You know I was thinking about what would be a wonderful approach to draft an article about gamification. I mean, isn’t it ironic? Gamification is the pinnacle of engaging someone in the way you want them to be involved in achieving a goal. And I am attempting to do so using a bunch of words. I will not deny it. This will be an arduous task. What say you? Allow me to open a fortune cookie and see what awaits me before I proceed. Let us see what my fortune cookie has to say.

Feed the ants in the anthill before you conquer Everest.

Yeah.

That was intense. Just the kind of motivation I needed. Thank you very much fortune cookie. I understand exactly what you mean!

If you want customer stickiness, you better not just have a glue gun, you got to own the whole damn glue factory!

Remember, you may have a fantastic product that offers excellent quality and unequaled convenience, and most importantly, a great value at a great price point. However, suppose you focus on all the fundamentals. In that case, you will ignore the “non-essentials,” such as customer engagement and retention, which, ironically, are the essentials that drive a brand’s growth and market share. It generates sales when you properly engage your customer. It boosts your brand’s visibility and loyalty. Above all, it helps with retention.

Existing customers are 60-70 percent likely to make a purchase. Unfortunately, the possibility of a sale with fresh prospects is only between 5% and 20%. As a result, customer retention and keeping your customers hooked are critical.

Nov 7-13 was #InternationalGamesWeek.

If you want a one-of-a-kind customer loyalty, you must give your customers a one-of-a-kind treatment.

When StarHub, a leading South-East Asian telecommunications company, wanted to cut through the competition in the post-pandemic market and make an impact on modern-day consumers, it went on a mission to build a unique one-of-a-kind digital rewards program for its customers.

To accomplish so, StarHub needed first to grasp the current trend, which saw a rising number of customers incorporating digital technology into their daily lives.

Second, StarHub is evolving from a telecom to a full-fledged digital life and digital services provider, offering customers the most rewarding connectivity, entertainment, and other lifestyle experiences, as well as innovative business solutions, all with seamless digital engagement at its core.

The Perx platform allows you to plan, customize and deploy campaigns on a whole new level.

Third, StarHub was aware that the telecom business had a high churn rate, despite telecom companies consistently offering attractive deals to entice new customers and retain existing customers. As a result, it was clear that it needed to address the significant issue of customer retention.

If you don’t want your brand’s growth to be static, you need to have a dynamic rewards program.

Once StarHub had finished understanding and analyzing their challenges, as well as having an unclouded vision of where they wanted to go, they partnered with Perx and established a dynamic rewards program, where customers could receive incentives digitally, seamlessly, and most importantly, instantly through the MyStarHub App.

When you transform a static customer-brand engagement strategy to a dynamic one, the journey of the end consumer is sprinkled with personalized rewards and gamified engagements that nudge actions along the way. As a result, making everything simple to absorb and digest for the end user is critical for customer adoption.

Every Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., customers could spin the Wheel of Treats for a chance to win at StarHub Snapping Saturday.

Consumers were divided into three membership tiers based on their minimum monthly spending:

Green (less than $200)

Gold (more than $200 for six months)

Platinum (more than $200 for six months)

Green members were given fewer chances to spin the Wheel of Treats, while gold and platinum members were given more chances.

What was the outcome of the treat wheel?

The customer received a star each time the treat wheel was spun. The stars were treats. With 20 stars, a customer could enjoy a pastry. If the customer liked pizza, he/she could collect a few stars and exchange them for a pizza.

If you want to shine like the brightest star, you need to make your customers feel like stars.

Perx made sure StarHub’s rewards were not solely based on instant gratification. In the reward configuration, Perx designed it so that StarHub could reward its customers on specific days and at specific times. The date-bound and time-bound rewarding mechanism included special days too such as birthdays, anniversaries, and festivals.

The gamified rewards were tailored to each customer segment’s lifestyle preferences.

Personalized rewards are a surefire way to win your customers’ hearts. For the first time, like your customers, your loyalty program (if it had a soul) would thank you for resurrecting it from being just a glorified bookkeeper of points to enabling it to actively engage with your customers. Customers are more likely to join your loyalty/rewards program and adopt your products or services if you offer incentives. For the customer, the more individualized the incentives are, the more appealing they are.

If you want customers to adopt your brand, you need to adapt to their lifestyle choices.

According to Epsilon research, personalization increased purchase intent by 80%.

Brands must keep in mind that the notion of rewarding customers should not appear to be a charity or feel impersonal. Instead, by understanding your customers’ requirements and lifestyle preferences, you can customize your rewards to fit their lifestyles, and that is when you have a winning formula.

In the customer engagement space a winning strategy is measured by customer adoption. StarHub’s previous customer acquisition goal was to onboard 10% of existing StarHub Singapore households into the New Rewards Loyalty Program within 30 days of introduction.

With Perx, StarHub had surpassed its goal by more than 100%, onboarding 20% of StarHub households in 30 days. This figure has climbed from 20% to 50% of all StarHub Households in Singapore in a few months.

Thanks to Perx’s unique mix of next-generation in-app customer experiences, dynamic incentive-led campaigns, and injecting the concept of gamification into every last-mile customer connection on the MyStarHub App, 4,465,889 rewards have been issued to customers at the time of writing this article.

Even though the fortune cookie I had at the beginning of the story was imaginary, the fortune cookie remains one of the most impressive innovations. It could have simply been a regular cookie. But here is a cookie that can tell you your fortune. It is not like you are going to sue the cookie if what the cookie predicts doesn’t come true. It is the intention that counts. The cookie gives you something to look forward to when you are going to eat it. Isn’t that delightful? See? That is all you need to focus on. You must provide something that your clients are not anticipating. This is the essence of gamification. It is not some esoteric jargon. It may be something simple, effective, and beneficial for both the customer and you, the brand.

Customers have the power to make or break a brand. Even if you are a brand that is made, you will still have your milestones to achieve to get to the next stage. Whether you are a new or established brand, we must not make the mistake of assuming that a consumer will continue to pay for our goods regardless of how we treat them – which is to say, by not treating them. There is, quite frankly, no better way to reward your customers in this era driven by instant gratification and smartphones than through gamification. To put it another way, give them something to do that fits their lifestyle choices, and they will gladly pay for your goods even if they had the option to go with your competition. They win, you score.