Games tap into our natural instincts — the thrill of overcoming challenges, the satisfaction of watching progress bars fill up, and the rush of friendly competition. We are hardwired to chase these small victories and emotional rewards. This is why gamification marketing is so effective.
It allows organizations to drive engagement, increase loyalty, and, eventually, achieve measurable business growth. In the following sections, you’ll learn what gamification is, the benefits, and look at some successful examples.You will also discover how to implement this strategy effectively.
What is gamification marketing?
Gamification marketing involves using game-like elements in non-gaming environments to increase user engagement and motivation.
This approach operates on the assumption that people are naturally inclined to play and that game mechanics — such as challenges, rewards, and progression — can help make boring activities more interesting and engaging. Common elements used include leaderboards, virtual rewards, leveling up, and point systems. These are designed to reward users for their efforts and accomplishments as well as encourage healthy competition.
When implemented correctly, gamification can boost employee and customer engagement and loyalty — recipes for sustainable business growth. But that’s not all. Let’s examine more benefits you can extract from this strategy.
Why gamification marketing is important
Gamification is an effective tool that helps businesses satisfy two of their most important stakeholders (employees and customers).
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Gamification marketing for employees
Gamification can be used internally to enhance things like training, meeting targets, and collaboration. Key benefits include:
Increased engagement
Engaged employees are productive employees. Unfortunately, some mundane tasks are just never going to be that interesting. Gamification can make tasks like data entry or handling complaint calls more engaging and enjoyable. As a result, employees are more likely to stay focused, reducing errors and maintaining a high standard of work. When paired with employee rewards software, these small wins feel more motivating, helping employees stay engaged even during repetitive tasks.
Gamification also allows each employee to track their progress — and seeing progress can be encouraging, especially when tackling something challenging. With a clear idea of how they’re doing, and what rewards await, there’s increased motivation to reach the next level or milestone. This sense of progress can be reinforced with simple tools like printable weekly timesheets, helping employees visualize how they’re spending their time and identify areas to improve or optimize.
As well as improving engagement, gamification can also help with employee retention rates. According to research, 84% of warehouse employees say they will remain with a company that encourages competition in the workplace.
Improved information retention
Many employees don’t usually look forward to corporate training. They see it as a chore rather than an opportunity to grow. Now, there are several reasons for this, including monotonous content delivery and a lack of personalized learning paths.
Gamification can fix this. Through elements like badges, completion meters, and progress tracking, training becomes an engaging activity, and the information received becomes more memorable.
For instance, when sales teams practice sales pitch examples in a gamified setting — complete with progress tracking and rewards — they’re not just memorizing lines; they’re internalizing techniques and building confidence.
Facilitate collaboration
Many gamification strategies encourage collaboration and social interaction between team members. For example, group challenges and team-based competitions create opportunities for employees to work together towards shared goals.
When departments compete in friendly sales contests or collaborative problem-solving missions, they naturally develop stronger bonds and better communication patterns.
These team-based activities often lead to:
- Stronger workplace relationships
- Better knowledge sharing across departments
- Enhanced problem-solving capabilities
- Increased cross-functional understanding
Gamification marketing for customers
Gamification can be applied externally too, helping draw customers in and keep them coming back time and time again. Some key benefits include:
Enhanced customer engagement
Gamification enhances customer engagement by making loyalty programs interactive and rewarding. It introduces leaderboards, challenges, and personalized rewards that motivate frequent brand interaction. This can result in more frequent purchases, increased brand loyalty, and a better customer retention rate.
Higher conversion rates
The purpose of gamification is to increase participation. When people feel more involved, they’re more likely to convert into customers rather than viewers. One reason gamification is so effective in this regard is because its content rarely feels like marketing. It gives people the feeling of having casual fun rather than being actively sold things, making them more likely to respond to your call-to-action message.
Gamification is also among the most effective lead generation tactics. Brands can use gamification to create engaging content and promotions that encourage customers to leave their contact information, allowing for follow-up opportunities.
