Happy Friday! We have been working like crazy on some cool new projects and falling behind on our gamification news.  Our favorite links for the past week are listed below and focused mostly on some defense of gamification and new articles about consumer facing gamification and its success.

‘For the Win’: How Gamification Can Transform Your Business Knowledge@Wharton 12/5/2012 Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter sat down with Knowledge@Wharton to talk about their new book, gamification trends and how companies can use game mechanics to improve their business. Interestingly, Werbach and Hunter make the distinction between external and internal (similar to our consumer/enterprise) gamification solutions and point out how different those two approaches can be in solving business challenges.

Don’t Hate The Game. The Points May Not Matter Associations Now 12/4/2012 If you follow the gamification industry you have no doubt heard about the Gartner study released claiming that 80% of gamification will fail. Gamification experts of all types responded to this criticism in a myriad of ways, but we thought this response was especially good. While the hype of gamification has been great in bringing press to our industry, it is also important to remember that gamification should fit your website and that not all websites will need or should implement gamification.

How One Guy Gamified His Google Interview And Won SF Gate 12/1/2012 Gamification is a great way to motivate in the right situations and Jon Guerrera proved that in his quest to land a job with Google. Daunted by the task of studying for the interview, he used basic game mechanics and applied them to his study tactics to create a system of rewards, tracking and milestones.

Social Customer Experiences That Matter Huffington Post 12/6/2012 Being focused on consumer facing gamification means understanding what customers are looking for when they interact with a brand. This is a great look at data describing what customers expect, what makes them stick around and how brands need to adjust to keep their customers happy. Gamification is listed as one of three suggestions for how brands can improve their customer experience. It’s great to see consumer facing gamification get some recognition.

How can social data help drive brand loyalty? Fresh Networks 11/30/2012 Less than 48.8% of marketers believe that their marketing initiatives are working. Unfortunately, the loyalty program landscape has been bogged down by traditional programs that have not adjusted to meet with new customer demands like social recognition, real time feedback. Brands looking to improve the value of their loyalty program should start with taking a look at social data, and adjusting their programs to address deficits there.

Social Loyalty in Action – Airport Check-ins on Social Media for Air Miles TNooz 11/26/2012 Delta Airlines has embraced a new trend of social loyalty by announcing a deal with TripAnomaly a startup that gives passengers 80 SkyMiles points just for checking in at the airport and posting it to their networks. This partnership “taps in to the idea that passengers are increasingly willing to share certain elements of the personal data on social networks (such as location) in exchange for loyalty points and other traveler perks.” We would love to see more airlines involved in something like this!

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

As with many new industries, gamification erupted a few years ago offering solutions to a number of marketing, brand and even social problems through the application of game mechanics. Before the word gamification was even fully defined, the industry was home to a number of various platforms, companies, gamification success stories, and of course failures. With everyone eager to be part of such an exciting new industry, anything ‘game’ related was often lumped into the industry much to the dismay of game designers and game experts. Today, the gamification industry has matured, and is carving out a space for itself in a few noticeable verticals.

Consumer Facing

Brands are always looking for new and unique ways to connect with their fans and customers. While loyalty or rewards programs have been around for as long as anyone can remember, gamification is a great way to add an online engagement layer to an existing loyalty program, power a new rewards program or give your users a better way to connect with your content on and offline. Brands with big audiences can gain better understanding of their customers with gamification’s powerful analytics, all while rewarding their fans and making site actions, engagement and exploration more fun.

The key to successful consumer facing gamification is to apply simple and basic game mechanics that make actions customers already take more intrinsically valuable as well as guide them towards new opportunities and content. Brands can then reward the most engaged customers with both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

Examples: NFL Fan Rewards, Starbucks, Yamaha Corporation Fan Rewards

Enterprise

Enterprise gamification began to rise as an effective solution to increasing employee productivity as well as encouraging employee growth early on in the industry. While enterprise gamification is often lumped in with consumer facing gamification, the two are actually very different. Enterprise gamification, most often seen in support desk software, IT applications or employee management focuses on an entirely different set of objectives, namely making work more fun. Goal setting, time management feedback, hiring processes and training games are features of enterprise solutions that often don’t show up in consumer facing implementations.

Due to the focus on personal growth, productivity and company goals, many enterprise solutions have found that focusing on intrinsic value to the user is much more important than tangible rewards. Status within the enterprise and personal development are often much better rewards for success.

