Happy Friday! We found lots of great gamification, customer loyalty and social media news for you this week. Catch up on our favorite links in this weeks gamification news roundup below!

Learn To Code, Get A Job: Treehouse Offers Free Courses To 2,500 College Students TechCrunch 9/14/2012 Portland based Treehouse is building an educational platform to help aspiring programmers and developers learn the trade. Using videos, quizzes and gamification, Treehouse is hoping to educate anyone interested in code from complete beginners to advanced developers. This week they announced that they will be giving 2,500 ‘scholarships’ of free access to their platform to college students across the country. Students will get 2 years access to their “gold” accounts, which includes 550+ videos, a real time practice engine and feedback on user projects.

Playing the business game The StarPhoenix 9/11/2012 We don’t normally focus much on enterprise gamification solutions, but we thought this was worth a mention. A new training tool for sales teams is being released called Quota, aimed at turning what is typically a boring training process into a fun collaborative training experience. The platform uses interactive seminars alongside game mechanics and game thinking to make sales team training more fun and engaging. George Anastasopoulos says of the Quota platform, “Fun may sound like a wishy-washy and unscientific factor in business, but at the end of the day, when it comes to learning, fun is an absolutely vital variable,”.

Tracking down the music with digital Dylan DW 9/10/2012 It is awesome to see someone who has been in the music industry for so long embracing a new technology like gamification. Bob Dylan is promoting his new album ‘Tempest’ through a mobile app called Sound Graffiti. The app unlocks random selections from the new album when users have hit a targeted location. One hundred locations around the world have been set up to unlock various songs through the app. This is an interesting marriage of gamification, location based services and the music industry, we can’t wait to see how this turns out!

Using Digital Coupons to Increase Engagement and Loyalty 1to1 Media 9/12/2012 At BigDoor we believe tangible rewards are a great way to help build customer loyalty. Those rewards don’t have to be expensive, and even coupons, discount codes and other sales type offers are beneficial. 1to1 Media agrees with us, acknowledging that digital coupons are a great way to create social benefit, as well as track users use of coupons you are providing and build customer engagement and loyalty. We hope to see this trend get more acknowledgment as time goes on.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media

The BigDoor team has grown again, and I’d like to take a moment to introduce one of the newest members of our team, Darren Brady. Darren was hired as an account manager a few weeks ago. He is a recent graduate of WSU with a passion for football. His enthusiasm for gamification and all its various parts made him the perfect person to talk a little bit about the BigDoor view on the overuse of “badge-only” gamification. 

Let’s have a candid talk about badges. A badge is a virtual representation of having accomplished an activity. The activity itself can be anything: Watching a video, posting a Facebook status update about eating a donut, or creating a given number of posts on a message board. In traditional game design, a badge may also be referred to as an achievement. How do badges work within the gamification framework?

• Reward desired, repeated activity.
• Provide visual representation of users status on leader-boards and profiles.

Badges seem to be everywhere online today, and for good reason: websites know that people like to display their achievements. The obvious example is Foursquare. Users are rewarded with badges for all kinds of activities, such as checking in at stores, destinations, and restaurants. Specific badges, such as Gym Rat (for attending a gym multiple times in a week), or even NASA Explorer (visiting the International Space Station), are awarded for specific activities. Badges seem to have become the champion of gamification reward systems. When used correctly, badges are a great way to provide intangible rewards: users are driven through content that publishers want them to be exposed to, as well as receive praise, status, and progression. But when used poorly, they can turn off users and drive them away from participation.

What are some reasons badges are popular with users?

• Social Influence/Power: Individuals enjoy having status. Badges that are displayable to other users (along with leaderboards) are a good example of this. Simply being in front of another person or comparatively “better” through a score is an intangible reward.
• Gratification/Praise: Individuals enjoy being praised. Be it by a circled “A+” on an 8^th grade science paper, or an “Employee of the Month” plaque, being praised is an affirmation of good behavior. Users like to feel like they are doing the right thing.
• Progression: Measured progression and achievement is extremely important in game mechanics. A badge can signify a user’s progress through levels, goals, or targets, adding value to the users overall experience.

