Gamify and Reward to Skyrocket Your Audience Experience
Understanding audience experience and loyalty
As a consumer, you must have experienced choosing a particular brand that has proven efficient and consistent for you. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this behaviour. You may be delighted with the brand’s product, customer service, or promotions.
No matter the reason, a direct result of this situation is you being a part of the brand’s loyal audience.
Studies show that loyal audiences are only 20% of your total audience but are responsible for up to 80% of revenue. That’s why your top priority should be to enhance the audience experience that will lead to loyalty.
Importance of boosting audience loyalty
Loyalty is all about gaining the trust and preference of your users. If you have a loyal audience, they trust your brand and will do more business with you. It also means that they will continually choose you over your competition.
Here are the reasons why audience loyalty is important:
- They are less likely to change their minds and shift to other brands.
- They are known for recommending the products they love to family and friends. Which makes them your very own product evangelists.
- They are always eager to know about updates and product launches. Making you their top priority of purchase.
Now that you know why audience experience and loyalty are necessary, let’s discuss how you can enhance them with gamification.
Understanding gamification
First things first, what is gamification?
Gamification is the process of installing game elements into a non-game environment. Companies that gamify their customer experience can increase engagement and customer loyalty.
You can gamify your platform in a lot of ways. You can display leaderboards to increase user competition or reward them with badges for every mission they complete.
According to TechNavio, a data analytics company, the gamification market is expected to grow by 70% in the upcoming years.
Source: technavio
Benefits of gamifying user activities
Knowing how to gamify your product is an excellent way to reinforce a particular behaviour among your audience. Through positive reinforcement, your audience will have increased engagement, resulting in a more fun and satisfying experience. Here are some more benefits if you gamify audience experience:
#1. Attract more customers
Most users today are looking to be entertained. Once you gamify the audience experience, you will have increased brand awareness and attract more customers.
KFC Japan used gamification to their advantage by launching the KFC Shrimp Attack app. This game aimed to entertain and motivate customers to try KFC’s new shrimp menu. The marketing scheme was so successful that it led to the release of a new product line.
By incorporating game-like features into your product, you can capture their attention and keep them interested. Not only will you attract new customers, but you will also be able to retain your existing ones.
#2. Understand your customers better
When you gamify your platform, you are provided with the information you need to understand your customers. You can observe how your customers interact with your product and how often they use specific features.
Through that information, you can analyse customer behaviour and know their preferences. Remember that data analysis is just as critical as the data itself. If the data you have gathered is not processed correctly, it may affect your product development process.
Luckily, most gamification platforms offer a built-in analytics system for easier data processing. You can use this to your advantage and process data quickly and accurately.
#3. Build a loyal customer base
Since gamification helps provide a satisfying experience, it will result in more loyal customers. Through custom rewards and daily challenges, you will keep them excited and wanting more.
Not only are you engaging with your audience, but you are also bringing value to the time they spend with your product. This builds loyalty and an essence of trust within your users.
How to improve audience experience with gamification
#1. Play-along experience
Having a digital product means that you have to consistently find new ways of interacting with your audience. You want to keep them on their toes and excited for each update you release.
By initiating an interactive experience, you ask your audience to play along and connect. This will give a sense of importance to what they do with your product and drive them to keep tuning in.
An excellent example of a play-along experience is posting an online poll or a survey where your audience can vote. You can ask what product updates they are most excited about or what feature of your product they use the most. Through this, you will know more about your users’ preferences and have them more invested in your product.
Letting your audience participate in surveys like these makes them feel included in the development process. This will then increase their interest and investment in it.
Source: talentlms
#2. Analyse real-time data
To further understand their behaviour, you can analyse real-time user engagement data. You can gamify your app and gather this info by rewarding users for sharing their location. Another way to do this is by adding tasks that will incline them to provide their personal preferences.
Analysing real-time information is beneficial because you can design your updates and pop-ups based on the audience preference you gathered.
#3. Bring competition to your advantage
Healthy competition is one of the greatest motivators you can offer. By posting leaderboards and showing your audience where they stand against other users, you can boost their experience.
Additionally, you can also increase participation by introducing teamwork and group challenges when you gamify your product. They can interact with other users and compete with each other. This will give them fulfilment and satisfaction while using your product.
#4. Determine metrics to target
This is a simple yet very critical point. Without determining which metrics to target, there’s no way for you to measure progress and improve your audience experience. This will also serve as a goal that measures the overall success of your product.
Here are some of the metrics to target when you gamify:
- Product adoption – It’s important for your product to be adopted by your target audience. To measure this, you must know if your users have engaged or logged in to your system. Another way to measure it is by tracking if your users have completed a task or are tackling several challenges.
- Usage – Once your users have adopted your product, monitor their usage frequency and determine if certain features need updating.
- Performance – this is one of the most important metrics for the target. After the product launch, watch your product’s performance closely. If your product meets audience expectations, you can devise updates to keep it performing perfectly.
#5. Reward performance
It’s pretty simple, right? You set goals for your audience and provide measurable challenges that will be rewarded when met. However, most businesses fail to accomplish this simple detail.
You need to set achievable goals and provide valuable incentives to do this. Offering valuable rewards to your audience compels them to exert more effort and have an unforgettable experience. You can give top users badges or certifications they can use as real money to buy upgrades or other perks.