Example: Rypple (now Work.com), Play Vox, GamEffective

Social Good

Beyond loyalty applications and enterprise management solutions gamification has revolutionized the way many people are viewing social change.  By applying game mechanics and game principles to education, health, and even environmental causes many companies and nonprofits have seen people engage like never before. By tapping into human competitiveness as well as the power of participants social networks, these kinds of gamification solutions are addressing issues like poverty, online education, and weight loss. Probably the most broad category mentioned, social good gamification solutions often are broken down further into education, government and health.

These gamification applications are often very different from the solutions seen in enterprise or consumer facing programs, but share the facilitation of collaboration as well as creative problem solving that makes gamification work across a variety of verticals.

Example: EveryMove, Nike+, Foldit and Duolingo

These three verticals are by no means definitive and many of the examples mentioned could move from one category to the next. Rather, these hopefully provide a framework for thinking about gamification reiterating that each one will rely on a different set of tools, challenges and expertise to reach success.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty

Happy Friday! We found some really great articles about building brand affinity, customer loyalty and some interesting critiques on cheaters in gamification programs. Enjoy!

The mechanics of gamification: How to harness perceived distance to benefit your brand Campaign Asia 11/15/2012 Gamification experts often reference basic psychology in explaining the success of gamification and brand loyalty programs but this is by far one of the best examples we have seen. Focusing on how to use gamification to solve customer’s internal needs while promoting your brand, this is an excellent look at how brands should be marketing themselves in today’s online world.

Creating Loyalty With Your Clients Through Social Media Business2Community 11/9/2012 For those of us short on time, this is a very simple and to the point list of ways marketers and community managers can build loyalty online with social media.

The Complex Challenges Facing Advertisers on New Media Platforms Herald Online 11/13/2012 Linda Goldstein, a partner at New York based Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP spoke on today’s marketing landscape at the PMA Marketing Law Conference in Chicago. Focusing on best practices for marketing online, she highlighted gamification and stated, “”We must be thinking about how to use gamification and social engagement in ways that create true human response.”

The irrationality of cheating at gamified learning Wired 11/12/2012 Anyone who has played games or experienced a gamified experience online has probably come across someone trying to cheat or game the system. Focusing on cheaters using Memrise, an online memory improvement game, Robert Barry digs into why people cheat and how to combat this trend in our gamified solutions.

Study: Measuring social media word of mouth drives restaurant traffic Fast Casual 11/15/2012 The importance of social media word of mouth is well established among marketers, but a new study done among restaurants shows that analytics and measurement are important in order for brands to see real success on social media. Brands need access to simple analytics to help measure ROI as well as feedback that shows them how to create success in social media channels.

Brand Loyalty Via Social Media CMV Live 11/12/2012 With so many options for consumers on the web, brands can always use a few more tips on how to engage their customers and create deeper brand affinity. CMV Live lists three tips to build better loyalty. Number two on their list, rewards. We don’t want to toot our own horn, but in consumer facing gamification, we were the first gamification platform to speak to the value of tangible rewards in order to boost loyalty and engagement.

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

One of the common mistakes in the industry today is the assumption that all gamification is created equal. In creating an industry, many of us have forgotten that the competitive realm will be comprised of a wide variety of gamification examples and solutions. While many distinctions between enterprise and consumer gamification are beginning to emerge, we also see a trend in the lack of separation between gamification products and gamification solutions. The two may seem similar, but in our experience, gamification products don’t tend to see the same success as a comprehensive gamification solution. Typically, a product is a one-size-fits-all answer to the problems of user engagement online. It is generally the same regardless of the type of users, content on the site, and site-specific needs/goals. For many websites, this application of gamification works great: it provides extra lift in registration and engagement, yet remains simple enough for a small publisher to manage themselves. For larger publishers a product is often simply not enough.

The reality is that large scale gamification is a network of moving parts, working in unison to engage and motivate users. This network is what we refer to at BigDoor as a gamification solution. Adding game mechanics to incentivize loyalty amongst online users is only part of the puzzle. Comprehensive service differentiates between a product and a solution, and elevates the latter to provide publishers with even more lift in engagement. Gamification is more than points: it’s a system that shows the user why those points matter. A solution creates a unique experience for the user that is ever changing and adaptable to publisher and brand needs.

