Last week, the BigDoor team closed out our April conference schedule by attending iStrategy Miami. The conference brought together online marketers to strategize and discuss the future of customer engagement. In addition to enjoying a bit of sun and Florida weather, the BigDoor team had a great time discussing how the BigDoor loyalty solution can solve common marketing problems including; user acquisition, directing user engagement and customer retention.

BigDoor also also competed in and won the iPitch competition. Our CEO Keith Smith gave a 6 minute demo of the BigDoor product to attendees, followed by a Q & A session from panelists: Ben Parr, Jonah Goodhart and Eric Litman. Attendees then voted on the technology they thought was the most relevant to solving their marketing problems. We wanted to share Keith’s winning slide deck, for anyone who wasn’t in attendance or who wanted a chance to look over it again. Feel free to shoot us questions in the comments.

Posted in: Blog, Conferences, Gamification, Loyalty, Testimonials, User engagement

Last week the gamification industry gathered in San Francisco for the 2013 Gamification Summit. The conference highlights the truly broad application of gamification across industries around the world. Every year we are impressed with how much the industry has grown and changed. As long running sponsors of the event, we were very excited to have 5 team members staffing the BigDoor booth, speaking at the event and interacting with the gamification community in person.

GSummit offers up speakers from all aspects of the industry: education, enterprise, social good and consumer facing applications. This year, we were very pleased to have another one of our customers talking about their success using BigDoor’s platform.  Jeff Hawley, Director of Customer Experience with Yamaha Corporation of America spoke about his experience implementing a customer loyalty program, in conjunction with Yamaha’s 125^th Year anniversary that engaged and rewarded the diverse set of customers that visit Yamaha’s website.  The ongoing program’s success is unquestionable,  but they continue to expand the program in new directions. Be sure to check out their website and see the implementation live as well as check back for the video of his talk when it becomes available.

In past years, BigDoor CEO Keith Smith has spoken to the GSummit audience about various topics surrounding gamification, but we decided to mix things up and have our VP of Sales, Gavin Hewitt, discuss BigDoor’s philosophy on the importance of rewards in customer loyalty programs. In his talk: Rewards Matter: How big brands are unlocking the secret to customer loyalty Gavin highlighted the importance of offering customer focused rewards as key in increasing customer engagement and long-term loyalty.

Our booth last year was quite a hit (remember the marshmallow guns?) but we think we did even better this year. Some people might recognize this setup as a bit reminiscent of their college days, minus the beer. Depending on their skills, players could earn a number of rewards, from custom ping pong paddles to water bottles and T-shirts. Our grand prize winner, John Leech, walked away from GSummit with an Xbox 360.

Thank you again to the Gamification.co team, who put in a ton of work to make this event happen, as well as to the attendees and speakers who help continue to grow the gamification industry in interesting and innovative ways.

Posted in: Blog, Conferences, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty

In response to a growing number of current and future partner’s inquiries and suggestions, we are very excited to announce BigDoor’s newest platform feature: Internationalization.

Working with brands that achieve global reach, we acknowledge the need for rewards and loyalty programs that engage customers internationally and across languages. Unlike other vendors in the space, touting their “global” or “world leading” platforms with English-only language support, BigDoor has always prided ourselves in making our platform available in any language, but we weren’t satisfied with the complex translation progress that slowed down our typical implementation process. We decided to launch internationalization to enable brands around the world to easily implement a BigDoor Gamified Loyalty Program in any language (or combination of languages).

With internationalization the BigDoor user interface will reflect browser-specified  languages allowing visitors to seamlessly interact with a brand’s loyalty program, no matter what language version of the site they are on. Badges, quests, rewards and achievements will display in the browser-specified language throughout a customer’s session. The feature will also cover BigDoor powered redemption emails, ensuring that the entire BigDoor experience is available to customers, no matter what language they are using.

BigDoor publishers will be able to add language configurations to current loyalty programs, without affecting the existing experience. The internationalization feature will also allow publishers to break down existing analytics by language, giving even deeper access to valuable customer data and insights.

To learn more about BigDoor’s internationalization feature, or to talk with a BigDoor Loyalty Expert, please contact us at: Info@BigDoor.com.

