Gamification software: Benefits and 6 essential features

• A 47% rise in engagement

• A 22% rise in brand loyalty

• A 15% rise in brand awareness

• Gamification software definition

• Benefits of gamification software

• Key features of gamification software

• Case study: Flash Coffee

What is gamification software?

"Gamification can be as simple as awarding points for purchases or as involved as creating different rewards for specific customer behavior. The guiding principle is the same: gamification makes a serious process, i.e. accessing a website to find out more information or purchasing a product online, more attractive, more compelling, and more likely to hold a customer’s interest. Even better, it’s a tactic that can incentivize the entire customer journey, from acquisition to retention."

James Dye

Country Director UK/I at Talon.One

Benefits of gamification software

• Enhanced engagement: While companies use various technologies to keep their customers engaged, gamification software stands out because it infuses elements of enjoyment and accomplishment into the experience. Unlike other approaches, which might feel more passive or one-sided, gamification actively involves customers. This encourages people to accomplish tasks and make purchases, all while having fun. 

• Increased sales: Gamification is especially powerful as it taps into the brain’s reward mechanism to encourage sales, particularly when combined with coupons or vouchers as prizes. This is because people are more inclined to use a reward they've earned compared to one that's just handed to them.

KFC Japan’s gamified campaign increased sales by 106%. Source: Gamify.com

• Zero-party data collection: Implementing gamification software allows brands to collect zero-party data - the information that customers willingly and proactively share with companies. For example, running game-based quizzes on your website or app enables you to collect valuable, consensual insights into your customers' product preferences, behaviors, and individual traits.

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Key features of gamification software

• User ranking: Being able to compare player rankings triggers a sense of challenge and desire to improve. This competitive element motivates users to invest more time and effort into the game, ultimately leading to higher engagement levels. 

Leaderboards create a sense of challenge and the desire to improve among users.

• Rewards, points, and badges: Elements like badges positively reinforce certain behavior, while appealing to users’ inner collector:  shoppers can, for example, collect points and convert them into badges that represent their achievements. By earning a sufficient number of points and badges, they might qualify for rewards such as bonuses, discounts, or free items.

• Progress tracker: As customers approach the next game level, they usually become more active. Incorporating a visual progress tracker in your app encourages users to enhance their involvement and earn better rewards. This tracker displays their progress and remaining distance toward the reward.

Flash Coffee uses a progress tracker to increase user engagement. Source: flash-coffee.com

• Loyalty and referral integration: This feature is vital in gamification software as it aligns the gamified element with your loyalty and promotions strategy. For this, you'll want to select an enterprise gamification platform that lets users add points to their loyalty program's profile or digital wallet, and create referral codes that users can share to invite others to participate.

• Automated campaign monitoring: Marketing teams often complain about needing to manually monitor reward redemptions nearing completion. In cases of human error or missed updates, customers could miss out on redeeming rewards due to exhausted campaign budgets. To streamline processes and enhance customer experiences, work with gamification software that automatically monitors budgets and updates rewards to 'fully redeemed' status when budgets are nearly spent.

• Reporting and analytics: Your gamification software can offer valuable insights into which games are more effective in motivating users to take action and use their points. With these insights, you can create games that generate the highest customer engagement.

Case study: Flash Coffee

"With Talon.One, we now have the power to incentivize any user behavior we want - and make it fun and rewarding in our app. "

David Brunier

Founder and CEO at Flash Coffee

• Surprise: Flash Coffee's app consistently introduces new, time-limited rewards, maintaining excitement and encouraging customers to return for more prizes.

• Delight: Customers experience a feeling of satisfaction by participating in easy mini-games.

• Earn and burn: Customers are motivated to use their points since they have to put in effort to earn them.