While providing some intangible benefit for online users, just badges are not enough to create a robust and effective customer loyalty solution. Many sites are missing out on the full benefits of rewarding their most loyal users with tangible rewards that the user can more easily comprehend as valuable. The reality is that for many B2C companies, badges by themselves are essentially valueless to the user. Furthermore, badges don’t have a very long shelf life: the novelty of earning/collecting badges wears off and leaves nothing to propel the user to continue to engage. While badges do praise a user’s progression and mastery, this effect is often not enough to create tangible value from a user’s perspective. What real-world value do virtual badges have outside of the site they’re awarded from? If a companies goal is to increase loyalty, social activity and user engagement, it is clear to us, that badges are not the main tactic sites should be using.

At BigDoor, we’re wholly focused on the user experience. If users in one of our loyalty implementations isn’t able to quantify the value of his/her time online, we’ve failed. We’ve discovered that the value of game rewards can be better understood by the user if intangible rewards (badges) are offered in addition to a virtual currency and a redemption system. A user’s value on the site (indicated in part by badges) is then transformed into value off the site in the form of tangible rewards such as coupons, physical items, and sweepstakes. Instead of just awarding social standing, praise, and progression, a virtual currency and redemption system adds tangible value and additional brand touch-points for the user. Examples of a virtual currency and redemption system include exchanging earned coins for additional paint colors in the popular mobile/tablet game Draw Something, and the NFL’s Fan Rewards program, where users earn coins to “spend” on anything from a t-shirt, to 15% off coupons, or even a chance to for a trip to the NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

Badges and their role in customer loyalty solutions aren’t going anywhere. Badges are an integral part of a healthy game-mechanics breakfast. But for many consumer facing implementations badges just don’t offer the same kind of measurable value and appreciation for their users as tangible rewards do.

Keep in mind that there is no single mix of game mechanics that fits the needs of every business. When used, badges need to have contextual meaning to be valuable to any user, within any context. Badges are a low cost way for gamified sites to reward their users for participating in desired tasks; but for those who choose to prioritize user satisfaction and engagement, badges should be accompanied by other reward types, virtual and tangible, to foster further user loyalty.

What do you think? Do you think that the role of badges changes depending on the gamification implementation? Are badges overused? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Virtual Currency

Happy Friday! For many of us this was a short week, so you might have spent a lot of it trying to catch up from missing a day. If you lost track of gamification, social media and customer loyalty news don’t worry! You can catch up here.

Using Social Media To Manage Relationships Through The Sales Funnel Business2Community 9/6/2012 Every marketer and sales person is thinking about how to manage customer relationships effectively. This is a great article on how to use the power of social media to build brand affinity with customers in various stages of the sales funnel. The value of social media in building customer relationships validates the success of gamification as a great way for brands to encourage and manage their customers in a variety of ways, including through their social networks.

NFL.com Gets Gamified Just in Time for 2012 Kickoff Gamification.co 9/5/2012 We highlighted the NFL Fan Rewards program last week, but now that it has been up and running for a while, the gamification experts over at Gamification.co highlighted why this implementation is a huge step for gamification and brand loyalty programs. Of the program, Ivan Kuo says, “The NFL brand’s full commitment to a site-wide implementation must be one of the biggest gamification implementations on the web today.”

The 100-Second Guide to Gamification in Education Edudemic 9/2/2012 This infographic has been around for a while now, but in case you haven’t seen it, it is worth a look. Highlighting the potential for gamification in education, elements of gamification valuable to education as well as a few examples of existing programs makes this a densely packed infographic full of great information.

