As we jump into 2024, it’s clear that adding a bit of play to business is more than just a trend – it’s a game-changer. Gamification marketing software turns a one-way monologue into a friendly interactive dialogue with the audience.
In this top 6 gamification marketing software list, we’re excited to share with you the top five gamification marketing software of the year. Imagine if seeing your brand evoked the same level of joy in people.
These tools are not only popular but also super user-friendly, helping businesses of all sizes create memorable experiences for their customers.
Using gamification technology, you can create brand-related wordles, puzzles, advent calendars, wheels of fortune, digital scratchcards and more. More importantly, you can help your customers associate your brand with joy and fun.
In this article, we will dive deep into all possibilities that gamification software offers and show you our selection of the top 6 tools to try.
Let the game begin!
What is gamification software?
Gamification software is a platform or a tool that allows you to transform your marketing campaigns into interactive experiences for marketing.
Instead of watching an ad or reading about a product, people can now interact with your brand. Keep reading to see some cool examples and gamification use cases you can apply to your business.
Earlier, it was pretty complicated to gamify your campaigns. You’d need a whole team of illustrators, developers and video editors.
This is where advanced software changed the game.
It allows you to create unique experiences through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. With it, you can easily customize your campaign and add your own brand CVI, logos, fonts, images and even videos. As a result, everyone immediately associates a fun game with your brand.
Gamification provides a plethora of opportunities. It is mainly used in marketing, although it can help improve sales campaigns, e-learning resources, employee motivation, engagement, performance, and customer loyalty programs.
How to choose the best gamification software?
Don’t settle for a second-best marketing solution. Do your research, find the best gamification software and you’ll see how easy it can be to gamify your marketing efforts. But how do you decide what’s best?
Mainly You should be looking for 2 main criteria’s – Ease of use of the software and customer support availability.
Ease of use - No workshop required
You do not want to include yet another software that requires dedicated workshops and tutorials to learn. You want a software that you can jump right into using it and getting the results you expect.
We recommend you to ask for a free trial and evaluate whether you understand everything immediately. With a great software you notice you can achieve everything almost at an instant and you are comfortable knowing that more niche functionalities are available if you delve into the software in more detail.
Customer Success Quality not only the software
Gamification is not something you have probably mastered before. That’s why the right partner does not just give you access to the software but also assists you personally on which are the correct decisions in game design, what are the best performing games for your requirements, evaluate your campaigns before you are about to launch it publicly and much more.
Look for a partner who is proactively reaching out and giving you pointers not just someone who outsource their customer support from cheaper salary countries.
Here are six things to consider when choosing your gamification software:
- Uniqueness: Does every campaign come out looking almost the same as competitors? Can you truly use your brand language and make it indistinguishable from the rest?
- Features: How many things you can do with a tool matters. Can you easily customize the game? Do you have enough features to make your game stand out from the rest? How hard is it to integrate it into your website?
- Integrations: Can you send all the data to your CRM? Can you embed the campaign into your application? Can you use it in your own website? Does it come as white labeled?
- Real Time Updating: If you notice a mistake while the campaign is live – can you fix it in real time? Can you update the prize probability in real time? These are important as you don’t want to commit to a mistake.
- Rating and reviews: Check people’s comments and reviews and weigh the pros and cons of each available alternative.
- Support: Always check user reviews and people’s experience with the customer support team. Do you get 24/7 assistance? How fast is the support team?
- Free trial: Before purchasing software, it’s best to test it first. The easiest way is to sign up for a free trial.
Luckily, we have done the homework for you. Below is our analysis of our six preferred marketing gamification software.
6 best gamification software to consider
Coming up, check our pick of six gamification software especially useful for marketing purposes.
Adact is our top pick for 2024 due to high customizability, extremely user friendly interface and unmatched number of various functionalities to organize every type of interactive initiative you can imagine.
Adact.me is a software that simplifies gamification with an intuitive drag-and-drop dashboard that allows you to create fun games, trivia, raffles, competitions, and quizzes in minutes – without touching a line of code!
The team behind Adact have created custom made Gamification solutions to Volkswagen, Keurig, Coca Cola and many other Fortune 500 companies. They have brought their expertise into one no-code software to enable everyone get a piece of the pie!
The best part is that no campaign looks like your competitors campaign. Fully customize each view and the end results is completely different from any other example.
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 4.5/5
Pricing: Starting from €1500/year for one campaign – all features included.
Support: 5/5
Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
Users agree that it is a user-friendly, highly customizable tool with lots of game types and great customer service. Plus, campaign formats are innovative and very easy to implement.
User review at Capterra
The customer support team is also one of its highest points. Always reachable via email, phone support, or chat, there is also a forum with FAQs and lots of training resources such as videos, documentation, webinars, and even in-person training.
Top features:
- Analytics and engagement tracking
- Drag-and-drop builder
- +60 game formats
- Customizable branding
- Social media integration
- Use for Marketing, HR, Conferences, Applications, Offline,
Click here to start working on your first game!
