It’s Tuesday again which means it’s time for our weekly compilation of Pinterest pins. This week we highlighted customer loyalty, brand advocates, design work and of course, more gamification! Head over to our BigDoor Pinterest page to check out all our favorite visuals for the week.
Whether you are an iphone fan or not, this little case is pretty awesome.
Created by Schreer Designs
Happy Friday! We found lots of interesting gamification related news this week. We found a lot of great information on social and brand loyalty as well as some great stuff on social games. We hope all our readers have a great weekend!
Brands that failed with gamification iMedia Connection 7/23/2012 With gamification being such a new industry, there are bound to be some people that make mistakes. This is a great look at some gamification implementations, where they went wrong and how we can learn from these mistakes. Brands mentioned include Foursquare, Zappos, Google and Klout.
Making a game of global tragedy Financial Post 7/25/2012 While we don’t really consider social games and gamification to be exactly the same thing, they do often play around with some of the same techniques and ideas (sparking change, driving engagement, etc). Frima Studio a Canadian game company has created a game to draw players attention to the power of corporations and the challenges businesses face balancing green choices with shareholders opinions.
Is Important the Same as Influence? Business2Community 7/25/2012 Our favorite gamification blogger over at Business2Community is back this week talking about influence in social media networks. As the environment around social media changes and grows, users constantly need to be thinking about how to grow their own networks and influence. Our favorite piece of advice “produce content that is original and interests you”.
General Motors Is Tops In Customer Loyalty, Ford A Close Second The Car Connection 7/25/2012 We love driving customer loyalty through gamification and we love seeing companies that dominate their industries because of their customers loyalty. Congratulations to General Motors and Ford for their loyal customers! It is great to see American car companies doing well again.
Facebook vs Twitter – The Rivalry, Differences, Privacy Issues Social Barrel 7/25/2012 While social media is clearly a dominating force in brand marketing, Facebook and Twitter provide very individual markets for different brands and industries. If you have ever wondered about the differences and benefits to these two popular sites, this is a dig into how each can help your brand.
Tuesday is kind of a sad day of the week, it follows the hated Monday, and comes right before the hump of the week, Wednesday. I propose Tuesday as Pinterest day, full of geeky images, cool design, social media tips and most important of all, everything gamification. Make sure to check out our Pinterest board to see everything we pinned up in the last week.
This week, we highlighted quite a few interesting social media infographics, as well as a great one on gamification and employment. We also felt the need to repost this awesome talk from Amy Jo Kim last year at Casual Connect on “Smart Gamification: Seven Core Concepts for Creating Compelling Experiences”. With Casual Connect going on in Seattle right now, we were reminded of her tips from last year!
What were your favorite pins this week?
If you are a frequent reader of mygamification.com you might have noticed that a few weeks ago we quietly updated the look of the BigDoor platform here on the site. Today, we want to proudly announce the newest version of BigDoor featuring a new look, better customization and updated user notifications. With both publishers and the end-user in mind, we’ve updated the BigDoor platform with more publisher features for easier and faster implementation as well as a simple interface to improve user experience.
A few highlights on the update:
Design: With the new update comes a new slick and minimalistic module. Keeping in mind that users come to a site to engage with content, we wanted to compliment a publisher’s site, without visually over-whelming it. The persistent form factor will sit on the bottom right of the page, and won’t interfere with content or the users browsing experience. Interaction happens only when users engage or perform a rewarded action.
Customization: Gamification should be flexible enough to work for a variety of publishers and their sites. With the newest version of BigDoor, publishers can choose what features to implement (be it quests, leaderboards, rewards, etc) without the worrying about user interface. The customizable dock allows publishers to pick and choose which BigDoor powered gamification apps are visible to users, which ensures that every BigDoor gamification solution is unique.
Notifications: Included with our new design, we’ve updated our user feedback to provide users a clear notification when they have made a rewarded action. We believe that a gamification solution needs to clearly communicate to users what actions are valued. Notifications are a great way to draw the users attention to these actions and let them know that they are moving in the right direction. No longer will users be unaware when or why they have received points. This not only improves the feedback loop for the user, but increases the likelihood that users will onboard and join in.
We’re working on loading more quests, adding features and content all the time, so make sure to check back frequently and see this new version at work! If you have any questions about the new look, or would like to talk to one of our gamification experts about a BigDoor solution for your site, you can email us at info@bigdoor.com or check out our website for information about specific BigDoor features.
We’d love to hear what you think!
