

• Tele 2 Estonia: this Estonian telecommunication company partnered with us to deliver customers a digital Wheel of Fortune. And fortunately for them, the campaign was a massive success! They collected as many as 10,069 leads from this single campaign, making it an instant hit.
• Ballzy: as a sneaker retailer, Ballzy needed something that would relate to their target audience, raise brand awareness and get more subscribers to their list. And they did it! The game they created was so interesting and the award appealing that people have played it more than nine times, on average, with play time per customer averaging nine minutes. Huge congrats on such a Ballzy move!
• Adažu: this chips manufacturer decided to pick Adact to promote their limited edition product and increase engagement by insisting on the historic background of that limited line. To do that, they chose our “Swipe” game where customers like/dislike an image shown on the screen with a swiping motion. Results? Their Chip Tinder attracted more than 3,863 people on the first day. A massive brand awareness success, to say the least, with so many people chipping in to play.

For more inspiration, check out our 12 top gamification examples.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many reasons to incorporate gamification into your eCommerce sales and marketing tactics and plenty of apps to try.

Adact holds its place among gamification tools as a fun and simple-to-use yet powerful solution. With many templates, easy customization and 30+ games, Adact will let you create astounding gamification campaigns, engage customers and keep them coming back, so try it out today.

eCommerce gamification: FAQs