Using gamification in loyalty programs is a hot trend right now, and for good reason. It’s been shown to increase customer retention by a whopping 30%, making gamification a powerful tool for engaging and retaining customers.
Let us tell you a secret about your customers—they love playing games.
If you think that’s not a big deal, consider this: companies that combine gamification and loyalty programs see customer retention increase by 30%.
The average person enjoys the thrill of competition and the small rewards that come with it, which is what makes gamification so powerful. And it’s the main reason so many companies invest in loyalty program gamification.
Who can blame them? With platforms like Adact, almost anyone can launch a gamified loyalty program in minutes.
In this post, we’ll go over the basics of this exciting new concept and give you ten loyalty program ideas using gamification.
Let’s take a look!
How can you use gamification?
Gamification means taking something that typically isn’t fun—such as building a loyalty program—and turning it into a more enjoyable game-like process. It usually includes these elements:
- Point systems
- Awards and badges
- Competition features
- Some skills
- A little bit of luck
Gamification is great for building loyalty, onboarding employees, engaging conference attendees, and improving education.
But how do you use gamification in loyalty programs?
The first step is determining your business goals because loyalty program gamification is never random. On the contrary, you need to know exactly what you want to achieve with it. Is it to build relationships or to drive more website traffic? Perhaps it’s to boost brand advocacy?
As soon as you figure it out, you can pick the right approach for gamified loyalty programs. After that, you must choose the most suitable game for a given goal. For example, surveys and quizzes will help you learn much about your customers, while prize wheels are good at re-engaging passive consumers.
The third tip is to find the right channel for loyalty program gamification. Will you do it through the mobile app, social media account, or your website? It’s a critical decision because customer engagement is about delivering the right content to the right audience using the right channel.
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Gamification: Transforming Marketing through Play
Gamification is the practice of integrating game mechanics and design elements into non-game contexts to engage and motivate people in achieving their goals. By tapping into intrinsic human motivations such as competition, achievement, and collaboration, gamification transforms mundane tasks into engaging and enjoyable experiences.
Why is gamification useful for customer loyalty and rewards?
According to a recent survey, 26% of consumers stopped using or buying from a business over the course of a year. That means you can expect to lose one in four clients each year — but that’s only if you do nothing to stop it.
Gamification in loyalty programs can help you significantly reduce customer churn and it also comes with many other benefits, such as:
Improved user experience
Make customer interactions more engaging and fun with loyalty program gamification. Points, leaderboards, and levels are tricks to keep your audience engaged and make them associate your brand with entertainment.
Brand promotion through word-of-mouth
When gamified loyalty program members share their experiences with friends and family, it can lead to more word-of-mouth referrals. Gamification incentivizes customers to share their experiences and achievements with others, increasing brand loyalty and awareness.
Maximized customer loyalty
Gamification is the unicorn of modern marketing because it maximizes customer loyalty. An effective gamification reward system encourages customers to make repeat purchases, and customers stay loyal due to the exclusive or enticing benefits of the loyalty program.
Increased brand recognition
A saturated market can make it hard for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competition. Thanks to gamification, you can make your business stand out by providing unique gaming experiences customers won’t find anywhere else. This tactic is similar to conference booth gamification—your visitors are more likely to develop brand loyalty when you provide engaging content.
Elevated customer engagement
Gamification incorporates incentives and challenges, and rewards customers for interacting with your brand, leading to more customer engagement. Gamification incentive programs give customers a feeling of success and accomplishment that keeps them coming back to your brand.
Supported community building
Gamification also fosters a positive environment where customers can share experiences, interact with each other, and build relationships. Gamified loyalty programs are an easy way to build a community of highly engaged customers.
Improved collection of user-related data
Gamified loyalty programs also offer insights into customer behaviors and preferences. They help businesses gain user-related data, which can be used to optimize customer experience. It also enables companies to target participants and give personalized rewards, thus improving overall user experience.
