Let us tell you a secret about your customers—they love playing games.
If you think that’s not a big deal, check this out: Gamification in loyalty programs has increased customer retention by 30%. A typical person enjoys the thrill of the competition and the small rewards that follow, which is what makes gamification so powerful.
It’s the main reason why so many companies invest in loyalty program gamification. And who can blame them? With a platform like Adact, almost anyone can launch a gamified loyalty program in minutes. In this post, we will explain the basics of this concept and show you ten ideas for gamification in loyalty programs.
Let’s take a look!
How can you use gamification?
Gamification means taking something that typically isn’t fun—such as building a loyalty program—and turning it into a more enjoyable game-like process. It usually includes these elements:
- Point systems
- Awards and badges
- Competition features
- Some skills
- A little bit of luck
Gamification is great for building loyalty, onboarding employees, engaging conference attendees, and improving education.
But how do you use gamification in loyalty programs?
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The first step is determining your business goals because loyalty program gamification is never random. On the contrary, you need to know exactly what you want to achieve with it. Is it to build relationships or to drive more website traffic? Perhaps it’s to boost brand advocacy?
As soon as you figure it out, you can pick the right approach for gamified loyalty programs. After that, you must choose the most suitable game for a given goal. For example, surveys and quizzes will help you learn much about your customers, while prize wheels are good at re-engaging passive consumers.
The third tip is to find the right channel for loyalty program gamification. Will you do it through the mobile app, social media account, or your website? It’s a critical decision because customer engagement is about delivering the right content to the right audience using the right channel.
Benefits of gamification in loyalty programs
According to the report, 26% of consumers stopped using or buying from a business in the past year. That means you can expect to lose one in four clients yearly—but only if you don’t do anything about it.
With gamification, you can significantly reduce customer churn and gain many more benefits. Here’s what loyalty program gamification can do for you:
Improve user experience
You can make customer interactions more engaging and fun with loyalty program gamification. Points, leaderboards, and levels are digital engagement tricks that make consumers remember your brand as inspiring and entertaining.
Earn word of mouth
Loyalty program members often share their experiences with friends and family, which can lead to more word-of-mouth referrals. With gamification, customers are incentivized to share their experiences and achievements with others, leading to increased brand loyalty and awareness.
Maximize customer loyalty
Gamification is the unicorn of modern marketing because it maximizes customer loyalty. An effective rewards program encourages customers to make repeat purchases. They will stay loyal because you keep offering exclusive or enticing benefits for participating in the program.
Help the brand stand out
A crowded market makes it difficult for a business to differentiate itself from its competitors. Thanks to gamification, you can stand out by creating unique experiences that customers won’t find anywhere else. The tactic is similar to conference booth gamification—your visitors are more likely to develop brand loyalty if you provide engaging content.
Drive customer engagement
Gamification can increase customer engagement with incentives, challenges, and rewards for interacting with your brand. Gamification encourages customers to keep coming back because they love the feeling of success and accomplishment.
Boost community building
Gamification also creates a positive environment where customers can share experiences, interact with each other, and build relationships. It’s an easy way for businesses to build a community of highly engaged consumers through loyalty programs.
Collect user-related data
Gamified loyalty programs offer insights into customer behaviors and preferences. It helps businesses gain user-related data, so they can use them to optimize the customer experience. It also enables companies to target participants and give personalized rewards, thus improving the overall user experience.
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10 gamification in loyalty programs ideas
The benefits of gamification for customer loyalty are clear, but delivering the right game-like content is still a challenging task for most companies. If you are unsure where to start, let us show you the top 10 ways to do it.
1. Wheel of fortune
A good old wheel of fortune is a classic way to engage your customers with a game-like experience. A spin of the wheel can reward them with discounts, free products or services, and other prizes that you choose. Not only will they have fun while playing, but they will also be more likely to return for future purchases.
This loyalty program feature works wonders if you target passive customers. That includes two groups of consumers:
- Those who follow your brand but rarely buy from you
- Those who used to be your frequent buyers but stopped coming
Wheels of fortune are an excellent motivator to get users more involved. With Adact, you can create up to 25 wheel sectors, provided you have enough perks to offer to your customers.