2. Qualifio
Ease of use: 4.5/5
Features: 4.5/5
Pricing: There are four price tiers available with different support services, amount of users, and available integrations. Unfortunately, prices are not published on the website.
Support: 5/5
Free trial: 30 days – only for Engage module.
Qualifio is composed of two complementary modules, Engage, for data collection and marketing, and a loyalty module for rewards and brand experiences.
One cool thing it has is the integration with CRM platforms and email marketing providers – but it comes only in the highest pricing plans.
While most users highlight its ease of use and great customer service, they do find some limitations and bugs such as problems with multilingual campaigns and not enough game formats. Also, analytics dashboards are not customizable.
Top features:
- CRM integrations
- +50 game formats
- Analytics dashboard (yet not customizable)
3. Gleam.io
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 3.5/5
Pricing: You can purchase each app separately (starting at $10/month for Competitions App, and $29/month for Rewards, Galleries, and Captures) or the full package for $97/month.
Support: 3/5
Free trial: No.
Gleam.io is a marketing platform aimed at small businesses and content creators that don´t want to spend too much on their gamification efforts.
It offers four apps that can be acquired separately or as a full package: Competitions, Rewards, Galleries, and Captures.
While it is probably the best option in terms of costs for influencers and sole marketers, it is very limited in features, lacks customer support and analytics, and is not very customizable. In other words, you get what you pay for.
Top features:
- Friendly UI
- Good for giveaways (But basic design options)
- Inexpensive
4. Scratcher.io
Ease of use: 5/5
Features: 4.5/5
Pricing: The Starter plan is €3588/year. There is also the option of a customized pro plan – but you will have to request a quote – or for a single campaign, which starts at €2000 /year.
Support: 4.5/5
Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
Scratcher.io provides an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, more than 20 campaign formats, and lots of customization options. Features such as user roles and permissions, a wide list of integrations, and social sharing capabilities make this an interesting option for large enterprises looking for an all-in-one solution.
As good as it might sound, we couldn´t find any user reviews in popular tech review sites such as Capterra, G2.com, and Trustradius – which is quite unnerving.
Plus, the tool is quite expensive with a flat annual subscription that is almost prohibitive for small companies or entrepreneurs.
Top features:
- Drag-and-drop editor
- +20 campaign formats
- Integrations
5. Dot.vu
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4.5/5
Pricing: The Starter plan is €5,995 /year for up to 50,000 yearly visitors and 1 admin user – with ticket support only. The Advanced plan is €9,995 /year for up to 250,000 yearly visitors, 3 admin users, system integrations and live chat support. The Pro plan goes up to €15,995 for 5 admins, 5 million yearly visitors, and priority support. There is also an individual subscription with one template available only but its price is not published on the site.
Support: 4.5/5
Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
Dot.vu is much more than gamification software. The platform allows you to create and embed interactive content on your website, e-commerce, or native mobile app. This includes not only marketing games but also virtual tours, guided selling, and interactive flipbooks.
Additionally, the company offers an agency service with experts that can create interactive content for you.
Unfortunately, it is not a cheap option at all.
Top features:
- Drag-and-drop editor
- Customizable branding
Interactive content formats
6. Playable (former LeadFamly.com)
Ease of use: 4/5
Features: 4.5/5
Pricing: Not available. Send a pricing request. The pricing model is usage-based.
Support: 5/5
Free trial: Yes, 14 days.
Playable (former LeadFamly) is a gamification platform that offers a large selection of game formats. On the downside, the variety of options does not make it very intuitive and there is a steep learning curve. Plus, it is not very customizable – which might make your campaigns look too much like your competitor’s campaigns. Also, users often find bugs.
The real-time dashboards for campaign tracking are probably one of the best features of the tool, along with the more than 70 integrations that include popular CRMs and email marketing providers.
Users also find chat support to be good and there are lots of documentation such as guides, webinars, a FAQ, and blog posts which can help through the learning process.
LeadFamly (now Playable) user review at G2.com
Top features:
- Campaign tracking
- +70 integrations
- Collaboration tools
Gamification software – comparison table
The competition seems to be tight – but of course, it depends on what you are looking for.
Are you a content creator just looking to increase interaction in social media? Maybe Gleam is just enough.
Do you belong to a medium-sized or large company and will have lots of people playing your games? Get a quote for Qualifio and Leadfamly and compare with Adact.me
Budget is not a problem? Bring Dot.vu and Scratcher.io to the competition.
Check the comparison table of our preferred gamification software for marketing below:
Now, it’s time to explore what benefits you can get from using gamification software.
How does gamification software benefit your business?
Game mechanics have been used by businesses for years. Looking back to the early days of mobile phone carriers offering free ringtones and in-game services, this form of marketing got a lot of traction with smartphone users.
The more time goes by, the more gamification becomes relevant to businesses. Let’s take a look at how you can use gamification software for marketing purposes:
#1 Boost user engagement and sales
Imagine you access an eCommerce store and the first thing you see is a promotional pop-up. What are the chances you don´t leave the site in the following five seconds?