Here are the types of rewards you can implement:
- Fixed action rewards – This is the most common and straightforward reward in gamification. To get this reward, your users are given specific actions and goals to target. Once they’ve accomplished said goals, they are immediately given the reward.
- Random rewards – This type of reward is unpredictable. However, Its unpredictability makes it more exciting for users to move forward with the game. The reward can be in the form of a mystery box or a surprise gift that contains big prizes.
- Lottery rewards – This reward strategy usually comes from spinning a wheel or rolling a die. Users can win exciting prizes by chance and may even hit a jackpot prize.
This strategy helps you build relationships with your audience and keep them more personally engaged. The more reward you provide, the more they get to experience and enjoy your product and brand.
By giving them a chance to win prizes as they go through their customer journey, you provide the entertainment they are looking for.
How to apply gamification strategies to boost audience experience
#1. Gamify product discovery and exploration
With the rise of modern technology came an abundance of information. Whenever a customer wants to make a purchase, they are presented with many different products.
When you gamify the product exploration process, you can simplify your audience’ experience. To do this, you can implement an interactive quiz where they enter their preferences. Then use this information to recommend the best products tailored to their needs and preferences.
#2. Gamify Marketing
How you do your marketing campaigns dramatically impacts how your audience sees you. If they visit your website and find your platform boring, there is very little chance they will make a purchase.
That’s why it’s vital to gamify your marketing strategies.
Old-fashioned marketing campaigns often need to be more aggressive and pushy for customers. To avoid this, you can gamify and promote new products through exciting programs and give out attractive prizes. Your audience will see this as engaging and prefer it over aggressive marketing campaigns.
Source: nudgify
The key is creating attractive campaigns and waiting for your audience to engage. Once they find value in your product, they are more likely to retain them.
#3. Loyalty programs
With stiff competition, keeping your customers satisfied has become a real challenge. Once you gamify the platform, you are given the edge you need through loyalty programs and incentives.
You can implement personalised characters, award badges, and exciting events to unlock after reaching specific targets. Through this, you can increase customer engagement and retention.
If you already have a loyalty program, you can gamify it to make it more enticing. Even simple game elements like levelling up and earning points can make a massive difference for your brand.
Once you’ve incorporated gamification into your loyalty program, you can encourage your audience to purchase or recommend your brand.
#4. Reward-based training
Aside from competition, you can also gamify for learning.
Think of it as a video game with different levels and obstacles to overcome. Every time players reach a new level, they are rewarded with points or badges. The more difficult each level becomes, the greater the rewards they earn.
Prioritising end-user training is one of the best ways to improve the audience experience. You can gamify end-user training especially if your product or system is complicated. And rewarding your users whenever a target is met is the best way to motivate them.
#5. Gamify mobile apps
Mobile applications have been conquering the market for a long time now. This makes it harder for developers to stand out. Especially since young people are constantly looking to be entertained.
If you want to stand out, here are some ways to capture your audience’s attention through gamified mobile applications:
- Keep it straightforward – Gamification is about having fun while achieving your goals. Keeping it straightforward, you avoid confusion and help your audience focus on their goals. This creates lighthearted fun that your audience will love.
- Make it social – Most mobile apps nowadays showcase their collaboration feature. This allows their users to interact as a group. Not only does it bring more fun, but it also encourages and rewards social networking.
- Develop easy-to-earn rewards – Rewards and pointing systems must have an implementation strategy. You don’t want your challenges to be impossible to overcome. Otherwise, your audience will give up. Break it into more manageable goals with small points that will eventually pile into bigger rewards.
#6. Gamify employee engagement
Lastly, you can also gamify to boost employee engagement. After all, your employees are just some of your most important audience.
Classic employee reward systems can be repetitive. Implementing games and healthy competition can boost employee morale and make the rewards more enticing. Once the brain gets used to a certain reward, it stops being exciting.
Some of the most popular ways to gamify employee engagement are:
- Employee training – Gamification is a creative way to motivate people to learn new skills and boost productivity. You can set up a reward system to acknowledge your employee’s achievements for every training and certification they receive. This will encourage them to enhance their skills and keep up the excellent work.
- Feedback – You can provide positive feedback through gamification. Your employees can log their work goals and cross them out as they go through. This will result in a rewarding environment that recognises your efforts.
- Monitor performance through leaderboards – By turning their workload into a challenge, you can monitor performance and reward the top employees. You can also create metrics and reward systems most beneficial to their department or field. It’s important to establish healthy competition to encourage productivity among workers.
Source: startkiwi
Not only can you boost productivity when you gamify and reward, but you can also promote unity and harmony. Whether running a multi-national or small business, learning how to gamify your work environment is useful for building strong connections with employees.
Conclusion
Your audience has very high expectations when it comes to having their needs met. They want to be entertained as well as educated and rewarded. Once they realise you can provide them with all these, audience loyalty is guaranteed.
Your priority is making the audience experience fun, simple, and worthwhile. To do that, you must keep the whole customer lifecycle in mind. Focus on areas you gamify and improve.
Enhancing audience experience and gaining their loyalty is a tedious job. But it’s worth everything for your business. A loyal audience that advocates your brand and products can lead to brand success.
If you’re looking to gamify your platform, book a demo with Mambo today!