2. Open the box
Another way to gamify your loyalty program is by rewarding people through the old-fashioned ‘Open the box’ game. You can create different prizes for your most loyal customers and offer them through a fun game.
The best thing about this game is its simplicity. Everyone knows it and it takes only a few seconds to play. Your customers don’t have to enter a lot of data or wait until the end of the game to get the prize. Instead, the reward is just one click away. This easy logistics compared with the excitement of opening the box and getting some sort of present can make people quite enthusiastic about playing it. You can even create different levels, based on the loyalty
3. Trivia
The third idea on our list is to use trivia in the loyalty program. You can create questions about your products or services, rewarding the ones who answer correctly with discounts or points in your loyalty program. You can also use trivia to educate customers about your company and its products.
What makes this feature so good? It’s the fact that customers learn something about your brand in the process and get a reward for it. On top of that, trivia is the perfect option if you want to bring some fun into your loyalty program.
With Adact, can import as many questions as you like, but we suggest keeping it short and sweet. Once again, you are free to customize elements according to your style and brand visuals.
Adact creates a straightforward game logic, allowing you to tailor these elements:
- The order of questions
- Timeout for answers
- Delay until the next question
- Showing how other participants answered
The game mechanics are easy, so your customers are guaranteed to have fun with this interactive loyalty program.
4. Treasure hunt
This type of loyalty program gamification works especially well for brick-and-mortar stores. It can help engage customers by encouraging them to explore the store and look for hidden prizes. You can set up a variety of treasure hunt-like tasks, such as finding a specific item in the store or answering questions about your products.
You can also use this to draw attention to new items and offers. By offering points for completing certain tasks or clues, customers will be more likely to come back and participate regularly.
5. Personality test
You can also use personality tests in your loyalty program to get customers more involved. These tests are usually fun and lighthearted, and they can help you understand more about the customers’ preferences and interests.
But why would consumers participate in this kind of gamification program? According to the report, it’s because they like confirmation of their qualities, particularly strengths. In such circumstances, personality tests are one of the most effective ways to engage customers in the loyalty program.
With Adact, you can launch these tests quickly:
- Pick the preferred number of questions
- Give players at least two possible results
- Arrange the game visuals
The whole process is effortless, just like in all Adact games and features. The same goes for other gamification elements, such as hidden objects, quizzes, bubble shooters, and so on.
6. Puzzle
Another very popular, well-known game is puzzle. Since you will be creating games for your most loyal customers, you can use the puzzle to check how familiar people are with your brand. Perhaps you want them to put together your logo? Maybe there’s an interesting visual from one of your campaigns?
This can be a very unique game that will show people you realize how loyal they are to you. For every successful game, your customers can get some type of reward. Aside from the fun aspect of the game, a specific prize will motivate people to keep playing and get it right. Adact allows you to upload your own designs and customize it as much as you need, including individual elements, background, font and colors.
7. Advent calendar
The next idea is similar to the winning streaks, but it comes with a twist. With an advent calendar, customers get rewards for completing tasks over a specific period of time. It works best if you use it around the holidays when people are in a special buying mood and appreciate when companies give them something interesting.
Besides that, loyalty programs based on advent calendars contribute to the overall holiday atmosphere and make customers feel special. By getting them involved in a festive game, you build loyalty and brand recognition.
Related: 5 Best Advent Calendar Ideas for the Business Holiday Season 2022
8. Leaderboard
A leaderboard is a feature that allows customers to compare their performance against other customers in the loyalty program. This encourages competition and drives engagement, as customers are more likely to participate if they know there’s something to gain from it.
As soon as users get hooked on the idea of competing and climbing up the leaderboard, they’re more likely to keep participating in your campaign. That’s because people just don’t like to lose, and they’ll do anything to stay ahead of their competitors.
