How retailers are using gamification to maximize customer connection

How can your brand improve its ability to reach retail customers? One of the most promising methods is to make interacting with your company fun, with an infusion of game mechanics. In short, you should embrace gamification.

Since so many customer interactions take place in digital spaces, especially mobile apps, it’s easier than ever for brands to use gamified mechanics. Turning everyday experiences into fun, enjoyable touchpoints should be a major priority for brands across the retail spectrum.

A gamified experience combined with customer loyalty marketing enables consumers to earn rewards they really like, ones that fit their interests and will keep them highly engaged with the brand. Combining fun interactions and perfectly targeted rewards is a great way to craft a cohesive, compelling customer journey.

Use gamification as a customer outreach tool

The rise of gamification has touched industries of all kinds, but its applications in the retail industry and the e-commerce space are especially promising. As Forbes contributor Elad Natanson explains, retailers are able to make make customers more loyal and engaged by adding gamification elements to their apps, following successes in the education and health sectors.

Natanson cited success stories such as fitness and language apps that have managed to add fun, competitive, social elements to everyday.

interactions. When users earn points, badges and other digital rewards for completing common tasks, there is more incentive to finish those actions. This theory has managed to earn 200 million downloads for health tracking app MyFintessPall and 300 million for language learning app Duolingo.

Gamification marketing isn’t just a useful way to make users more likely to open an app repeatedly. It can also be an effective digital marketing for new customer attraction. Martech Alliance reports that after snack brand Popchip gamified its mobile advertising efforts, it saw a sales increase of 40%, which culminated in $100 million in sales.

Today’s customers are bombarded by marketing and branded content, both from bands they know and those trying to get their attention. How will they choose which deserves their time? Entertaining, repeatable activities that lend positive reinforcement can help them pick your brand over competitors.

Integrate gamification into retail sales strategies

Gamification is an exciting concept in customer rewards strategies because the fun mechanics allow your brand to keep up a connection with customers over time without some of the issues that tend to hamper legacy customer loyalty programs.

An old-fashioned earn-and-burn, points-based rewards strategy without game or similar interactive elements may lose customer interest today.

Without interesting or fun mechanics around earning and spending points, shoppers may quickly abandon the programs, especially if they put hard limits on when consumers can spend their points. Today, loyalty programs are not enough to engage customers and create sustainable and meaningful relationships.

A gamified strategy, on the other hand, can create fun and interesting repeatable experiences – ones that don’t always have to be associated with monetary value to maintain a two-way communication between brand and audience.

Smart devices can be a constant source of contact between audiences and brands, and smart companies will make sure they have a compelling mobile customer experience, even if their primary sales channel is through brick-and-mortar stores.

Make retail gamification happen with a lifestyle marketing platform 

The technology powering a gamification strategy can make the difference between a merely serviceable campaign and one that truly captures consumers’ imagination. Using a lifestyle marketing platform that enables a deep level of customization is a way for your brand to reach out to your specific audience with optimized game mechanics and rewards triggers.

A powerful technology platform will let your brand dig deeper into the non-monetary side of gamification marketing. This may be an especially

powerful method of connection with your audience. By tapping into the same types of experiences that have made fitness and education gamification so popular — the ability to track progress, compete on leaderboards and earn badges — you can stay in touch with consumers between purchases, without squandering value.

Another advantage of building a customized and optimized mobile customer experience is the ability to incentivize and prioritize different behaviors based on what you need most from your audience. Are you seeking to get more frequent customer engagement from casual followers? Do you want your most loyal audience members to refer friends or family members? Are you eager to promote brand awareness or certain in-store actions? All of these and more can be reward triggers with advanced gamification solutions.

A true customer engagement platform pairs these varied customer actions with rewards that actually matter to your audience. You can use rich data on current audience behavior to make sure you’re truly getting through to shoppers with the rewards you’re providing and the cadence at which you’re providing them.

Perx is the technology platform for you if you’re ready to get serious about retail gamification. Request a demo now to see it in action.