It’s Friday, which means most of us are thinking about the weekend (or if you are a workaholic like we are, the plan for your next week). If you weren’t able to keep track of all the gamification news this week, here are our top stories.
The ‘Gamification’ of Personal Finance U.S. News 7/16/2012 Only a week after we posted about the need for gamification in personal finance, this week has had a rush of stories about just that. Interested to know what companies are trying to make finance more fun and engaging? This article talks about quite a few including payoff.com, Credit Cardio and our Seattle neighbors Bobber Interactive. Gamification seems like a great way to incentivize and educate people on long term financial goals.
Gamification Comes of Age Forbes 7/16/2012 It’s hard to argue that gamification isn’t here to stay when Forbes provides such a long list of companies successfully using game mechanics to increase loyalty and engagement. For the unconvinced reader, this is a comprehensive look at gamification, why it works and why it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Gamification The Next Generation: Introduce, Engage, Retain Business2Community 7/15/2012 We have to give Andrzej Marczewski some serious credit, he really gets gamification. Here, he focuses on the three stages of gamification, introduction, engagement and retention. While a lot of gamification solutions are solving the first two, due to the newness of many solutions, the focus hasn’t shifted to retention. Citing both BigDoor and Pug Pharm as companies who get this stage of gamification, he discusses the need for strong a strong community to retain users.
How far will you go for Fantastic Delites? – Delite-o-matic Fantastic Delites 7/5/2012 We couldn’t resist posting this awesome video done by Fantastic Delites. By turning their vending machine into a game, the company brought a ton of fun and an interesting look at what people will do for a snack!
We’ve decided to change up the order of some of our weekly and bi-weekly posts (hence the lack of gamification news on Monday). But don’t worry, we will settle back into a new routine soon. Today at BigDoor, we bring you our favorite Pinterest pins. We found some great stuff including new gamification infographics, tips for better social media and best of all, the video below.
You can check out all of our Pinterest findings on the BigDoor Pinterest page.
No one can say that the Dutch aren’t innovative!
Last night our CTO and Co-founder Jeff Malek participated on a gamification panel for the WTIA’s Gaming Community Event. Wade Rockett of Weber Shandwick and Scott Dodson of Bobber Interactive were also on the panel, moderated by Kraig Baker of Davis Wright Tremaine. The panel was excellent, with perspectives from a wide variety of gamification experience, ranging from finance applications to HR benefits. It’s always interesting talking gamification in front of the gaming community and this discussion was diverse and thought provoking.
The panel discussed a range of topics from the distinction between gamification and games, gamification failures and the role of social media in gamification solutions. It was surprising that even with a panel of experts all using gamification in different ways, they were often in agreement about the core principles of gamification and where it is heading in the future.
Scott Dodson spent a good deal of time talking about the importance of intrinsic rewards in gamification solutions. He noted that while extrinsic rewards give users an added bonus, the internal value to the user to engage, is key to creating an effective gamification program. We are seeing these kinds of intrinsic value a lot in energy, environmental and non-profit applications of gamification. Users who may already value the end goal are rewarded intrinsically though a gamified process.
Jeff Malek highlighted the differences between an old fashioned loyalty program and a gamified loyalty platform, namely the ability to expand and adapt well beyond what a standard loyalty program is about. Gamification is a next frontier loyalty program that uses technology to engage and solve online publisher and user questions. It is a much more adaptable system than the loyalty programs of the past with much greater analytic power and customization.
Wade Rockett brought a really interesting perspective to the panel with his company’s use of gamification internally to structure learning and development of employees. While the program is still in fairly early stages, he spoke to the success it has seen with employees actively seeking and engaging with badges and rewards. Wade also talked about the distinction between gamification and games noting that gamification often has a larger end goal than simple entertainment and is typically used to enhance something that already exists.
The final question to the panel was “Where do you see gamification heading in the next 2 years?” Everyone agreed that gamification in its many different iterations is here to stay. Examples of industries it will affect ranged from politics to mobile platforms.
We wanted to thank the WTIA for once again putting on a fantastic event that was both informative and interesting. Thank you as well to the panelists, the moderator and everyone who attended and grilled Jeff with some great questions. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
We’ve had the opportunity to work with some pretty awesome companies in a wide variety of industries since we started increasing loyalty and engagement with our gamified rewards program. From sports to entertainment and even health we consider ourselves pretty lucky to have worked with some of the coolest brands and people around. Each one has unique questions and different priorities about what users need and how gamification needs to interact with business and user goals. But for all our clients, increasing brand loyalty is one of the most important factors in choosing to implement gamification.
