Gamification: An essential component of a winning digital strategy

Gamification was once perceived as an activity of choice for teenage users only, however the ongoing competition in the digital landscape and the need for brands to adopt innovative concepts for driving engagement, have well established gamification as a key component to their marketing strategy.

Based on the simple concept of desire, incentive, challenge, fun and reward, gamification has a fast-growing appeal in the retail industry. Retailers are presented with a prime opportunity to incorporate competitive tools and strategies to encourage engagement, drive in-store traffic and boost their awareness and loyalty. According to data released by M2 research, gamification turnover is expected to reach nearly $2.8 billion by 2016, indicating its remarkably growing impact.

The benefits of gamification for retailers and organizations can be condensed in the following points:

• Enhances loyalty and awareness:  By putting the ‘fun’ element into communication with their audiences, brands can gain competitive advantage into their communications towards the more generic interactive platforms. Moreover, it can provide an active way for aspirational consumers to get involved. Gamification also helps build and sustain an emotional bond between an organization and its employees and between an organization and its customers. Clearly then, gamification has the potential to increase customer retention and can be integrated into a loyalty scheme, in a way that is right for the retailer. Additionally, gamification can be an integral component of various loyalty schemes in a way that is a seamless experience for the consumer. This includes loyalty programs, referral programs, a point system, a leveling system, and even prizes. Retailers should integrate the correct technologies in place to ensure smooth operations across the various digital channels. Therefore, if implemented correctly gamification can be a supporting factor to the whole omnichannel process.
• Moreover it can be implemented as a reward to brand ambassadors by, rewarding loyal consumers and creating an environment where they feel appreciated, thus achieving consumer engagement that overlaps the traditional business/customer relationship.
• Stimulates social interactions: gamification can be a stimulating factor for generating ‘buzz’ and awareness in social media. The fun and rewarding nature of gamified apps encourages social interaction, likes, sharing statuses and tweets. 
• It enhances the customer experience: gamification helps brands deliver exciting, memorable experiences to their users. Moreover it can provide relevant, personalized content that is either educating or entertaining. All-in-all, consumers are looking for enhanced experiences across channels, as well as incentives to spend money.
• Provides with rich data and metrics, thus ROI. Gamification can favor the collection of valuable behavioral and contextual data by encouraging registrations, memberships and rendering feedback, thus enabling marketers to track consistently metrics and capitalize on customer demographics, traffic patterns and consumer behavior.

MPASS provides the know-how and the expertise to develop and launch added value apps and solutions incorporating gamification. By integrating with MPASS’s solutions for iOS/Android platforms, our clients can increase their engagement ability and also deliver exciting, creative, educational and entertaining content.