Social Media Marketing Encourages Customer Loyalty Through Interaction Social Focus by CG 8/30/2012 We talk a lot on this blog about building customer loyalty through social media and game mechanics, but it’s always great to hear someone else talking about the value of these tactics. There are some great tips in here (even if she doesn’t include gamification) and it’s worth a quick look if you are interested in brand loyalty and how to create loyal users.

Game design, gamification, game mechanics and games-based learning Doug Belshaw 9/2/2012 As the marketing specialist at BigDoor I spend a lot of time looking at the #Gamification tag on twitter. There has been a ton of activity talking about the Coursera Gamification course led by Kevin Werbach in the last few weeks. This is a great read by someone taking the course and thinking critically about how we interact with games and game design.

Best of Startup Day: Keith Smith on how to avoid failure Geekwire 9/6/2012 We know this isn’t really gamification news, but everyone has had to deal with failure in their lives at some point. Our CEO Keith Smith talked about how to avoid failure and how to deal with it when it’s unavoidable in his 2010 Startup Day talk. Some of his advice, “Be prepared to make sacrifices” “Build and develop the people that are going to be able to bail your ass out” and “Layout the problems that you have, identify those that can kill you, and work on the ones that can kill you the fastest”.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media, Startups

Back in June we talked about how excited we were to have Grammy award winning artist and entrepreneur Chamillionaire at Gamification Summit 2012 to talk about brand loyalty and his BigDoor implementation. Chamillionaire discussed his websites lack of engagement and his quest to find a solution that could engage his fans, recognize his online users and boost web registrations. Unlike other solutions he tried, BigDoor’s gamification platform was easy to integrate with his existing website, allowed quick customization and simple rewards management resulting in a 32% user registration rate. You only need to visit Chamillionaire’s website, Facebook or Twitter page to see that the program is still building loyalty and getting fans excited about the Chamillionaire brand.

We posted a Chamillionaire case study last month, but now you can check out the entire Chamillionaire talk from Gamification Summit to find out why he chose BigDoor and how he used gamification to make his loyalty program a huge success.

Enjoy!

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Partners, Success, User engagement

Happy Friday! For many of us (in the states anyway) today marks the beginning of Labor Day weekend with Monday off to relax just a little bit more than normal. Before heading out to your Labor Day plans, make sure you are caught up on gamification, customer loyalty and social media news. We made it easy by compiling our favorite articles of the week!

How Gamification Can Help Attract New Customers Entrepreneur 8/30/2012 There is a common misconception about gamification that leads people to believe that a gamified loyalty program is the same as the rewards program at your local coffee shop. Gabe Zichermann of gamification.co explains the difference and how gamification can help build a new customer base, instead of just rewarding existing customers.

A Sum of Parts: The Point of Points and The Gamification of Videogames Gameranx 8/28/2012 Points have always been a part of games, but this article argues that the emphasis in their meaning and role has changed over time as video game development has advanced. “Instead of standing in for some other, intrinsic, emotional goal, the numbers themselves became the goal.” This change directly influences the way we think about gamification and motivation. While we might not agree with everything here, this is a really interesting theory that is worth a quick read.

Boost Your Blog Audience’s Engagement With Gamification Independent Fashion Bloggers 8/23/2012 We wanted to highlight this article as an example of why gamification fails. Adding a quiz to your blog is not gamification, nor is integrating social media. Gamification requires many of these elements (social, rewards, polls/quiz interactions) working together to create an interactive experience. For bloggers looking for gamification, they should check out BigDoor’s free gamified rewards program.

In Defense of Social Shopping: Driving Sales and Loyalty Forbes 8/28/2012 Despite retail seeming like an obvious place to embrace social media and gamification, we have yet to see a really cool implementation. This is a great look at the trend, challenges and suggestions for brands looking to turn shopping into a much more interactive and social experience.