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Best examples of loyalty gamification
Many successful businesses are already using loyalty program gamification to reap the benefits we’ve discussed so far. Some of the top loyalty gamification examples include:
Costa Coffee Milestones
Costa Coffee rewards loyal customers for making purchases with its Milestones program. In this example of gamification in loyalty programs, customers buy products to collect points. Once they’ve collected a certain number of points, they reach a “Milestone” that rewards them with prizes, such as a discount or a free coffee.
By using loyalty gamification, Costa Coffee is able to keep its customers engaged and build a solid base of loyal customers.
KFC Rewards Arcade
KFC introduced its Rewards Arcade to improve its traditional loyalty program. The fast food chain created a loyalty gamification app that lets customers play a branded minigame for the chance to win free menu items.
With customers never knowing what they will win, the app adds excitement to their dining experience, increasing customer engagement and interest in the KFC loyalty program. Aside from the benefits for customers, KFC Rewards Arcade also allows KFC to collect valuable customer data.
This gamified loyalty program also promotes social interaction, as families and friends can play together and enjoy winning prizes. This makes customers associate the KFC brand with fun and excitement.
10 Best customer loyalty game ideas
The connection between gamification and loyalty is clear, but delivering the right gamified content remains a challenge for many companies. If you’re unsure where to start, you can find some inspiration from these top ten customer loyalty program ideas:
1. Wheel of fortune
A wheel of fortune game is a classic way to immerse your customers in a game-like experience. Just a spin of the wheel can reward customers with discounts, free products or services, or any other prizes you choose to give away. Not only will customers have fun playing, but they’ll also be more likely to make purchases in the future.
This gaming loyalty program feature works wonders for reaching passive customers who:
- follow your brand but rarely buy from you
- were frequent buyers but stopped making purchases
A wheel of fortune game is an excellent way to motivate users to get involved with your brand. With a gamified customer loyalty platform like Adact, you can create up to 25 wheel sections, provided you have enough perks to give away.
2. Open the box
Another option for loyalty gamification is rewarding people through the timeless “Open the box” game. You can create different prizes for your most loyal customers and offer them through a fun game.
The best thing about this game is its simplicity. Customers simply choose a box to open and then receive their reward. It takes only a few seconds to play and customers aren’t required to enter lots of data or wait until the end of the game to receive their prize. The reward is just one click away.
With this loyalty game, you can create different prizes for your most loyal customers and offer them through a fun game. The simple gameplay combined with the excitement of instantly winning a prize can draw a lot of enthusiasm from customers.
3. Trivia
The third item on our list of customer loyalty program ideas is trivia. With trivia you can create questions about your products or services, rewarding customers who answer correctly with discounts or loyalty program points. You can also use trivia to educate customers about your company and its products.
But what makes this feature so good? Customers receive a reward and in the process learn something about your brand. On top of that, trivia can bring some fun and excitement into your gamification rewards program.
With loyalty gamification software like Adact, you can add as many questions as you like to your trivia game. However, we suggest keeping it short and sweet. You can also customize game elements according to your style and brand.
Adact utilizes straightforward game logic in creating trivia games and allows you to tailor elements such as:
- The order of questions
- Timeout for answers
- Delay until the next question
- Display of answers from other participants
The game mechanics are easy, which means your customers are guaranteed to have fun with this interactive loyalty game.
4. Treasure hunt
This form of loyalty gamification works especially well for brick-and-mortar stores. With this game, you can set up a variety of treasure hunt tasks, such as finding a specific item in the store or answering questions about your products. By encouraging customers to explore your store and look for hidden prizes, you can engage customers and give them a memorable experience with your brand.
You can also use a treasure hunt to draw attention to new items and offers. By offering gamified rewards points for completing certain tasks, customers are more likely to come back and participate again.
5. Personality test
You can also use personality tests in your loyalty program to get customers more involved. These tests are usually fun and lighthearted and can add some fun to your customers’ shopping experience. They can also help you understand more about the customers’ preferences and interests.
But why would consumers participate in this kind of gamification program? People seek confirmation of their qualities, particularly their strengths. This makes personality tests one of the most effective ways to get customers involved in your loyalty program.
