Who doesn’t enjoy games? Reward-seeking behavior, a natural competitive spirit, and the classic fear of missing out all contribute to the ever-increasing growth of the gamification market – expected to reach USD 48.72 billion by 2029. In the language of loyalty programs, this trend translates into compelling gamified elements meant to drive engagement, level up customer satisfaction, and build an emotional connection to the brand.
However, the idea of gamification in loyalty programs is quite broad. What does it actually mean? Are tiers gamification? How about social media contests or friend referrals? After reading this article, you’ll be able to tell which concepts are still fresh and impactful. So, let’s see how real, game-like gamification in loyalty programs can increase customer engagement in-store and online.
Ready to deep-dive into Gamification Best Practices? Download our trusty ebook for all the tips and tricks you might need to get a head start on your next feature.
Table of Contents
Gamification in the Context of Loyalty Programs – Frequently Asked Questions
In this section, we aim to answer some of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to gamification in loyalty programs.
What Is Gamification?
In a regular context, gamification is associated with video games. But in marketing, it’s quite the opposite, as the industry tends to label everything and anything as “gamification”, even regular features such as tiers or point collection.
So, let’s clear things up! In loyalty programs, gamification embodies certain program modules, that have a game-like feel to them:
- Customers are presented with a progression-like flow (filling out their profile, entering a prize draw, taking part in a challenge).
- The winning prize for completion is clearly communicated (bonus points, freebies, services, partner rewards, etc).
- There is an element of luck involved (you can spin a wheel for a guaranteed reward, but its value is randomized).
- Loyalty members are able to see their progress (being aware of the many actions left from completing a challenge).
- They are constantly incentivized to complete the process (by messages and notifications) in order to gain a benefit.
To summarize: As a customer, you are presented with a challenge or a task to complete, or you can exchange your tokens to enter into a contest, for which you know the prize.
What Is the Impact of Gamification on Customer Loyalty?
In short, gamification makes loyalty programs more effective, significantly improves customer engagement and brand awareness, as well as grows customer lifetime value. Brands that incorporate gamification into their loyalty strategies see a 47% rise in engagement, a 22% rise in brand loyalty, and a 15% rise in brand awareness. It enables companies to collect customer insights for personalization purposes in a way that’s fun and motivational for the members. It especially helps you target Millennials and Gen Z, who grew up using smart technology.
Why Is Gamification So Effective? What’s the Psychology Behind Gamification?
The psychology of gamification speaks to three of 5 aspects represented in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Love and Belonging, Self-Esteem, and Self-Actualization. Humans are social creatures: eager to engage and compete, to be part of a community, and to lead and outperform others, while simultaneously awaiting positive reinforcement and appreciation. Gamification activates and engages this side of the human psyche through features that contain game-like elements.
What Is the Best Approach to Gamification Loyalty Programs Now?
The best, gamified loyalty programs on the market right now are app gamification examples. Customers constantly use their phones throughout the day, so a mobile-first approach is definitely advised for brands aiming to engage their loyalty members in a flexible way. Loyalty program apps with engaging quizzes, prize draws and gamified profiling elements are entertaining for users to earn rewards while acting as invaluable data sources for brands to gain in-depth customer insights.
What Is the Best Example of Gamification?
KFC Rewards Arcade
KFC UK & Ireland’s delicious loyalty program KFC Rewards Arcade definitely nailed the gamification aspect (pun fully intended). Hammer Time – the first element introduced in their revamped loyalty program that’s powered by Antavo’s technology – is 100% on theme with the arcade-style program, providing a chance for members to swing one of three distinctive hammers in order to win one of the tasty rewards offered by the restaurant.
How to Use Gamification in Your Loyalty Program
When adding gamification elements to your loyalty program, there are a few rules you should consider:
- Set clear goals: What are you hoping to achieve? And what can you offer in exchange for your customers?
- Understand who your customers are: What kind of games are they most likely to engage with?
- Evaluate feedback and optimize your content: Monitor user feedback to be able to emphasize or pivot if needed.
If your core customers check their phones frequently, it is a good idea to make the gamified loyalty program available to them in an app as well. Encourage members to engage in social sharing. You can also create badges and leaderboards because when customers can see how others are progressing in the program, it builds a sense of competition. To better understand your customers’ preferences, engage them with a likes/dislikes quiz or show them a selection of images so they can select the option that is closest to their hearts. All the information gathered through gamification can then be used for segmentation and better targeting, helping you offer more personalized rewards.
The 7 Best Gamification Features in Loyalty Programs
The sky’s the limit when it comes to gamification options that make shopping more fun than ever. Let’s see some examples!