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Improvements, Loyalty, Technology, UI, Uncategorized

When people talk about loyalty programs, one of the first examples used is airline mileage programs. Not only have these mileage loyalty programs been around for ages, but customers often feel as though these programs come closest to hitting the mark on providing authentic and desirable rewards. While travel loyalty programs, including hotel chains and rental cars are often held up as a shining example of loyalty, rising costs of travel are beginning to make these transaction based loyalty programs more and more expensive for brands, while providing less value for consumers. Brands who have long had programs rewarding frequent travelers are forced to raise the cost of free flights, hotels or car rentals, or limit the quantity of qualifying free experiences. These changes, often feel like slights against valuable program members, who resent the devaluation of their miles, points or memberships.

While many travel brands are experiencing the weight of increasing costs to run a successful loyalty program, few of them have expanded the options for their programs and sought models that exist outside the traditional (and outdated) transaction based model.  By expanding these programs online, beyond the customer transaction, brands open up numerous doors to engage their most loyal members, and reward members with perks far beyond what traditional programs have imagined. Better yet, platform’s like BigDoor’s gamification and loyalty platform, seamlessly tie into social media another important channel for travel brands to monitor and build.

They haven’t moved towards these innovative programs yet, but it sounds like they know the change is imminent. In a recent article in USA Today, delving into the second annual hotel CEO roundtable, CEO’s from companies like Wyndham Hotels, Carlson Hotels and Kimpton mentioned the need for traditional loyalty programs to evolve towards better engagement, innovative rewards and features for customers that expand beyond transaction based models. Brands are increasingly looking towards social media integration, hoping to see more customers reaching out to them through various social channels as well as promoting brands to their own social graphs.

The CEOs participating discussed what they see as important changes in the hotel loyalty space, pointing out that social media, customizable rewards and keeping up with customer expectations are their biggest challenges moving forward. It’s definitely an interesting read, and worth looking through whether you are a brand facing the same challenges, or a customer who travels frequently.

For those travel brands facing the challenges highlighted, gamified loyalty programs seem like an easy solution to a wide range of problems presented.

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Loyalty, Social Media

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing successful BigDoor implementations. We set out to find a better way for brands to engage with their customers and seeing our platform in action, delivering results never gets old.  It’s even better when those brands are out talking about gamification and their gamified loyalty solutions.

BigDoor client Yamaha is featured in the February issue of MMR Magazine talking about their gamification/loyalty program. Launched last October, in conjunction with Yamaha’s 125^th anniversary the “My Rewards” program focuses on thanking and rewarding Yamaha customers for their loyalty over the years. The program also encourages new visitors to learn about Yamaha products and offerings, as well as guide Yamaha fans to new sources of content and information about the brand.

Kevin M. Mitchell of MMR interviewed Jeff Hawley, director of Yamaha’s consumer experience group to talk about how the program came about as well as challenges and benefits of using gamification in the brands marketing strategy. The full article is available on MMR Magazine’s website, but we thought we would share some of our favorite quotes here.

On the difficulties of talking about “gamification”:

[Jeff Hawley] admits that the first challenge was internal: getting past the perception of – and frankly, the word, itself: “game”. He heard back from the higher ups that Yamaha customers ‘don’t want to play games’.

On what gamification really is at its core:

“It’s frequent flyer miles’ for the Social Web 2.0 generation, and just ties it into a neater package then sending a rebate card or waiting for something in the mail. In a nutshell, it’s a loyalty program”

On concerns that gamification can be used negatively to glean personal information about customers:

“For folks on the bleeding edge of this type of marketing, that’s the big question,” How many details are too many details, and how far can a company go without being “creepy?”

On why Yamaha ultimately decided to pursue a gamified loyalty solution:

“Hawley emphasizes again that the reason they took up the gamification mantle in the first place is to thank consumers for their support”.

Be sure to check out the entire article, on MMRMagazine.com.