Of course, to achieve high conversion rates, you must give more than you take. Gamification leverages the power of reciprocity — when people receive something, they feel obliged to give. With an instant reward in exchange for valuable customer data, gamified promotions are a hard offer to refuse.
Enhanced customer experience
A gamified approach can make a routine transaction more enthralling. For example, a simple signup process or purchase can become part of a large, enjoyable game that improves customer satisfaction.
7 real-world examples of gamification marketing
Businesses across various industries have embraced gamification due to its ability to engage and motivate employees and customers. Below are seven brands implementing this strategy successfully:
1. Starbucks: Rewards app
Global coffeehouse chain Starbucks used gamification effectively in its rewards program.
The program incorporates game-like designs that encourage customers to earn points known as “Stars” for every purchase. The more stars you collect, the higher you move up. Each level gives you better perks and rewards.
Want to earn more rewards? The app makes it fun with special tasks and deals. For example, you might receive bonus Stars for trying new menu items or buying during special promotions.
The app also includes a progress tracker, which allows customers to see how close they are to unlocking their next reward. This adds an element of excitement and competition.
With Starbucks making earning rewards fun, customers feel connected to the brand and want to return for more.
2. Superdrug: Spin-to-win
Superdrug incorporated gamification into their site through spin-to-win discount prizes. It did this by presenting users with a wheel in their brand colors that offered discounts of between £1 and £50. In order to access this promotion, customers have to be signed up as a Health & Beautycard member — a great way to gather customer data.
Spin-the-wheel games can be especially effective when combined with exit intent recognition technology — which detects when a user is about to leave your website. It then displays a discount or gamification promotion to convince them to stay longer.
By encouraging users to play an online game, you can reduce the likelihood of them visiting a competitor’s store.
3. Hyundai: Hyundai Chop Shop
In 2013, South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai partnered with AMC’s hit TV show, The Walking Dead, to launch an ingenious gamification campaign.
Hyundai developed an application that allowed users to customize Hyundai cars with nearly 300 zombie-killing modifications. Users who engaged with the app daily and answered trivia questions were rewarded with points they could use to unlock new items.
This encouraged repeat engagement. In fact, 60% of users returned to build a second vehicle – and Hyundai saw a 150% traffic increase in three months.
4. Nike: Nike Plus Program
To increase retention and brand loyalty, Nike successfully integrated gamification into its customer loyalty program. The program is structured like a game where members receive rewards for their active behavior.
These rewards include unlocking special features, such as exclusive new designs and VIP treatment. Additionally, Nike incorporates unique gamified experiences, such as virtual treasure hunts for new sneaker designs, adding excitement and competition.
This playful approach incentivizes purchases and creates an engaging and interactive customer experience. By rewarding active participation, Nike encourages continuous engagement with the brand and, thus, a deeper connection with its customers.
5. Dominos: Points, achievements, and challenges
Domino’s Pizza introduced the Pizza Hero course, which uses a gamified training approach to teach new hires and existing staff pizza preparation, operational procedures, and company standards.
In this course, employees take part in interactive, scenario-based training to learn how to make pizza, simulating real-life processes.
The gamified elements embedded in the training include unlocking achievements, earning points, and completing challenges similar to what they will encounter in actual stores.
Making training into a game helped workers make pizzas faster and better. Staff enjoyed their work more and did a better job overall.
6. Deloitte: Badges
Deloitte’s senior executives weren’t completing their required leadership training, so the company needed a creative solution.
They decided to make the training more engaging by turning it into a game-like experience. Every time executives finished an online course, they earned special badges to show their progress.
While most badges were given for completing regular tasks, they also created special badges that were kept secret. These surprise badges could only be unlocked in unique ways. For example, if everyone in a department watched the same training video in the same week, they’d all get a special badge.
This approach worked, and the company saw 37% more executives returning to use the training platform weekly.
7. Microsoft: Language Quality Game
Faced with the unique challenge of improving Windows language translation across multiple markets, Microsoft turned to gamification — the Language Quality Game.
