In an era of increased advertising costs and declining engagement, brands need to spend precious budgets more strategically, plus find better ways to engage customers.
And the only way is to be data-driven. Why? Because a data-driven approach increases conversion rates and optimisation, leading to increased average order values and purchase frequencies.
Brands are turning to marketing gamification software to help.
If you’re ready to partner with a marketing gamification software provider, here’s what you need to know to find and select the right vendor – starting with a quick recap.
What is marketing gamification software?
Marketing gamification software is designed to incorporate game mechanics into the customer experience. Examples of marketing gamification campaigns include interactive quizzes, gamified loyalty programs, and countdowns.
The aim of marketing gamification software is to motivate and reward audiences for taking certain actions.
Gamification in marketing delivers plenty of benefits, such as:
- Increase and improve user engagement
- Grow brand awareness and loyalty
- Drive conversions through a fun experience
- Gather zero party data
- Make promotions more interesting
- Attract new engagement and convert ‘unknown’ audiences to ‘known’
In summary, marketing gamification software drives more of your audience to engage with your brand and, in turn, provides your business with valuable zero party data. This enables you to be truly data-driven.
How does marketing gamification software work?
Essentially, the right marketing gamification solution delivers real-time interactive experiences that challenge individuals to complete specific tasks. In turn, rewarding them and giving them a reason to want to come back for more.
The platform usually comes pre-loaded with interactive mechanics and gamified elements, such as:
- Quizzes
- Social sharing
- Friend referral
- Digital instant win games
- Skills-based games
- Leader boards
These gamification techniques create a cycle of achievement, challenge, and reward – that is psychologically proven to encourage engagement, motivate desired actions, whilst capturing valuable data.
… Data that is provided directly, and with full consent, by the user.
This earned data and explicit permission to use the data means you gain a deep understanding of each individual.
But here’s the best bit: After collecting customer data, you can use this incredibly rich data to inform your product and marketing strategy, and make customer engagement more relevant through highly personalised marketing.
If you use the right software, it’s easy to get started. The best platforms have a library of tried and tested options, like the one below.
Your finished gamification experiences can then be used or triggered across mobile apps, websites, in-store, outdoor advertising, on pack, kiosks, and social channels.
You can select from a wide-range of reward types, including real-world rewards such as discounts or competition entries. Or more symbolic rewards like badges, achievements, or points as part of a loyalty programme.
Leaving the tech to engage audiences and provide brands with valuable data allows marketers to do what they do best – creating meaningful messages that build and retain customer loyalty.
>> You can read more about how marketing gamification software works here.
Why do brands choose to work with a specialist marketing gamification provider?
Providing a high-quality marketing gamification experience often requires much more than a nice front-end and a few tweaks to a pop-up campaign.
Building a gamification experience in-house or using a marketing agency takes significant time and requires domain expertise.
That’s because the main work involves data privacy due diligence, customer journey development, designing the customer experience, building a team, developing gamification experiences, building a technology platform, plus data collection and reporting.
We estimate that an in-house solution or using a marketing agency could take up to 6-12 months to bring a solution to market. Partnering with a specialist provider could take a couple of weeks, to 3 months.
Building in-house also comes with a significant degree of execution risk compared to a partner with a proven track record and launch experience, and generally limits A/B split testing.
Cost is also likely to be a clear advantage with a specialist provider too.
Many will have a broad range of pre-made templates and a tried-and-tested approach, plus a specialist partner will have a resource (and thus product quality) advantage, which will ensure the solution is market-leading and competitively priced.
How to choose a marketing gamification software provider?
When you choose a vendor, you’re putting your trust in the provider to take care of your brand and deliver the customer experience you envision.
Here’s how to do it…
What to look for in a marketing gamification platform
1. Evaluate their software platform
The advantage of using a marketing gamification platform is you can lean into a partner’s existing platform to set-up, execute, and manage campaigns at pace.
But it’s important to evaluate how robust that platform is and whether they’re equipped to handle a rise in campaigns as your marketing scales.
Start by asking the following questions:
- How does the platform handle scaling and security across geographic regions?
- Have you worked with brands in our industry? What vertical do you specialise in?
- How do you handle data privacy?
- Do they have a library of pre-loaded gamification experiences?
- How many different types of experiences do they offer?
- Are the experiences relevant to your target audience?
- How can we test and learn to ensure that this approach delivers results before long-term commitment?
- Is the solution set-up for one-off experiences or does it adapt based on external data or in experience learning?
- Does the platform allow actions such as sharing with social channels, viewing additional content, or completing surveys to capture preference data?
2. Ask about the costs
There can be steep set-up fees when partnering with some gamification providers. That’s why it’s important to ask for a list of costs – and what your package includes – before deciding on a partner.
Key questions to ask about gamification costs include:
- What are your onboarding costs?
- Is there a set-up fee?
- How much ROI do customers normally expect to see?
- Can the platform be set-up without putting a drain on your IT resources?
3. Set data and reporting expectations
When working with a new provider, it’s crucial you receive the data and insight you need. Set expectations about what data and reporting you expect to see.
Consider asking the following questions:
- What results and reports can you expect to see?
- Is there a dashboard where you can easily see customer engagements?
- What insight can you extract?
- How does the platform monitor campaign performance?
4. Check for integrations
The final measure is to confirm that the marketing gamification software integrates with your systems.
- How sophisticated is the platform overall?
- Do you integrate directly with existing systems via an API?
- Can the partner provide data extracts?
In summary
Though a variety of marketing gamification software exists, few are truly scalable. Partnering with the right marketing gamification software provider will provide you with the best data and insight and your customers with the most satisfying experience.
The bottom line is the right marketing gamification software will pay for itself very quickly. Plus, it will improve customer experiences like never before.
And ultimately, smart use of gamification marketing will put brands in a strong position to capture the opportunities that lie in the year ahead.
Ready to put 3radical to the test? Request a demo or contact our sales team today, to see how our gamification software stacks up.
If you still have unanswered questions about marketing gamification, take a look at the most commonly asked questions below.
Frequently Asked Questions
What industries use marketing gamification most?
Marketing gamification can be a useful strategy in most industries. The main industries that leverage marketing gamification today include retail, leisure, banking, and insurance.
What business value could we expect to see from marketing gamification and in which areas
From marketing to product, sales, and operations, gamification delivers business value through high-quality data, exclusive insight on customers, improved conversions and marketing efforts, and much more.
What is the reason for using marketing gamification software rather than an agency?
Using your marketing agency or building in-house takes more time, risk, and often more money too. On the other hand, specialist marketing gamification software has proven processes, rigorous testing, and can be implemented quickly.