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What Is Gamification? And How Should You Use It?
You probably have an idea about what gamification is, no matter which part you exist in marketing, whether it’s creative or digital. This word has a slightly different meaning in the marketing world. Gamification is all about leading and encouraging your customers, users, and followers to take certain actions you want them to. These actions can be following your social media accounts, visiting your website, filling out the email form, or even purchasing your products.
Gamification acquires results faster and easier compared to other marketing strategies. Since it is a highly effective tool it needs to be used sparingly and carefully. Overuse might lead to it losing its effect. Gamification yields the best results when it’s used at the right time, with the right plan.
Why Is It So Effective?
There are several reasons behind gamification’s star success. Increasing the adrenaline, even if it’s just a little, offering fun and excitement to the users are just some of them. When the happiness, driven from the winning streak, and the colorful images capture their attention the users are going to be can easily be guided through certain actions. And that makes gamification tools even more effective.
What Are The Benefits of Gamification?
We have already mentioned the high success rates and the effectiveness of gamification above. Then you might wonder, why do we need to list its benefits of it separately? Because gamification doesn’t always have the same effect in every situation, in some scenarios using gamification can lead to unwanted results or even failure. That’s why it’s always a good idea to know about the specific details of this tool so you will know when and where to use it more clearly.
It Is A Great Help for Collecting Data
If you are using games to steer your customers into doing certain actions, collecting data should take first place on those lists of actions. Giving out their data is the easiest thing your customers and users are willing to do, especially compared to purchasing products. Nowadays a lot of users are trying to avoid giving their personal information. Even the ones who are willing to do need a little push most of the time. At this point, a simple game with rewards will make your job easy. You might ask your users to fill out a form to receive their rewards -such as promotions or sales.
Increases Brand Loyalty
Games are fun, exciting, and compelling by nature. That’s why your brand can be even more memorable if your customers engage in these games, especially if they are newly aware of your brand. Gamification tools with capturing images and fun music can help your brand catch all the attention of the customer.
When sales, gifts, and promotions are added as rewards at the end of the game your brand is quickly going to leave the competition behind and get to a more preferable position.
Makes Promotions More Attractive
In which ways do you announce your sales and promotions? Email marketing, website pop-ups, and banners are all great ideas but as you know things are always more effective when they are personalized. There is nothing more personalized than the rewards your users or visitors win by showing some effort. You can be sure, your customers are going to be much more inclined to use the promotions they receive as a reward rather than some sales code they would see on your website’s banner.
Increases Customer Engagement
The statistics prove that websites and applications that use gamification have higher user or visitor rates. This means they would be more inclined to leave product reviews or to subscribe to your newsletter. If your website or your app needs more engagement from your users, gamification can make a huge difference.
And When Not to Use
Despite all the attractive advantages of gamification, you will find that this tool is not the best for every single situation. While they are ideal for Christmas or Valentine’s Day, there are other situations where gamification might make your brand look insensitive. Especially if you are doing a charity case don’t combine it with a game, it’s been known to bring unpleasant results. That being said, it’s always wise to put some thought into your campaigns if you want to use gamification.