While gamification products are traditionally implemented and left alone, solutions are continually managed. In our experience, this level of service is what has ensured success in our implementations. After all, we design, build and deploy our product all the time, but it’s our continued adjustments and attention to detail that turn a deployment of our product into lasting success. So, what happens after launch? How is “success” of a program determined? What is the process of making changes?

The most vital piece to our gamification solutions success is our dedicated team of gamification-minded account managers, implementation specialists, and loyalty experts that work with our partners to analyze user behavior and adjust gamification content. This team exists to make sure that our partners are receiving the best ROI, service, and support for their site. Using past experience, data from the BigDoor analytics dashboard, and a close look at every partner’s goals, we strive to find the winning combination of parts for a successful gamification program.

Here is a look at some of the questions BigDoor account managers look at in order to make adjustments to a partner’s solution:

 -What are the activities that the site’s user’s are normally engaging in while on the site?

-What is the average user’s passion level for the site content?

-What is the purpose of the user’s visit to the site?

-What are the expectations of the user in terms of implementation content, flow, branding, and design?

-What existing features and functionality especially “speak to” and resonate with the sites users? (i.e., leaderboards for a competitive user audience, or rewarding users heavily for commenting on topics in a tech support forum)

-What is the goal of the solution? To drive registration, retain a certain level of traffic of registered users a month, have users perform one specific activity (or several in a particular sequence), etc.?

-What aspects of the solution are under-performing or performing well, and by what metrics does our partner determine “success”?

We use the answers of these questions to justify possible changes within the solution. With every implementation, our team gets a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t. This knowledge informs not only specific implementation changes, but also product-level features. Our account team is accessible for a partner during the entire lifecycle of a solution, from when a solution is first being designed, built and deployed, to testing/QA, and from the launch onward.

Ultimately, solution management is a necessary part of the puzzle for gamification success. We havve talked before about the benefits of site-wide implementations, and we recognize the level of commitment that an implementation takes from a partner. That commitment requires that extra level of support from our end. At BigDoor, we recognize that there is value in creating long-lasting relationships with our partners: They know we are clearly invested in their success. A loyalty solution is a living breathing organism; just like the site’s users. Our partners are smart enough to recognize that as their audience’s behavior changes, so to should their solution. Does any website that is trying to engage their users want to be left with an antiquated, buggy, and irrelevant loyalty program?

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Success

Happy Tuesday! If you are in the USA, happy election day! If you are old enough to vote we highly encourage that you take the time to do so today! While Twitter, Facebook and pretty much every other news outlet are focused on election results, we decided to take a break from politics and compile some of our favorite gamification news articles from last week.

Reveal By L’Oreal, Recruitment Gamified! Business2Community 11/3/2012 This past September well known beauty and cosmetics brand L’Oreal launched a new interactive game called Reveal, to educate users on what it’s like to work for the global brand. The game, features mini challenges incategories including marketing, R&I, product development which challenge players to learn and earn achievements in various categories. Upon completing the game, users can send their scores to L’Oreal recruiters, who can select from high scorers for internships and job opportunities at the company. Using game mechanics to test and educate potential employees reduces the amount of time recruiters need to spend filtering candidates and ensures that candidates are up to speed about the brand they are applying for. Nice work L’Oreal!

Using Gamification to Curb Children’s Anger Issues Gamification.Co 10/29/2012 The field of games for social good has been growing rapidly over the past few years and is an interesting sub-category of the gamification trend. A new game called RAGE Control has been designed to help children with anger issues control their emotions. The game monitors children’s heart rate and forces them to stop playing when their heart rate peaks higher than an acceptable level. The idea being that it teaches children who want to continue playing, to keep their emotions and heart rate in check.

9 Stragegies to Gamify Your Startup Mashable 11/2/2012 This is a great compilation of 9 entrepreneurs advice on implementing gamification. If you have a startup or smaller business, these tips are a great place to start. Plus, since they come from a variety of backgrounds and applications, they are pretty universal in their approach.

Gamification – Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter’s new book Concurring Opinions 10/30/2012 Hundreds of people have taken Kevin Werbach’s gamification course online at Coursera.org. Now his expertise on gamification will be able to reach even more people with his new book co-authored with Dan Hunter called For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Read a summary of the book, and order a copy if you are interested!