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Loyalty, Partners, Testimonials

Keith Smith - CEO/Co-Founder of BigDoor

With 2012 behind us, my team and I at BigDoor have been reflecting on the state of the much hyped and oft derided gamification movement.  Game mechanics are now being deployed in a number of employee facing solutions, but the most exciting and impactful uses of gamification continue to be in consumer-facing experiences.   2012 saw new gamification efforts from a number of big brands; NFL, MLB, Yamaha, Adobe, Universal Music, Starbucks and Random House – just to name a few.  Now that many of the most powerful consumer brands in the world are embracing gamification as a way to increase loyalty and engagement, it is worthwhile to take some time to understand why and what’s coming next.

So as 2013 gets underway, I wanted to lay out my predictions for where I see gamification heading in the coming year:

 1. Gamification will define next generation loyalty programs. There is an ever growing trend that traditional loyalty programs are not delivering the results that marketers want.  A recent Forrester Research, Inc. report noted that, “compared to 2008, 40% more consumers feel that loyalty programs offer them no value at all”¹. Affecting the success of these programs over the last 4 years is the rapid adoption of customers interacting with brands online. Traditional methods of loyalty marketing are not addressing the needs of online customers. But where traditional rewards programs are failing, gamified loyalty programs are rising to the occasion; consistently deliver higher customer acquisition rates, better engagement on and offline, and clearly offering customers value well beyond the traditional transaction based rewards model.  Innovative brands are embracing gamified loyalty programs, and as a result are putting significant competitive pressure on those brands that have yet to deploy this next generation of loyalty programs.

2. The e-commerce/retail sector will deploy gamification faster than any other industry. Despite its increasing lack of success, loyalty marketing has been a cornerstone of the retail industry for a long time. With gamified loyalty programs rising in popularity, the rapid adoption of these programs in the retail and e-commerce industries is inevitable. Gamified loyalty programs – unlike traditional transaction based models – give marketer’s access to key customer metrics from acquisition to engagement.  These insights allow marketers to better personalize interactions with their customers on and offline.

3. Gamification implementations will become more brand specific and allow more personalization of the user experience. One of the regular complaints I hear from marketers using a traditional loyalty program is that legacy loyalty program vendors provide a one-size-fits-all approach to their programs. As more brands embrace gamified loyalty and rewards strategies, gamification experts will need to ensure that their programs are on-brand and authentic, but they should also be personalized.  Truly effective gamified loyalty programs should allow marketers to target specific rewards to their customers based on their buying habits and demographic/psychographic information. A more personalized experience for customers results in higher customer satisfaction, which means more customer loyalty.

 4. Many gamification implementations will fail due to an absence of ongoing program management. Gartner released a report in late 2012 announcing that 80% of gamification implementations would fail. Despite the success gamification saw in 2012, this number seems likely, unless gamification experts embrace gamification as an ongoing strategy and not a bolt-on solution. While this means that gamification requires more work, it has also lead to some truly effective gamified loyalty programs that deliver a huge impact to the brand’s bottom line.

 5. Successful gamification implementations will be cross-device, cross-platform and even available offline. Now more than ever, customers are interacting with brands through a wide variety of channels; mobile, tablet, web and believe it or not – sometimes even in-person. Unless customers are willing to register and login when using these various platforms, most brands have no way of knowing users as they move between them. As brands search for ways to get data from and develop relationships with their customers, the need for knowing who your customers are across channels has become crucial. Gamification implementations give customers a real reason to register and login, and this is a critical first step for a brand to develop a true relationship with their customer across all of their various platforms and touch-points.

 6. Advertisers will embrace gamification as a new growth area. With the popularity of consumer facing gamification on the rise, it is only a matter of time before advertisers realize the huge new revenue potential these programs hold. Consumer facing gamification implementations provide an entirely new revenue stream, allowing higher ad revenues for brands and new advertising opportunities for sponsors. Brands like the NFL have already begun to embrace this trend, partnering with Visa as a primary sponsor for their NFL Fan Rewards program.

 7. Gamification platforms that provide actionable analytics and reporting will succeed; those who don’t will fail.  No gamification implementation is complete without a robust set of real-time analytics and insights. These insights tell marketers what is working and what isn’t working, and allow for real-time adjustments in gamified loyalty programs. Gamification companies will increasingly need to demonstrate the value of their products using detailed analytics and program monitoring. Marketers in 2013 should require simple and relevant metrics that help the iteration process of their program and validate the return on investment that a gamified loyalty program delivers.

