Effectively implementing gamification as a strategy for your brand is like putting a giant flywheel in motion. Imagine a big wheel that starts off slowly, but with every push, it gains momentum and becomes unstoppable. This is similar to how a brand can utilize gamification to create momentum in their loyalty programs. When consistently applied in the right direction, the tools of gamification can lead to long-term success. Just like how a flywheel needs continuous effort to keep spinning, brands need to stay the course and effectively implement gamification as a part of their long-term strategy to achieve their goals. It’s not about one big action, but the cumulative effect of consistent, informed strategies that have the potential to bring about real change and growth.
In our previous article, we described the basics of gamification and why it is important to your brand to create more growth, more engagement, and more insight for your consumers. Just to recap: gamification is about integrating game elements into non-game settings, like websites, to motivate and engage people. It’s not just about badges or traditional games; it’s more about setting goals, challenges, and fostering learning and growth. The idea is to change how people interact with brands, moving away from traditional buyer-seller relationships and creating a more positive and engaging experience.
Gamification goes beyond mere gaming; it’s a strategic tool for companies to drive engagement, gather valuable customer insights, and create more meaningful interactions with their audience. Kobie’s expertise in leveraging gamification to collect zero party data and create unified customer profiles exemplifies the power of this approach in modern marketing strategies.
Kobie focuses on leveraging gamification to not only increase response but also to gather valuable customer insights through the capture of zero party data. Our application of Triple Play Data, comprising transactional, behavioral, and emotional data, plays a crucial role in our gamification strategy. While transactional and behavioral data are more readily available, emotional data presents a challenge for many brands to collect. Gamification serves as a gateway to capturing emotional data, bridging the gap and providing a more comprehensive understanding of customers’ preferences and feelings, which is typically not accessible through traditional data collection methods. That is why we promote a “Triple Play Data” approach, leveraging all 3 types of data through our loyalty lens to create engagement that matters for consumers. This data-driven approach allows companies to create that flywheel effect on all their campaigns and touchpoints, enhancing the overall customer experience.
So, what is your brand’s level of gamification maturity?
Gamification can be implemented in diverse ways, and Kobie uses a 3-tiered framework that focuses on effectively implementing each tier for your brand when it makes the most sense. Our 3 tiers of gamification are Single-use Promotional Gamification (good), Triggered Lifecycle Gamification (better), and Persistent Gamified Experiences (best). Each tier of the framework serves a specific purpose, from driving immediate impact and higher conversion rates to improving member retention and driving long-term engagement and profitability. Our approach helps your brand achieve maximum results by boosting brand engagement in a strategic and data-driven way.
In how we prioritize each tier of the framework, we take a “Good, Better, Best” approach to assessing and implementing gamification for brands based on how each campaign contributes to Triple Play data. Each tier gives us a different level of data on consumers that we can apply to continued gamification strategy. The higher you progress in the gamification framework, the greater your gamification maturity becomes and the higher the ROI from your investments in gamification.
If your brand is utilizing Single-Use Promotional Gamification you may be focused on creating immediate, higher conversion actions. This is usually a unique offer required with differentiated messaging and gamified delivery. While this type of gamification is “good” and does help your brand collect data in the short term, the data tends to be shallow and only using gamification in this way fails to take advantage of full opportunity or the related flywheel effect it can have.
Triggered Lifecycle Gamification is a “better” option and improves your member funnel and retention, deepens program immersion, and gathers more usable data on those customers. In this instance, tying this strategy to a program lifecycle stage like onboarding or reactivation helps to create a deeper level of understanding or engagement relative to assist with the life-stage objectives. This approach can have a limited flywheel effect but still does not fully leverage the power of gamification.
The “best” gamification strategy, however, includes Persistent Gamified Experiences for consumers and is achieved through sustained everyday application. This type of gamification progressively builds zero-party data and optimizes long-term engagement and profitability. This final tier collects the most data on the consumer, including the elusive emotional data that truly tells your brand the most about your consumer and their preferences. It engages members in a series of connected, cadenced interactions that progressively build member insight to support ongoing targeted marketing actions.
Ideally, these gamified experiences are always-on but adaptable. While we could easily use a traditional seasonal campaign calendar approach, the challenge is that members join and engage at all points in the year, and we cannot lose precious time getting to know them and still realize our goals. For this reason, the gamified experiences must be on the customer’s terms – whenever they choose to engage with them.
No matter where your brand falls within these tiers, whether you are just dipping your toe into the gamification framework or are already applying some game mechanics in your program, Kobie has the expertise and capabilities you need to get your flywheel momentum started and running smoothly.
Reach our strategy team today for more momentum!
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