When creating personality tests with Adact, you can:
- Choose the number of questions
- Give players at least two possible outcomes
- Design game visuals to showcase your brand
The whole process is effortless, as it is when using Adact for creating any games or features for your gamified rewards program.
6. Puzzle
Puzzles are one of the most popular loyalty games. A puzzle can be a very unique game that shows the level of brand recognition and brand loyalty among your customers. Perhaps you want them to put together your logo? Maybe there’s an interesting visual from one of your campaigns?
Aside from the fun gameplay, by offering a prize you can motivate people to keep playing and solve the puzzle. With Adact you can even upload your own designs and customize puzzles, including individual elements, backgrounds, fonts, and colors.
7. Advent calendar
With an advent calendar, customers get rewards for completing tasks over a specific period of time. Advent calendars work best when used around the holidays, when people are in a special buying mood and appreciate unique promotions.
Besides that, loyalty program games like advent calendars contribute to the overall holiday atmosphere and give customers a special feeling. By getting customers involved in a festive game, you also build brand loyalty and recognition.
Related: 5 Best Advent Calendar Ideas for the Business Holiday Season 2022
8. Leaderboard
A leaderboard is a feature that allows customers to compare their performance against other participants in your gamification loyalty program.
People don’t like to lose and they’ll do anything to stay ahead of the competition. As soon as users get hooked on the idea of competing and climbing up the leaderboard, they’re more likely to participate regularly in your campaign. This encourages competition and drives engagement.
9. Scratch cards
When exploring gamification of loyalty programs, don’t forget scratch cards. This type of gamified loyalty program works similarly to lottery tickets, where customers scratch off a card and get a reward if they’re lucky enough to reveal a winning combination. It’s an exciting way to engage customers while giving them something of value.
With scratch cards, customers can get multiple rewards for the same purchase, creating a sense of progress and motivation and encouraging them to make repeat purchases.
10. Quizzes
If you’re looking for a fun and engaging gamification reward system, then why not try quizzes? They’re a great way to test customer knowledge about your products, services, or brand, or even general topics.
What’s more, if you make the quiz challenging enough it can create an additional layer of engagement that helps drive sales. For example, you can offer gamification rewards to customers who answer all the questions correctly or create a leaderboard for the top scores.
Overall, quizzes promote an engaging customer experience and encourage customer loyalty. Plus, they can help you collect valuable data about customer preferences and interests that can help you improve your gaming loyalty programs.
While these aren’t the only loyalty gaming ideas, they are proven features that are guaranteed to boost user participation. Some honorable mentions include:
- Prize machines
- Visual quizzes
- Challenges
- Badges
- Social sharing contests
- Surveys
- Open-the-box campaigns
- Games like Hoops or Candy Crush
You can experiment with all of these features or even combine them to create unique loyalty programs. What matters most is that your gamification campaign resonates with your target audience.
How to get started with loyalty gamification?
There are many ways to grow customer lifetime value through gamification loyalty programs, but you still need the right tool for the job. Adact is that tool. It’s the easiest solution for creating, upgrading, and managing your gamification campaigns.
But what is Adact?
Adact is a customer loyalty gamification platform that helps businesses and marketing teams launch gamified campaigns with just a few clicks. There’s no need to design or code anything—Adact enables you to build a branded loyalty program in minutes.
Related: How To Create a Branded Game To Promote Your Business
Simply sign up and start working on your loyalty campaign ideas. The Adact dashboard has two main sections that make it easy to create and improve your campaigns:
- Campaigns: This is where you can tweak gamification techniques and features to suit your brand and target audience.
- Analytics: Here you can find performance data on previous or current campaigns.
Once you launch a campaign, you can view all the relevant information about it, including:
- Unique page visitors
- Unique leads
- Games started
- Landing page visitors
- Bounce rate percentage
- Game completion percentage
- Average gameplay time
If you’re into advanced analytics, Adact also lets you see daily stats, the most active players, high scores, and so much more.