The idea was a huge hit. More than 4,500 Microsoft employees volunteered to participate. They reviewed over 500,000 Windows 7 dialog boxes and found 6,700 mistakes that needed fixing. Hundreds of these problems were critical and needed immediate attention.
By turning translation checking into a game, Microsoft achieved much better results than expected. Not only did they improve Windows translations, but their employees actually enjoyed helping out. This brought together people from different teams and countries who might not usually work together.
This project showed that making work feel like a game can get excellent results, even for tasks that might initially seem tedious.
Common gamification strategies
We’ve touched on some key strategies in the above examples, but let’s look at how you can apply them in your own business.
Leaderboards
Leaderboards are a powerful way to spark healthy competition and motivate participation. They display rankings of participants based on their achievements, points, or other metrics, creating a sense of friendly rivalry and accomplishment.
When implementing leaderboards, it’s important to refresh them regularly and perhaps segment them by departments or regions to keep the competition fair and engaging. They should only track things directly in the control of your team too – leaderboards for things like days in the office penalise workers for illnesses, so avoid them and stick strictly to work-based targets.
Completion meter
Another way to engage employees and customers is through completion meters. This is an efficient tactic for keeping customers on your mobile app, or your staff on your training site.
When you give users a goal to reach or another level to earn — along with commensurate benefits — you can drive ongoing engagement.
This is how the online learning platform Udemy keeps users returning to the application. They use a completion meter to display a learner’s progress through each course.
As a result, learners feel a sense of achievement and motivation to complete lessons.
Badges and achievements
This gamification strategy taps into humans’ natural desire for recognition and accomplishment. Digital badges and achievements serve as virtual trophies that users can collect and display, marking their progress and expertise. These virtual rewards become powerful motivators, especially when they’re tied to meaningful accomplishments.
For example, Fitbit rewards users with badges and achievements for reaching milestones like climbing stairs or walking a certain number of miles. These virtual rewards recognize users’ achievements and motivate them to keep pushing their limits.
Points and rewards systems
Just like collecting frequent flyer miles or credit card rewards, point systems give users tangible benefits for their actions. These systems assign value to specific behaviors, such as making a purchase, completing a task, or participating in an activity.
Imagine implementing this in your training system. Employees can earn points and unlock rewards as they master fundamental concepts like ‘what is regulatory compliance’ or ‘how to create a new record in a CRM’. This makes the learning process both interactive and having tangible goals to work towards encourages engagement
Streaks
Streaks tap into our natural desire for consistency and achievement. They encourage users to perform specific actions regularly by tracking consecutive days or instances of completing a task.
When users see their streak growing, they become more motivated to maintain it, creating a powerful habit-forming loop.
Take Duolingo’s famous streak system, for example. Language learners become deeply invested in maintaining their daily learning streak, often practicing just to avoid breaking their chain of consecutive days.
You can apply this to customers and employees, using streaks to encourage any habits you want them to form — for instance, logging into a loyalty program, or completing particular tasks.
How to implement gamification marketing
You have a choice when it comes to how best to introduce gamified experiences into your business. Here are some of the most common approaches:
Leverage loyalty programs
Loyalty schemes have been in place for decades, with stamp-based mechanisms being introduced by some businesses in the 1800s, and tokens being issued way back in ancient times.
Nowadays, things are, of course, a little more sophisticated, with the interface between the loyalty program and technology-enabled interaction making for a rewarding and fun experience for the customer.
Start by deciding on what you want to offer. You can have a scale of reward, where a certain amount of purchasing gives customers points that, in turn, give a discount (remember our Lego example?). The more purchases, the more points, the greater the discount. Or, you could give the customer a goal to save points toward such as a VIP experience when they amass 500 points.
The important factor with loyalty programs is to make the whole thing seem achievable. Points should accrue no matter how small the purchase, and rewards should look to be at least in notional reach. A target of a trillion points is a bad look.
Add spin-the-wheel element to your site
Your website is likely to have a number of pages and numerous different areas for different activities. Why not incorporate a fun piece of gamification into all that product and service information?