1. Challenges & Badges – Game On!
Drive recurring behavior by giving your customers a sense of accomplishment for completing challenges. Customers can unlock rewards by completing a task or challenge or receive a badge that delivers an extra benefit. Challenges and badges are widely used gamification elements that create the feeling of being skilled while strengthening the customer’s connection with the brand.
Best practice: Bergzeit Club
Bergzeit, the German multichannel mountaineering products retailer, rewards its customers for daily activities. Within the company’s loyalty program, Bergzeit Club, members can earn points by completing sporting challenges thanks to integrating a sports tracker app.
Why it works:
- Having milestones in your loyalty program ensures there is always something for the customer to work towards.
- In addition to building a like-minded community of hiking enthusiasts, the company also set out to increase brand engagement with the help of gamification.
- Bergzeit not only rewards customers for having an active lifestyle, but also for making repeat purchases, writing product reviews, and inviting friends, too.
2. Social Interactions – Sharing Is Caring
Nowadays, it is essential for companies to be present on social media in order to strengthen their bond with customers. But simply being there isn’t enough. You have to engage your customers and involve them in challenges! These hashtag-challenges can be comment,- picture,- or video-based. You can ask your customers to write comments, share pictures featuring your products, post Haul videos, OOTD (outfit of the day) videos, or other UGC-type content, while using the hashtag you provide. On the one hand, this could generate significant social buzz, on the other, it’s very cost-effective. For the amount of social media attention you receive, you only have to give away one or a few high-ticket prizes. These could be loyalty program points, sought-after products, VIP invites, or other experiential rewards as well.
Best practice: Simply Be Perks
With the aim to highlight body positivity, Simply Be, the go-to digital destination for fashionable size 12-32 women, created a loyalty program that rewards customers for who they are and how they interact with the brand. They encourage members to upload pictures of themselves wearing their favorite clothes or opening their monthly gift box.
Why it works:
- The aim of Simply Be’s membership program is also to increase purchase frequency and brand loyalty, so they incorporated Surprise & Delight elements in the program, coupled with contests, social sharing, and friend referrals.
- Their rewards program also encourages greater word-of-mouth around the brand.
- Simply Be has competitions where members can participate to get on the VIP list at special events.
3. Gamified Surveys & Quizzes – Getting to Know Customer Preferences
Customers engage more with content that is fun, which is why surveys and quizzes are a great tool for profiling. Create engaging visual quizzes, show your customers a curated selection of pictures, and ask them to choose the one they like best, or let them decide whether they like or dislike the image presented.
Best practice: Victoria’s Secret Pink Nation
Victoria’s Secret created an app called PINK Nation which gives customers points for signing up for a “Fashion Show Sweeps” contest, where they can win a trip to the company’s fashion show.
Why it works:
- Loyalty program members receive additional points by playing daily trivia games and sharing on social media.
- The company’s app also features polls and quizzes, stickers, and wallpaper for their members. With the help of the app, Victoria’s Secret not only gathers a great deal of customer information but also increases website visits.
- Surveys and quizzes allow the brand to get to know its customers and their preferences, for better personalization.
4. Online and Offline Treasure Hunt – Let The Search Party Begin
Surely, you’re familiar with “Where’s Waldo?”. Make customers feel like kids again — give online and in-store customers the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of prizes. In a treasure hunt, customers need to search for marked products and when they find them, they get a prize. While looking for the hidden treasure, they may very well find other products they like and discover parts of the store they may have otherwise overlooked.
Best practice: Virgin Red Loyalty App
When launching their loyalty app, Virgin held an epic treasure hunt. Involving 17 Virgin brands, ‘V marks the spot’ saw more than a million coins of various forms, physical and digital, each featuring the face of the founder, hidden in various locations around the UK and on websites. The coins featured a code that unlocked points when entered into the Virgin Red app. However, there was an element of mystery — members didn’t know how many they would get until they entered the code. The points could be used to unlock vaults with prize draws and offers.
Why it works:
- A treasure hunt gives customers the opportunity to discover what else you have to offer.
- Treasure hunts are a great way to shine the spotlight on your latest releases, or make old stock relevant again without any additional marketing.
- Creating mystery around the number of points customers could win increased customers’ anticipation even more.
5. Leaderboards – And the Winner Is…
People like keeping score. That’s why leaderboards can be a great way to motivate users to interact with your program more often, spend time competing, and earn new rewards. Customers can earn points and ascend the ranks by performing actions like buying products or leaving reviews. Leaderboards allow customers to see how they are doing compared to other customers.
Best practice: Tmall App
A couple of years ago, Tmall, the Chinese website for business-to-consumer online retail, launched an avatar game on their app where users can customize their 3D characters and complete daily challenges to earn points.
Why it works:
- The game also includes a social component: if customers send feedback or write reviews, they can earn better titles and secure a higher position on the leaderboard.