Gamification for customer loyalty FAQ
What are the best loyalty programs and apps?
There are plenty of loyalty gamification software available, all with different features and pricing. Adact is the best loyalty gamification app due to its ease of use, customizable features, and wide selection of games that can be used in gamified loyalty programs.
How can you use gamification for loyalty?
There are multiple ways you can incorporate gamification into your loyalty program. First, you can give customers rewards or points when they make purchases. This boosts customer engagement, incentivizes repeat purchases and shows customers your appreciation for their business.
You can also create fun and exciting games that customers can enjoy playing and can receive discounts and prizes from. Fun games make customers associate your brand with positive experiences, promoting brand loyalty.
How effective are reward programs?
A gamification rewards program is an excellent way to boost customer engagement and increase repeat purchases. 76% of customers are more likely to return to a company if it has a good rewards program.
But the benefits of a gaming loyalty program go deeper than just sales. Gamified loyalty programs offer customers a fun, exciting, and memorable experience that they will associate with your brand, helping you build an emotional connection with customers and boost brand loyalty.
What’s the difference between a loyalty program and a reward program?
A loyalty program is an overarching strategy to boost engagement with your brand and encourage repeat purchases. Loyalty programs may offer discounts to members. A reward program is typically a subset of a loyalty program. Customers make purchases to collect reward points, which can be used to get discounts or prizes.
Both are aimed at increasing customer loyalty, but a rewards program rewards customers for past purchases.
How can I gamify my loyalty program?
There are many ways to create gamified loyalty programs. One approach is to create challenges or quests that members can complete to earn rewards. You can also offer bonus points for engaging in specific behaviors, such as referring new members or making purchases on certain days of the week.
Another strategy is to use leaderboards and badges to rank customers and motivate them to compete with each other. Limited-time promotions and special rewards can also add some excitement to your gamification loyalty program.
What is the impact of gamification on customer loyalty?
One of the main benefits of gamification is its ability to promote customer engagement and brand loyalty. By using gamification in loyalty programs you can provide a unique experience to customers, which leads to an emotional connection with your brand.
When customers unlock exclusive discounts or rewards with your brand, there is a feeling of exclusivity and accomplishment, further increasing customer loyalty. Finally, when a game fits the needs and preferences of your customers, it shows them that you understand them, strengthening your relationship with customers.
Are loyalty cards gamification?
Yes, loyalty cards are a part of a gamification reward system. Most marketers use them to motivate and encourage customers to continue spending money at a particular store.
By awarding points for each purchase, customers feel like they’re getting closer to something bigger and better. This sense of accomplishment encourages customers to keep coming back. In this sense, loyalty cards can be considered a form of gamification.
What are some statistics that support the gamification of reward programs?
In 2023 companies that incorporated gamification in loyalty programs saw a 22% increase in customer retention. Customer engagement also increased by as much as 48%. Gamified elements were also shown to reduce customer churn by 63%.
What technology is used in loyalty games software?
Most businesses use a customer loyalty gamification platform like Adact to launch loyalty programs. These tools enable gamification and automation, and make it easy to give custom rewards to buyers. With these new technologies, you can implement:
- Point-based systems
- VIP tiers
- Referral programs
Loyalty gamification software also allows merchants to track customer activities and create tailored experiences. Additionally, this software allows businesses to collect and analyze customer data, giving them a better understanding of customers and increasing customer lifetime value.
Create your first gamified loyalty program
If there’s one thing that can make loyalty programs more interesting, it’s gamification.
Gamification drives user engagement by encouraging competition and giving customers a sense of accomplishment. Then, customer loyalty comes as a byproduct.
When using Adact, you can automate your gamified loyalty programs. Our tool lets you design all kinds of game-like experiences for your clients, so you can maximize engagement and promote brand loyalty.
You’re just a few clicks away from boosting your marketing strategy with a gamified loyalty program. So, what are you waiting for?
If you’re looking for a powerful tool for increasing customer retention, then book a demo with Adact and let us show you how we can take your customer loyalty to the next level with gamification!