A simple but engaging idea is to include a spin-to-win discount wheel in your site. It can ensure an enjoyable experience for your customer, and, if they win, can even boost sales.
To maximize use of the wheel, you can also do what jewelry brand Isabelle Grace did. It used the gaming element to also gather email addresses for its email marketing campaigns:
You should ensure, though, that the wheel is in the right place. You might not want it on your landing page, for instance. Your customers might only end up missing some key information you want to get across. Consider using an exit intent pop-up instead.
Do also bear in mind matters of design when you’re contemplating this kind of strategy. The discount wheel should be visible, but not clash with your overall brand look and feel.
Think mobile
It’s important to keep mobile devices right at the top of your thinking, when it comes to gamification marketing. Why is this? Because mobile internet usage is massive.
Miss this sector and you’ll miss out, big time. So, what you need to do is build a mobile app that includes gamification marketing.
Here’s an idea. Why not give your customers the chance to create a personalized avatar for themselves, then encourage them to engage with your brand by having online events for the avatars to attend? Create virtual spaces for avatars to interact with each other and with the brand, and sprinkle offers, discounts, and privileges over everything. Remember, gaming can also be about how the gamer relates to other gamers.
Or, you could go the simpler route and create a mobile app specifically for your loyalty program, just like Starbucks did with its Starbucks Rewards program:
This takes advantage of the personalized nature of gaming – it’s also all about the individual gamer and their performance. Just bear in mind that your app needs to be easy-to-use and accessible.
Use quizzes
People love quizzes. Quizzes, such as trivia games, are huge business, as this chart showing global revenue indicates.
You can create a quiz that chimes with your audience and relates to your product. For instance, Sephora, which sells cosmetics, runs a quiz on its site to help potential customers determine the perfect foundation shade:
Or you can pose a question or two about your business, the answers to which are on your site. This of course increases engagement rates as customers ferret through your site to find those answers.
Then, why not give a personalized results service, and perhaps a modest reward for your customers’ efforts? Suggest that they might like to share their performance with others via social media for maximum impact.
Include leaderboards
Introduce a competitive element by creating leaderboards that display top users based on points, purchases, or specific achievements.
The reason this is such a strong tactic is that it fosters competition, which taps into the human desire to win and encourages users to engage more.
Of course, leaderboards aren’t always the most suitable option. For instance, if your audience is not highly competitive in nature, or your business is centered around the concept of mental wellness, you should focus on another approach.
For further engagement, you can offer a prize for landing a top spot on the leaderboard, and make sure to give participants every opportunity to climb higher.
Use badges and achievements
Award users with badges or achievements when they complete specific tasks or reach particular milestones (e.g. “Early Bird” for first purchase or “Super Shopper” for multiple purchases).
Some of these badges should be harder to earn than others; after all, you’re looking to boost your users’ sense of achievement. Making every badge easy to earn would diminish this.
As an example, here are some that users can earn with Audible:
The reason badges are so popular with brands is that they are a form of recognition. They tell your audience that their efforts and loyalty are seen, in this way boosting satisfaction and encourages ongoing participation and engagement.
Dive into Augmented Reality
This last point is great for those looking to be innovative. One way to use augmented reality (AR) is hosting a virtual treasure hunt.
An AR treasure hunt is a very entertaining experience that you can offer your users. In short, they can use a device to search for virtual “treasures” hidden in the real world.
A good example of this approach is the McDonald’s partnership with Pokemon Go, which transformed McDonald’s locations into sponsored PokéStops and Gyms. The partnership created exciting opportunities for trainers to catch rare Pokémon. As a result, McDonald’s became the hotspot for Pokémon GO activities and saw increased custom and engagement.
Wrapping up
Gamification marketing is an effective way to encourage participation and engagement. Through game mechanics like leaderboards, rewards, badges, and more, monotonous activities can become interesting.
When properly implemented, gamification can also foster brand loyalty and improve overall business performance. However, it is crucial to note that gamification can only be successful if the rewards and experiences appeal to your target audience. Make sure to get to know them first, and you’ll be well on your way to a successful gamification strategy.
