Increase customer loyalty with gamification
The need for an engaging customer experience
At a time when attention is in short supply and customers lose interest as soon as they are not engaged, retailers are struggling to find solutions. The customer experience has become a key success factor for retailers. Gamification seems to be one of the best tactics so far to increase both sales, brand awareness and customer loyalty.
According to this survey, nine out of ten retailers, or 87%, will use gamification to engage their customers in the next five years. In addition, almost half of retailers consider structured loyalty programmes to be one of the most important customer relationship priorities.
As the concept of gamification emerged, various large companies began to apply gamification in their operations. Among them are Adobe, NBC, eBay, Walgreens Oracle, Cisco, etc. Gamification has become an important part of these companies’ consumer adaptation strategies.
Benefits of gamification
Gamification is all around us. The most obvious example in retail is loyalty programmes, customer clubs and bonus ladders. But progression meters are also a type of mechanism borrowed from the world of games. What unites them is that they create a more engaging experience, which has all sorts of good effects. Here’s what Capgemini, a business consulting firm, says about engagement:
“User engagement is at the heart of today’s “always connected” culture. Incorporating game mechanics encourage desirable behaviors, which can, with the help of carefully planned scenarios and product strategies, increase user participation, improve product and brand loyalty, advance learning and understanding of a complex process, accelerate change adoption, and build lasting and valuable relationships with target audiences.”
- taken from Enterprise Gamification: Playing to win
Successful examples
Here are some examples of companies and brands in retail and shopping that have used gamification to their advantage.
eBay
Winning a bid makes you feel like you’re winning over an opponent when in reality you’re really just buying a product. It also creates a need to check for new bids, which creates exciting unpredictability and makes you want to come back. This is also true on the seller’s side as they constantly feel the need to improve their star rating and act on the feedback that buyers leave.
Webhallen and Inet
Swedish retailer Webhallen, which focuses on gaming and electronics, has been using a gamified customer club since 2015, which in addition to exclusive offers, bonus ladder and shipping discounts also allows you to collect achievements and equipment for a character. Everything is presented with nostalgic pixel graphics that bring to mind Nintendo games from the early 90s.
“We have managed to build a strong loyalty, which is not based on buying, price and discounts — we have that too, but the basis is that we have built a deeper loyalty. The cornerstone of that is gamification”, says marketing manager Fredrik Lindblad, pointing to a high proportion of active members (Quote translated from Swedish).
The competitor Inet also started a similar customer club in 2020 where you can collect points, level up and unlock equipment for your character.
Twiik — with gamification by Insert Coin
Twiik, the leading digital wellness platform in the Nordics, used gamification to motivate and engage its users. The platform allows users to purchase courses, workouts and access to personal trainers. Twiik’s users needed help to get started with their training and to stick to the programme in the long term to see real effects.
Twiik Gamification powered by GWEN compressed from Insert Coin on Vimeo.
Using Insert Coin’s gamification, Twiik saw a 128% increase in retention after just one month. More users returned to the app and spent more time and money while using it. In addition to this, Twiik is now able to analyse and track all data about its users for future improvements and development of its product.