- Leaderboards are one of the most effective ways of getting users to engage with each other, helping companies build communities of customers with similar preferences and interests.
- Customers also feel good when they see themselves steadily moving closer to accomplishing their goal.
6. Prize Draw – Play to Win!
Playing for the win always has an element of surprise to it, so why not emphasize it? Spicing up your loyalty program with a game, based on chance is an excellent way to make your customers keep coming back for more. Spinning a wheel, swinging a hammer, or scratching a card are all entertaining and visually engaging ways to draw in users, especially in an app format.
Best Practice: Yeo Valley Organic’s Yeokens
As the UK’s no. 1 organic dairy brand, Yeo Valley Organic lives up to its prestige in its loyalty program as well. The recently re-launched Yeokens loyalty program (powered by Antavo Loyalty Cloud) is full of fun gamification elements. All customers have to do is scan a special code on the packaging, and redeem it online for Yeokens (program tokens), which they can use to enter prize draws, limited-time competitions, events, or even make donations.
Why it works:
- Prize wheels randomize the reward experience and give it a thrilling quality.
- Customers have to enroll in order to spin the wheel and receive their reward, which, in turn, allows you to identify them.
- Adding a prize wheel to your loyalty program is a great way to incentivize enrollment or reactivate lapsing customers as well.
7. Content Consumption – Watch and Learn
Incentivized content consumption is a great way to direct your audience toward consuming more of your content, boost brand awareness, and diversify the way they engage with you. You may ask them to watch a dedicated video or read a specific blog article on your website in order to enter into a contest, gain extra points, and be eligible for high-ticket reward items. This could help educate your loyalty member, build new habits of consuming a wider variety of your content and also strengthen commitment to your brand.
Best practice: Starbucks Rewards
Starbucks is an enthusiastic user of QR codes. The multinational chain frequently promotes its products and content using this technology. When customers scan the QR codes, they are redirected to a mobile landing page where they can learn more about the company’s various coffee products, how they taste, and what food goes best with them.
Why it works:
- By placing QR codes on leaflets in-store and in magazines, Starbucks drives mobile app downloads.
- This type of soft-action feels easy and comfortable for digital-minded customers, allowing you to engage them quickly.
- The more content customers consume, the more they will know about the brand, the more emotionally connected they will become.
Antavo’s Technology in Action: Gamification Made Easy and Impactful
Antavo’s next-generation loyalty platform is filled with amazing gamification modules, which help you engage your customers both online and in-store, strengthen commitment, boost customer satisfaction, gain valuable zero-party insights, and build powerful habits. Let’s see some of the features we offer:
- Rewarding more than just points: With our highly developed systems, customers can be awarded points by default for engaging with a gamified feature. However, using the Workflows module, you can assign any kind of benefit, such as contest entries, different types of products, or partner rewards can also be set as prizes.
- Prize wheels: Antavo offers an extensive Prize Wheel module that can be hooked up with your graphic interface for a randomized reward experience. In the module, you can set a limit to how many times a certain prize can be won, and how the entries are weighed. You can set a time limit and present different wheels to different segments of your loyalty program, or present a wheel to only loyalty members who belong in your entry-level tier for example. It could also take the form of a traditional wheel, a scratchcard, or any other visual representation based on the corresponding vendor’s capabilities.
- Gamified profiling: Antavo’s next-gen capabilities enable your loyalty program to act as a true zero-party data source. Within our gamified profiling module, you’re able to create surveys and profiles combining text input, text options, like/dislike, image picker, numeric slides, and many more types of elements. Using the information input by shoppers allows you to maximize your ability to further tailor and personalize your messaging, elevating your current targeting strategy.
- Garmin API integration: Our Garmin API integration enables data migration from Garmin wearables (such as smartwatches and other tracking devices) into Antavo’s platform, which opens up near-endless possibilities for brands to reward non-transactional customer actions. Furthermore, you can set up sports activity challenges, where you reward both transactional and soft actions, widening the array of ways to reward customers in a cost-effective way.
Get Your Head in the Game
The thrill of competition, the excitement of winning, and being the best: these characteristics are reasons why implementing gamification in loyalty programs works wonders to engage customers. It’s a smart and exciting way to create a fun, interactive experience for customers. The goal is to encourage customers to interact regularly with the brand and form new habits.
If you are interested in learning what Antavo’s Loyalty Management Platform has to offer, don’t hesitate to book a demo & invite us to your RFP.
Interested to know even more about Gamification Best Practices? Download our informative ebook and get started on your next feature!
Barbara is a Loyalty Program Specialist at Antavo and a Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional - CLMP. She is also a writing expert with several years of experience in marketing and also in the information technology industry. In her free time she likes traveling the world, reading crime stories, and doing crossword puzzles.
