Loyalty Blogs

We live in a digital world full of online shoppers that has more choices than ever. With stiff competition in the market, what can you do to make your brand rise above the competitors and keep your customers coming back to you?

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about gamification for eCommerce retailers. This trend is being adopted by many top eCommerce retailers to boost and increase customer retention by making their shopping experiences more enjoyable. In this blog, we will find out how gamification is used in eCommerce and how a gamification loyalty program can improve customer engagement for your business.

Rising Importance of Gamification in eCommerce

Gamification can be defined as the concept of applying gaming options in a program to engage customers in a fun way. It powers customer retention rates by making customers addicted to your brand as well as your services. This makes use of a system of challenges and rewards that enable brands to enhance the customer shopping experience, making it social, competitive, and fun to boost long-term brand loyalty.

Gamification is gaining huge attention among eCommerce business owners as customers look for more interactivity to fuel engagement. One of the longest-running gamification campaigns is McDonald’s monopoly campaign which has been drawing participants since 1987. This game not increased AOV but also boost sales by 6% in 2010 as customers were motivated to place larger orders for more tickets.

Another example is eBay’s gamification strategy that built off shoppers’ competitive natures and was embedded with a sense of urgency that led to impulsive purchases. Brands can use it by allowing certain deals within a timeframe that buyers need to buy before time runs out. This motivates shoppers to take advantage of the deals that are available only for a limited period.

Other examples are black Friday and Cyber Monday sales that come up with limited-time offers at regular time increments that encourage users to check back.

Benefits of Using Gamified Reward Programs for Your Ecommerce Business

Irrespective of which sector your business belongs to & what size your business is, gamification strategies can be applied to any eCommerce business. One common way as discussed earlier is through reward programs and urgency-based deals.

The gamified rewards program offers several benefits to your eCommerce business and some of them are listed below.

Make Customers Loyal

From the journey of first-time buyers to repeat customers, gamified loyalty programs can help by offering points for continued purchases. Another form that increases return business is to use coupons that can be redeemed at later date.

Build a Positive Brand Image

Using gaming techniques in the loyalty program can help in building a brand image as it helps in making customer engagement with the eCommerce store rewarding and enjoyable.

Increase Time Spent

When engaged with addictive games, users are more likely to spend more time and buy from a brand. This increase in time spent by customers can be used to increase product knowledge encouraging customers to buy more.

Better Social Media Engagement

Gamification combined with social media platforms can do wonders as it enables brands to offer rewards for product reviews on social media, which eventually boosts engagement between brands and customers.

Things to Consider Before Building Gamification Strategy

To make your gamified loyalty program a success, there are a few aspects that we must keep in mind. Like online shoppers with different preferences, gamers too are not created equal, which means games are made up of a diverse group of participants. That is why one must know the audience properly to create customized gamification campaigns that will be appealing to them.

Focus on Gamer Types

Know and understand dominant gamer subgroups to create targeted campaigns. For this, you must know the gamer types listed below-

Fun-lovers

The type of gamers is the ones who will enjoy the morning crossword puzzle or a book of Soduko, who play just for the enjoyment purpose. Engage them by making use of interactive ads, and digital games like word scrambles.

Socializers

These gamers are driven by competitiveness and are mostly interested in the games that offer measurable rewards with public recognition and social benefits like networking/communication opportunities. Use games that offer public progress bars, badges, and leaderboards.

Reward Seekers

These gamers don’t mind filling their inboxes with brand messages & emails because of the free services or products they offer. They are attracted to rewards in any form- points, discounts, free delivery, virtual currency, etc. Attract them by using contests, limited offers, and daily bonus points.

Game Building Strategy

No matter how interesting your game is, no one will play if they don’t know about it. Here is a trick to help you build and grow participation. A study by Fogg’s Behavior Model says humans are most likely to engage when three things are combined i.e. Motivation, Ability, and Triggers.

Motivation

It helps gamers to start playing and it arises when there is a need to satisfy a need.

Ability

Making the behavior easy to carry out i.e. ensure that your game can be easily played without any possible barriers or sign up.

Triggers

This means CTA or requests to get involved. Once users start playing, triggers can come in the form of reminders.

Final Thoughts

With the increasing adoption of Gamified reward programs, brands are successfully turning their one-time customers to repeat ones ensuring a rise in sales and customer experiences. However, a brand must understand its customers first before planning a gamification campaign to make it a success and attain measurable results. Take time to analyze your goals and come up with a well-planned gamification strategy for your loyalty program to offer relevant rewards for interaction and engagement.

Ready to turn your one-time shoppers into loyal buyers, connect with the experts of the Novus Loyalty team to integrate gamification effectively and boost growth in your eCommerce business!