 Social media poised to drive customer loyalty, Logic Group Survey reveals Retail Times 8/29/2012 Gamification companies, including BigDoor have been talking about the importance of social media in building customer loyalty for a while, but the trend finally seems to be picking up steam. The Logic Group took a survey of British buying habits and brand loyalties and the results are really interesting. Among other findings the survey found that banks, supermarkets and mobile phone networks are the brands that consumers feel most loyal towards.

SA’s bank clients are becoming less loyal Money Web 8/28/2012 We are always talking about ways to increase loyalty with gamification, but we don’t often talk about industries that seem to be suffering from a loyalty drought. This study takes a look at customer loyalty among banks in South Africa, including why consumers are becoming less loyal and what banks need to do to bring them back. There is a lot to learn about customer loyalty here and it’s a great case study for what to do and not do.

Posted in: Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty

Happy Tuesday! It’s that time of the week when BigDoor posts our favorite Pinterest Pins regarding gamification, social media and customer loyalty. We found some cool stuff this week including some statistics on social gaming, tips and examples of great customer loyalty and some really interesting stuff on using game mechanics for behavior modification. You can check it all out on our BigDoor Pinterest Board.

Our favorite geeky pin of the week was this awesome Tardis latte art. We’d love to see our local barista pull this off!

Posted in: Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media

Happy Friday! We have scoured the internet for the best gamification and customer loyalty highlights of the week. We are pretty excited to see some new applications of gamification as well as some redesign of older gamification websites and tips for improving loyalty programs. If you are like us and can’t stand to go into your weekend without the latest news, read on.

Social Shopping Site Shopcade Introduces ‘Perks’ To Reward It’s Most Influential Shoppers TechCrunch 8/23/2012 Social shopping side Shopcade has introduced even more features aiming at using gamification to build customer loyalty as well as reward super-users on the site. Users will now be able to earn points for sharing, shopping and completing sponsored missions to earn rewards from partner brands. The site hopes to grow its user base and increase engagement among existing users. Retail hasn’t caught the gamification bug the way some other industries have, so this will be an interesting example to watch.

eBay gamifies the auction, with a little help from US Santa Cruz VentureBeat 8/21/2012 This is a really cool example of academia and industry coming together to collaborate on innovative gamification. US Santa Cruz students are working with eBay, the online auction site, to see how game mechanics can engage the eBay audience. The program began with a small test course over the summer, and will expand to a larger course of 30 students this fall. It will be great to see what these students come up with and if eBay implements it!

What’s the Difference Between Games and Gamification MindShift 8/21/2012 Critiques of gamification often come from game designers, pointing out the vast differences between gamification and true games. This article takes a look at games, gamification and simulation in an attempt to parse out the differences and similarities. This is a great read for people thinking about how to add game mechanics to their site who might still be unsure about how best to do it.

Gamification of Scrum Team Practice is More Fun Dr. Dobbs 8/21/2012 This is something we haven’t seen yet! Gamification company Innovation Games has released a game, ScrumKnowsy, designed to help developers improve their Scrum practice. Developers can play challenges or multiplayer experiences to track their alignment with Scrum practices, roles and responsibilities. ScrumTide Partner Jim Complien said of the project, “The goal is to have fun and create value, and ScrumKnowsy helps Agile teams meet that goal.”

Fitocracy Redesign Ensures Your Friends Will Know if You’re Working Out or Not SocialTimes 8/20/2012 Fitocracy, the fitness social network launched last year, has gone through a redesign to fix UX issues that hindered users navigation of the site. The social networking site uses a mixture of gamification and social features to encourage users to reach their fitness goals. Among other redesign features, Fitocracy also updated user profiles, tracking pages and unveiled a new fitness mascot. We love seeing this community grow, as well as see the success of gamification in fitness!