¹: “Building A World-Class Loyalty Program”, Forrester Research, September 28, 2012[FRI1]

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Loyalty, Social Media

We are very excited to announce that we will once again be gold sponsors at Gamification Summit in San Francisco this coming April. GSummit is one of our favorite events to attend, connecting gamification and engagement experts, with industry professionals from all over the world. In addition to sponsoring, our CEO Keith Smith will also be speaking about the intersection of loyalty and gamification, specifically focusing on how some of our clients are using gamification to enhance their traditional loyalty programs.

We want to give our fans and fellow gamification lovers the opportunity to attend GSummit for free! Head over to GSummit’s Surprise and Delight entry page and fill out the form and then tweet that you entered for a chance to win. The contest ends this Friday 1/18 at 4pm EST. Good luck!

If you want to read up on our experience last year at Gamification Summit, you can check out the recap in our archives, here.

Posted in: Blog, Conferences, Gamification, Loyalty

Happy Friday! This time of year is busy for everyone, whether you were preparing for the apocalypse today or trying to do some last minute holiday shopping. If you got too busy to keep up on gamification, loyalty and engagement news, you can catch up on our favorite articles below.

Ice, Lycra and Nike Plus – Getting Gamification and Engagement Right Huffington Post 12/21/2012 Nike is often used as an example of a brand that has successfully used gamification to deepen brand loyalty and engage their customers. While the popularity of Nike+ leaves no doubt that people love using the program, what is less obvious is what specifically Nike did to achieve this level of success. Kent Valentine points out that Nike didn’t just focus on their own brand requirements, but instead focused on a customer need, that once satisfied would benefit the Nike brand.

On the ninth day…embrace gamification Entrepreneur 12/20/2012 Still not convinced that gamification can provide value for your company? Read this and contemplate the many ways that it can enhance your brand’s marketing efforts. No, gamification is not for every brand or company, but this is a great article with a ton of examples and ideas on how to use gamification.

Rewards and Reward Schedules in Gamification Social Media Today 12/18/2012 Rewards and how to use them successfully in gamification has been left out of the mainstream gamification conversation for a while. Most gamification providers stand by the opinion that rewards don’t enhance a program and haven’t tested using rewards enough to know the benefit they can create when used correctly. It is great to see some great gamification minds joining the discussion around rewards and how to use them successfully in a gamified implementation.

How Gamification Makes Social a Reality NewsGator 12/18/2012 Most people are familiar with traditional loyalty programs and non-digital recognition programs, but these types of programs just aren’t working anymore with so much of what we do heading online. Taking these programs online and enhancing them with social elements is exactly what BigDoor (and this NewsGator piece) believe is the next big trend.

Current Loyalty Programs Are Proving to Be Ineffective Towards Retailers’ Goal of Creating More Loyal Customers, According to New Research Report From Edgell Knowledge Network MarketWire 12/19/2012 We have been saying that traditional loyalty programs need a face lift and now Edgell Knowledge Network has the report to prove it. Surveying 60+ retailers Edgell discovered that while more and more people are signing up for loyalty programs, many of these customers are not loyal to any one program, and they don’t understand the benefits that brands are offering them.

Social integration and loyalty – here are the brands that did it best in 2012 VentureBeat 12/20/2012 The power of social media marketing was a huge trend in 2012. While some brands flopped in their attempts, some brands flew past their competitors using social media to connect and engage their fans. Of the brands that successfully employed social media to engage their fans, Urban Outfitters, American Express, Honda, Starbucks, and Grey Poupon.

Don’t believe us that people want loyalty programs? Check out this posting on the League of Legends Community board asking why senior members don’t get benefits for spending more.

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Loyalty, Social Media, User engagement

We’ve all been there, that moment where you reach for your wallet to make a purchase and realize it’s…not…there. That was me yesterday at Costco, scrambling around in my giant bag at the checkout before apologizing profusely and returning to my car in a panic. After a few moments spent tearing apart my car (I can’t be the only one who frequently loses things in there?), I resigned myself to the inevitable hassle of calling credit card companies and restricting all my accounts. While the process is a massive inconvenience and my afternoon plans were derailed, there was something else bothering me about the loss of my wallet.