9. Scratch cards
Another idea on our list is to use scratch cards as a form of loyalty program gamification. This type of gamified loyalty program works similarly to lottery tickets, where customers can scratch off a card and get a reward if they’re lucky enough to get the right combination. It’s an exciting way to engage customers and, at the same time, give them something valuable.
Moreover, scratch cards are an excellent way of encouraging customers to keep coming back. It’s because they can get multiple rewards for the same purchase, creating a sense of progress and motivation.
10. Quizzes
If you’re looking for a fun and engaging way to reward customers, then why not try quizzes? They make a great way to test customer knowledge about your products and services or even general topics.
What’s more, if you make the quiz challenging enough, it can create an additional layer of engagement that could help drive sales. For example, you can offer rewards to customers who answer all the questions correctly or even have a leaderboard for top scores.
Overall, quizzes are a great way of creating an engaging customer experience and encouraging customer loyalty. Plus, they can help you collect valuable data about customer preferences and interests that can help you improve your loyalty program in the future.
These aren’t the only gamification ideas, but they are all proven features that guarantee to boost user participation. Other honorable mentions include:
- Prize machines
- Visual quizzes
- Challenges
- Badges
- Social sharing contests
- Surveys
- Open-the-box campaigns
- Games like hoops or Candy Crush
You can experiment with all of these features or even combine them to create a unique loyalty program. The only thing that matters is to develop a gamification campaign that suits your target audience so that you can increase customer loyalty.
How to get started with your gamification campaign?
There are obviously lots of ways to grow customer lifetime value through gamification, but you’ll need a good tool to do it properly. Adact is the easiest solution for creating, upgrading, and managing your gamification campaigns.
But what is Adact?
Our platform helps businesses and marketing teams launch gamified campaigns in just a few clicks. There’s no need to design or code anything—Adact enables you to build a branded loyalty program in minutes.
Related: How To Create a Branded Game To Promote Your Business
All it takes is to sign up and start working on gamification marketing ideas. The Adact dashboard has two main sections:
- Campaigns: This is where you play with gamification techniques and features
Analytics: It is where you can find performance data about all of your previous or current campaigns
And once you launch a campaign, you can see relevant information about it. That includes the following data:
- Unique page visitors
- Unique leads
- Games started
- Landing page visitors
- Bounce rate percentage
- Game completion percentage
- Average gameplay time
If you’re into advanced analytics, Adact also lets you see daily stats, most active players, highest scores, and so many more.
Conclusion
If there is one thing that can make loyalty programs more interesting, it must be gamification. It drives user engagement by encouraging competitiveness and a sense of personal accomplishment. Customer loyalty comes as a byproduct.
The best thing is that you can automate loyalty program gamification with Adact. Our tool enables you to design all kinds of game-like experiences for your clients, so you can maximize engagement and brand loyalty.
You are only a few clicks away from improving your marketing strategy with a gamified loyalty program. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up now and let Adact skyrocket your CTRs!
FAQ
How to gamify your loyalty program?
You can gamify your loyalty program in many ways. One approach is to create challenges or quests that members can complete to earn rewards. You can also offer bonus points for engaging in specific behaviors, such as referring new members or making purchases on certain days of the week.
Another strategy is to use leaderboards and badges. That way, you will rank customers and give them incentives to compete with one another. Another solution is to add some excitement by offering limited-time promotions and special rewards.
Are loyalty cards gamification?
Yes, loyalty cards are a special type of gamification. Most marketers use them as a way to motivate and encourage customers to continue spending money at a particular store.
By awarding points for each purchase, customers feel like they’re getting closer to something bigger and better. It’s a way to encourage customers to keep coming back. In this sense, loyalty cards can be considered a form of gamification.
What technology is used in loyalty programs?
Most businesses use special platforms like Adact to launch loyalty programs. These tools enable gamification, automation, and custom rewards for buyers. New technologies help companies implement various loyalty programs:
- Point-based systems
- VIP tiers
- Referral programs
The technology also allows merchants to track customer activities and tailor experiences for them. Additionally, these solutions offer data analysis capabilities so businesses can understand their customers better and increase customer lifetime value.
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