Avoiding Loyalty Fatigue Business2Community 8/17/2012 While we make no secret at BigDoor that we are huge loyalty program fans, we also think this is a great reminder to building smart loyalty programs as well as avoid the pitfalls of bad implementations. Some of the top tips include avoiding too many emails, limiting your terms and conditions and providing rewards with real value to your users. As the internet explodes with loyalty programs, it is important to think about what works, what doesn’t and what companies are nailing their loyalty programs (We have to put a vote in for some of our awesome clients).

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media

Happy Friday! Doesn’t every weekend feel just a bit more relaxing if you are caught up on gamification and customer loyalty news? We think so! Find out what we think is the best industry news below.

Social media making the mundane more fun NineMSN 8/16/2012 Randi Zuckerberg, former head of marketing at Facebook and the sister of founder Mark Zuckerberg, highlighted the gamification trend as a new way for social media to make life more fun and luxurious. Users are seeking apps, games and services that make their lives easier and the trend is becoming more and more common in our lives.

5 Tips to Increase Customer Loyalty adotas 8/15/2012 Customer loyalty is becoming more important for businesses, but what creates the kind of loyalty that businesses want? A recent survey finds that “among active social-network active users, 21 percent stated they would make a purchase based on outstanding customer service from a company, regardless of the item’s price.” This article lists 5 other tips to building loyal customers, including rewards and engagement programs.

What Companies Miss on Their Social Engagement Journey Destination CRM 8/16/2012 Any marketer knows that building a social community around your brand isn’t easy. Focusing attention on brand influencers and advocates in different ways can maximize the benefit of a social engagement plan. Encouraging both these valuable customer types, can be done easily through customer loyalty programs, offering a wide variety of the things users want, mainly: status, access, power and stuff.

The pro’s guide to gamification Net Magazine 8/16/2012 We love seeing someone take the time to produce a comprehensive and thorough guide to gamification, the various applications for it as well as provide some best practices. This is a great guide to gamification as a whole, as well as a great look at BigDoor our gamified rewards program. We really appreciate being mentioned!

How Gamification Can Reduce the Need for Discounts Entrepreneur 8/14/2012 Gamification guru Gabe Zichermann highlighted the importance of intrinsic value in gamification in this 60 Second Solution video. While physical rewards are often great motivators, finding out what emotionally motivates your users is equally as important to success.

Google Gamifies Olympic Doodle X4 Business2Community 8/10/2012 Is there anything that Google can’t do? Riding on the popularity of Olympics, Google created 4 Doodle games for site visitors to play, earn points and share. The search engine giant has so far released hurdling, basketball, slalom canoe and soccer. You can also see all the non-game Olympic Doodles in the article as well.

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media

I love gamification and I hate to see it get a bad reputation. As BigDoor’s marketing specialist, I am fascinated by the conversation surrounding gamification. Gamification is a fascinating space because we have a lot to learn about what works and what doesn’t. At BigDoor, we spend as much time as possible educating publishers on what we think makes gamification a success. So I thought I would start sharing tips related to common questions I see popping up.

Tip #1: Keep your users in mind.

A user that comes to your site because they love your products isn’t going to appreciate a gamification solution that distracts from that. Similarly, a user that is coming to your site for some intrinsic value or status may not care about physical rewards. Take a moment (I recommend more) and think about what your site offers users, gamification can amplify your sites value and increase user loyalty, but it can’t add value where there is none and it definitely won’t succeed if it doesn’t line up with what your users want.

Once you’ve nailed down what people value, ask yourself if gamification can help. Gamification can among other things motivate, increase community and challenge users to engage with content. It can also help overcome the hurdle of registration so many publishers often find themselves facing. If you find that your goals can be met by using gamification, focus on using game mechanics that drive users towards the things they already value or educate them on parts of your site that can get them where they want to go.

Remember, gamification is about adding value to your users. If the average visitor can’t understand the value of the game mechanics you’ve added, something has gone wrong.

If you think you are a publisher that could benefit from gamification on your website, contact our gamification experts at BigDoor to see how we can help!

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Uncategorized

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.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media