6 reasons why Digital Marketers should NOT ignore Gamification
For the uninitiated, gamification is most commonly defined as “…an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement…”. (1)
Brian Burke, Research Vice President at Gartner, in a podcast defines gamification further as “The use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals…it’s the use of game mechanics… and uses things like points and badges and leader boards… It is used in a digital engagement model” (2)
Let’s take a look at the 6 reasons why marketers must consider gamification in their digital strategy. (It's a long read but I promise it will be fun!)
Reason 1: Let’s accept it – gamification is not ‘just a fad’
The last decade has seen interest in gamification rise substantially. Growth in digital technologies has further propelled this interest across sectors like Healthcare, Real-estate, Education, and other sectors. Today, mobile technology is using game mechanics combined with UX design to enhance user engagement, aid employee learning, help students with problem-solving, and even help sales personnel reach their targets.
Reason 2: Gamification is everywhere, literally!
The earliest, less refined, version of gamification in marketing was recorded in 1896 (3) when retailers rewarded loyal customers with stamps received from marketers. By 2020, one can comfortably say that gamification in marketing has come a long way.
“It (Gamification) can be applied on many products, services, or any stage of the customer journey and it’s easily adjusted to any budget” (4)
Today, Gamification is seamlessly incorporated in our favorite digital platforms like Google Pay, Fitbit, and even Linkedin. It is common to see a mobile app use badges, points, or virtual currency to drive user engagement. While there are popular applications that have gamification at their core like Duolingo and Nike Run Club, there are apps like Zomato which have incorporated gamification into their product to keep app users coming back for more.
In 2019, Zomato launched Zomato Premier League during the IPL season. Users could predict a winner of the IPL cricket match of the day and gain 30% cashback if they predicted the winner correctly. Zomato released a scorecard of the activity that showed 224 cities and 14 Million predictions achieved during the IPL season. (5)
(On a separate note, Google decided to ruin the game and sent a notice to Zomato citing Play store policy violation – Zomato had to take off this feature in September 2020) (6)
Reason 3: Your digital audience wants to have fun
“Many brands don’t need brand awareness anymore, they already have it. So they’re looking at what’s next, they want to engage the audience, the influencers.” (7)
Digital marketers need not limit themselves to using gamification only in an app – digital engagement can be successfully created wherever the audience is including social media! Micro-gamification moments have been popular on social media platforms for some time now. One example of the micro-gamification moment is Stories Ordering by Burger King.
Burger King Spain used Instagram stories and had some fun with gamification. With “Stories Ordering” followers could pick ingredients and customize their Whoppers by simply clicking on the Instagram Poll Feature. This generated a unique coupon that participants could use to redeem their Whopper for free. A simple creative idea with zero media investment led to 270000 brand interactions.
Similarly, Star Movies launched Play @ 7 (8) to gamify the TV watching experience. Viewers were required to watch the movies played on the channel daily and play 7 games by tweeting the correct answers to the games. Star Movies created a leader-board on Twitter in real-time where participants could track their progress daily and weekly.
Reason 4: Personalise to Gamify and Gamify to personalize
“While the job of gamification is easing the daily tasks in different fields, the users’ interests and likes must be considered to create intrinsic incentives and a moral environment for them.” (9)
For a truly effective retention strategy, a brand must enhance the product experience for the user. For this ethically collecting relevant data along the user journey to personalize content and keep users engaged becomes important. Duolingo emails a weekly report to its users reminding them of their progress in comparison to the previous week. Similarly, Starbucks sends rewards points as a birthday treat to its users.
As the collected data gets richer in quality, marketers can then create loyalty programs, feedback mechanisms, gamified content, and much more, to personalize the user’s experience further.
Reason 5: Gamified marketing survived COVID-19
Locked up at home due to COVID-19, people were increasingly active online, consuming a variety of content, and playing games when not working. Between March 2020 and April 2020, comScore noted a 62% increase in the time spent on playing games online in India. Another report states that the US and UK saw a ‘40% surge in the time spent on online games’.
During this time, Burberry launched its summer collection through a gamified campaign. The luxury brand created a multiplayer game “that lets players dress up their characters in the brand's outfits before grabbing a surfboard and challenging friends to a race around a track”. The game rewards participants with daily prizes and AR-based digital rewards. (10)
ABC Entertainment decided to have fun promoting its classic TV game show “Supermarket Sweep”. To announce the return of the show, the broadcaster launched a Twitter game “Supermoji Sweep”. The audience on Twitter was required to “reply to its @SuperSweepABC account with combinations of nine emoji for grocery items including cheese, bread, steak, turkey and cherries”. Every emoji had a secret dollar value attached to it and the audience was required to guess the combination of items that would cost exactly $20. And the reward for the correct guess? A Special video message from comedian Leslie Jones, who is also the host of the show.
Reason 6: Gamification is about to get better
The overall Gamification market globally is expected to be worth $76298.9 Mn by 2030 (11) and for marketers, the opportunities are endless. Game mechanics are combined with AR/VR in education, tourism, healthcare, and entertainment industries.
In 2019, Ally Bank used AR and Gamification to create an online learning experience for consumers. “The augmented reality game brings Monopoly to life in six USA cities… Ally aims to improve consumers’ financial literacy through gamification while giving them the chance to increase their savings and win prizes."
PetSmart used Snapchat’s AR feature to create a “gamified quiz based around educational reptile facts”. Using this feature users could use the filter to turn themselves into a reptile, answer questions related to reptiles, and win a 40% discount coupon that can be redeemed at a PetSmart store. As a result, PetSmart “has seen a 50% increase in reptile sales, as well as a boost in general pet sales as owners stocked up on food and supplies in preparation for lockdown..”
Digital marketers can leverage these technologies to present immersive and gamified experiences to consumers and expand the scope of digital marketing. Similarly, brands can work towards gathering relevant user data and utilize it to create a better user experience and consumer engagement through personalized in-app gamified experiences.
Parting Thoughts
From engagement to retention, gamification can support most of the marketing objectives. This is a great approach ONLY if the marketer is clear about what objective the brand is trying to achieve when adopting the approach. To elevate a user’s experience through gamification, marketers must weave storytelling or personalization.
But remember, creating a gamified experience is not easy. Experts have researched why gamification fails and these reasons range from lack of understanding of the target audience to not being able to create a compelling story. Brian Burke mentions that gamification fails when it is used to manipulate the user’s experience to meet the organization’s goal, instead of the goal of the customer (2). As a result, marketers must create an experience that helps the consumer achieve their objectives. And this means going beyond mere reward points.
I will leave you with two popular frameworks Elemental Game Tetrad Model by Schell and Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou. Both these should help you start off with planning and designing an outstanding gamification experience for your audiences/customers/users!
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FIN!
Thank you for reading this article. I would love to hear your views on gamification and how digital marketers can leverage game mechanics to improve user engagement.
If you found this article interesting or if you have any feedback for me, do share the same in the comments below!
All references and cited articles can be viewed here.