As I sat making a list of all the cards I carry, the ones that weighed the most heavily upon me were my loyalty program cards. The Starbucks gold card I have been carrying since 2010, the Feierabend Stein Club Level Two card (I wrote about here) with only 6 punches left to fill out or the local pet store program where my next bag of better-than-I-feed-myself cat food will be free. It’s silly and maybe irrational, but I can’t be alone.

A few of my precious loyalty cards...

These programs represent important parts of my life as well as a commitment of time to each brand I am loyal to. The barista at the Starbucks across the street from my apartment knows my drink, and knows what I look like when I need an extra shot of espresso in the morning. My gold card represents not only my status as a customer, but my daily interactions with a brand and its employees. My Feierabend Stein Club card represents a weekly lunch with friends, an embarrassing number of beers and a status as a well-known customer at a great bar. My point is that when brands get these loyalty programs right, they really are creating a relationship with a customer that goes beyond the free coffee, or t-shirt. It’s about status and a sense of community that can be created by small brands and large corporations alike.

The gamification industry doesn’t seem to give customers who are engaging in these rewards based loyalty programs much credit. The majority opinion is that customers are being manipulated, given free stuff to distract them, and that this tactic will inevitably fail. I think the industry has it wrong. Customers of retail or ecommerce brands are going to choose a brand that gives back, over a brand that doesn’t. I choose Starbucks over their competitors because I get a free coffee once in a while. I choose Best Buy because I get reward points that lead to gift certificates that I can use on high value items I want. I am not being manipulated in a negative way, I’m getting access to things I want, for choosing brands that I would engage with anyways, I just engage now at a higher volume, with greater loyalty.

That isn’t to say that free stuff is the only reason I stick around. As I mentioned above there are plenty of intrinsic reasons I visit these brands regularly as well. But the unfortunate reality retail brands are facing is that the personal value I get from buying an iPod at Best Buy isn’t much different from the value I get buying the same product from their competitor. There are just too many options for customers, and customers want something back.

This might seem heavily focused on traditional loyalty programs, and it is. But as the gamification industry is expanding and changing, gamification companies like BigDoor are tying into these traditional “punch card” programs I love so much and making them more dynamic and engaging especially on the web. Increasingly it is becoming important for brands that get it right in person with their customers, to also make a better impression online. As I spend less time in physical stores and more and more time online the relationship I have with these brands needs to shift online as well and if my loyalty programs and rewards follow me there, that is even better. Apart from online purchases, I can be valuable to these brands in other ways. My reviews on products, my recommendations to friends in my social graph, these are actions that brands value but previously haven’t tracked or rewarded customers for in the past. I’m so excited to see this changing and gamification is playing an important role for big brands who aren’t sure how to accomplish this.

An incredibly sweet person returned my wallet to me late last night and as I checked through it to see what I was missing, I happily noted that the thief had not stolen any of my loyalty cards. I’m still sorting out all my accounts this morning, and my debit card won’t arrive until tomorrow, but I was still able to pay for my morning coffee at Starbucks. When life is temporarily hectic and upside down, access to my morning coffee and routine, is priceless.

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Loyalty

Yesterday, gamification expert Gabe Zichermann sat down with BigDoor’s CEO Keith Smith in episode 19 of Gabe’s Gamification Revolution webinar to talk about the gamification industry, trends and what BigDoor is focused on for 2013. The webinar follows a Q&A open format and is an awesome chance for people interested in gamification to sling questions at various industry experts. This episode’s questions focused around analytics, authenticity in gamification and the intersection between traditional loyalty programs and gamification.

Some interesting points from the discussion:
- The gamification industry needs to be more focused on real results. BigDoor’s platform allows for the creation of a small control group, which allows our analytics to compare between users seeing the gamification program and users who aren’t.

- Gamification programs success should be tied to revenue of the brands who are implementing it.

- BigDoor’s consumer facing solution focuses on giving customers what they want, knowing that they will give you things back (in the form of actions, sharing, recruiting, etc).

You can watch the 30 minute webinar below, or check it out here.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty, Webinar