The more we talk with different companies, the more we see that old marketing techniques are just not satisfying the new kind of online user and they definitely fall short of creating the kind of loyalty that brands need for success.
With that said, while we see many companies coming to us to help foster loyalty, we still feel like the concept hasn’t caught on the way it should. So here is our list of the top 3 industries in need of brand loyalty:
Airlines/Travel
Gamification experts often talk about mileage plans when they talk about rewards programs, but let’s face it, most people aren’t very satisfied with their mileage program experiences or with the brands that try to keep them as customers. With the exception of high mileage business travelers most people are simply looking for a good deal, rather than sticking with a brand they know and trust. If Apple product users have taught us anything it’s that customers are willing to pay more if they believe that the product or service offered is better than the competition. But unlike Apple, airlines don’t seem to be making the effort to show users the benefits of being a loyalty member of a specific program. Most airline rewards programs are the same strict rules, difficult to redeem rewards and minimal customer value. They don’t encourage engagement with site features or advocacy on the brands behalf and they definitely don’t leave frequent users feeling all that special. Encouraging a travel community, centered around a specific brand and their services offered could take travel to the next level (ok, we had to use the pun…sorry!).
News/Blogging
News and press sites often have large numbers of site visitors, but low numbers of sharing and engagement. Additionally, most readers will jump from one news site to another looking for interesting news, rather than focusing on their favorite site and reading its content. Valuable actions to publishers, like commenting and shares are often ignored, as a user may balk at the need to sign up, login or take additional steps to engage with content. Sites that have embraced gamification, like Savannah Now, give users a tiny push towards engaging with content, a step they might not normally take. Once users are signed up and engaging with a community of other readers it is much more likely that they will return to continue to engage as well as bring their friends.
Financial
It’s safe to say that whomever you are, you can’t really avoid interacting with a bank or financial institution. But while most of us are forced to interact with them regularly (or face a very lumpy mattress) the general attitude towards most people’s banks is not one of loyalty. In fact, among people we talk too, most people who haven’t switched banks have only stayed around out of convenience. While we aren’t advocating that banks should start making us compete to access our money or provide leader-boards for the biggest account holders, we do think that fostering a bit of an online community, where users could be educated with financial tips and explore the online features each bank offers, could greatly increase customer satisfaction and increase loyalty.
So there you have it. Three unfun industries we think could stand to be a bit more fun. We’d love to hear what industries you think could use a bit more brand loyalty or what industries you think gamification could have the biggest impact on. Be sure to share!
Happy Monday! Since the 4th of July was last week, we know it was hard to keep up on all the news. If you missed out because you were BBQ-ing and watching fireworks, you can catch up on our favorite news below.
WeForPresident: Myspace’s Former Political Director Brings Social Media, Gamification to Politics TechCrunch 7/3/2012 We have seen gamification mobilize huge groups of people and now it’s time to see if it can do the same for politics. WeForPresident, launched by Lee Brenner, is an online community designed to educate and engage online users who might not be involved with politics. The site is heavily linked to social media (users login through Facebook) and uses gamification as well as online mini games to increase political engagement and education. With this site launching so close to a major election, it will be interesting to see the kind of use it gets and how people interact with the information available.
How To Take Advantage of Social Media Engagement Business2Community 7/6/2012 Any good gamification solution will be deeply integrated with social media and gamification can be a great way to beef up your presence online. “78% of consumers trust a peer’s online recommendations vs. 14% who trust advertisements,” engage your users, build loyalty and encourage them to talk about your brand or product to their friends via social networks.
Three things you need to know about gamification VentureBeat 7/3/2012 VentureBeat was in attendance at Gamification Summit 2012 and after hearing all the talks and doing some interviews of their own, they put together this great list. We really appreciate the mention and are so happy that Chamillionaire’s advice to keep gamification authentic to your audience was included!
Brand Loyalty and Sports Have Much in Common ClickZ 7/5/2012 If you are a sports fan or have spent time around some sports fans, you know that fandom can get pretty intense. Loyal fans spend more time, money and energy to demonstrate their commitment to teams and players than nearly any other group. What can we learn from sports teams about building this kind of loyalty? This article has some great tips.
We skipped last weeks Friday pin board post so we have a bunch of new stuff for you to check out on Pinterest today. Some of our favorites include some great graphics about loyalty loops, new ways to market for brand loyalty and some great infographics on social loyalty. Be sure to check them out on BigDoor’s Friday Pin Board.
We hope everyone had a fantastic week!
Marketing focus should be on creating advocates for your brand!
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