What if instead you are presented with a wheel of fortune that offers prices such as discounts, benefits, and freebies? Wouldn’t you be tempted to spin the wheel?
And what if you win a discount? Wouldn’t you want to take advantage of it? After all, you have earned it!
Wheel of fortune
#2 Motivate users and improve the performance of your marketing campaigns
Points, levels, challenges, and rewards can nudge people toward certain behaviors by making activities more appealing. While the idea might sound crazy, it works well.
For instance, you can reward every person who completes an email form or signs up on your website with a discount. However, to get this discount, they have to scratch the card or open a box with a present. This small, yet engaging step, can make ordinary activities much more exciting!
#3 Increase brand awareness
Did you know that 95% of customer purchase decisions are based on emotions? If you manage to associate your brand with positive emotions, people will be more likely to remember it.
For example, everybody gets promotional emails in their inbox every day. After a while, you don’t even pay attention to the sender. But what if you got an email that asked you to play a puzzle and nothing more? If it’s a busy day at work, you may be tempted to take a quick break and have some fun. After a while, you’ll start remembering which brand sends you fun games. You will associate it with entertainment and may even research more to see what the brand is about. From the business perspective, this is how you increase brand awareness in an effective way.
#4 Increase customer loyalty and retention
Turning the customer experience into a fun adventure can keep your existing customers much more engaged. They will want to come back and play simply because they enjoy it.
This is your chance as a brand to use this energy and invite people to interact further with your business. In the long run, you can increase customer loyalty, satisfaction, and their average spending.
#5 Promote social sharing
There is nothing more effective than creating a sense of community. Just think of Minecraft. How many times have you heard of people meeting and becoming friends thanks to a game? Can you now imagine the impact gamification can have on your customers?
Include the option for your clients to share the results of a game, or challenge a friend on social media. People love to show their accomplishments and play with others – and this way you can increase customer engagement, develop brand advocates, and expand the reach of your marketing campaigns!
#6 Collect customer data
Response rates to long surveys are usually very low – which sounds logical given how boring they are, aren’t they?
Companies like Netflix understand that offering a good product means putting what the customer is more likely to prefer in the first row. But the algorithm “If you have liked X, you might like Y” only works if customers are willing to provide feedback. And this means making the process extremely simple for them.
Now, we don’t all have Netflix´s budget or resources. Luckily, with gamification software you can easily upload a couple of images and create your own battle that looks like this:
Battle
#7 Increase employee engagement with gamification
Create your own incentive programs by using gamification within your sales team. This way, you can show them the benefits of the tool and, at the same time, motivate them.
These are just some ideas of how you can take advantage of gamification techniques to motivate your employees:
- create sales contests
- build a rewards program
- develop interactive employee training programs
The role of gamification software in marketing
Let’s imagine you have decent traffic to your eCommerce website but low conversion rate. Traditionally, you would add a banner to your website with a discount code or lower the price of some products and promote them as on sale.
What if you could make it more fun and different from others?
Try adding a pop-up with a digital scratchcard and make your visitors feel like they have won the discount. Doesn’t it look much more compelling? And this is just one of the ideas – name yours!
Digital scratchcard
Adding fun elements such as games, trivia, and quizzes to your marketing campaigns can help encourage participation, expand your reach, and increase conversions.
But developing an entire game just for a campaign can be expensive. This is where gamification software comes in handy. Having an easy-to-use cost-effective software solution can help add interactive elements to your campaigns in no time!
Conclusion
If you’re looking to boost sales and/or increase engagement in your marketing campaigns, gamification software is definitely a must-have.
An easy-to-use tool can turn any of your marketers into game developers. The key is to find the right software, a cost-effective solution that offers the key features for your business needs at the right price.
This is a question only you can answer.
If we look into our comparison table, Adact.me seems to check all the boxes. With an intuitive interface, it allows you to easily create fun games, trivia, quizzes, and more in minutes. Powered with a variety of game formats and highly customizable features, you can create fully branded campaigns that will increase interaction and conversions.
Book a demo to learn how to build highly-customized gamification campaigns for marketing with Adact.me – or sign up now!
FAQ
What are examples of gamification elements used in marketing?
Some examples of gamification elements used in marketing are:
- prizes and awards
- badges
- scores, ranking, leaderboards
- freebies
- Trivia
- wheel of fortune/ spin to win
Which are the top gamification software for marketing?
The top gamification software for marketing are:
- Adact.me
- Qualifio
- Gleam
- Scratcher.io
- Dot.vu
- Playable (former LeadFarmly)
What is sales gamification software used for?
Sales gamification software can add healthy competition and incentives to sales teams, boost engagement, and encourage employee development. Gamification software is also a great tool for real-time performance management as it allows one to see achievement instantly. A gamification solution can also be used as a training software, adding some fun to the learning process.