Health Insurer Humana Gamifies Fitness TriplePundit 10/29/2012 Gamification is a great way to motivate people. Health Insurance companies like Regence and now Humana have caught on and are now using gamification to motivate their customers to make healthier decisions as well as encourage employees to volunteer in their local communities. This is an comprehensive look at their various gamification programs across mobile, game consoles and web platforms.

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

I get excited every time I see an announcement for a new gamification program on the web. Each new implementation is a chance to witness the industry growing as well as experience the individual creativity and innovation from various companies around the world. Far too often, I head to websites to check out their gamified programs, only to have to spend time searching for how to join and participate. What good is a loyalty program if users can’t find it?

Gamification Tip #5: Make sure to onboard new users

Customers coming to your site may or may not know that you have implemented a gamification program. Either way, they can’t participate if they can’t find it. Publishers should be notifying incoming customers of their loyalty program as well as outlining its value. Will the gamification implementation help the user meet their goals? Will it give them access to exclusive content? Whatever, your customers want, it should be clear that your program can help them achieve it.

In addition to concisely communicating the value, make it easy for users to sign up. Customers shouldn’t have to spend more than a few seconds deciding and joining your program. A simple sign-up that guides the user through the registration process (or social sign-in authorization) means that customers can start participating in your loyalty program while they are still excited about what the program can do,

Onboarding your new users shouldn’t stop at registration. Publishers should be sure to educate newly registered users on what actions they can be rewarded for, how the program works and how to navigate around. Good design and quests can help guide new customers, giving them hints at what actions will help them meet their goals.

One of our favorite examples of excellent onboarding into a gamification implementation is the NFL website, what do you think?

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

It’s Friday again! The shorter days and fall weather made the week seem like it flew by. If you missed out on gamification, customer loyalty or social media marketing news, you can catch up with our favorites below.

When is Gamification Not Gamification? Business2Community 10/25/2012 Gamification evangelist Andrzej Marczewski asks and attempts to answer some open ended questions about gamification. How many game mechanics should an implementation use? Should you tell users that they are participating in gamification? Find out what Andrzej thinks, and add your comments to his post.

Marketers rely too heavily on social, need to diversify digital into gamification Marketing Mag 10/25/2012 Marketers and the brands they represent have begun to heavily rely on building customer relationships through social media channels, but what happens when Facebook and Twitter aren’t enough? “Gamification can be coupled with social media and existing online content to add an extra layer and greater motivation to engage in digital programs”. Gamification is a great way to encourage customers to engage with content on multiple social media platforms as well as explore brand websites.

Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2013 and Beyond Daily Finance 10/24/2012 Last year, Gartner predicted that, “By 2015, more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes.” This week, Gartner released its top predictions for IT organizations and making the list was none other than gamification. “By 2015, 40 percent of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations.”

Using “social” and “gamification” to provide UX improvements Ovum 10/16/2012 Implementing gamification often includes a lot of UX improvements that guide and improve the user experience. Ovum analyst Somak Roy discusses the relationship of social, gamification and UX. This is an interesting read on the role of UX in gamification solutions and features.

Apple, Amazon, Samsung, YouTube, and Twitter Are 2012 Loyalty Leaders Forbes 10/25/2012 BigDoor’s platform is all about increasing customer loyalty and what better way to improve our platform, than by taking a look at the loyalty leaders of 2012. No surprise, Apple tops the charts, but Starbucks, Call of Duty and Costco also made huge gains in the list this year. Many of the new arrivals to the list were brands that create connections in industries like social media, smartphones and tablets. Check out the Forbes article to see the full list of loyalty leaders.

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

Happy Friday! Here is the gamification and customer loyalty program news from the past week.

How Gamification Can Improve Customer Loyalty Programs Entrepreneur 10/9/2012 Gamification expert Gabe Zichermann talks about using gamification to improve customer loyalty programs, a topic that is near to our hearts. Here at BigDoor, we have seen great success in making customer loyalty programs more fun and engaging by applying game mechanics and design principles. It is great to see Gabe endorsing that concept!

When research is a game, and politicians seize the social media BizCommunity 10/12/2012 The use of gamification in politics is a relatively new idea, but one that seems to be sparking a lot of interest. At a recent conference of the SAMRA (Southern African Marketing Research Association) Kyle Findlay argued that gamification can produce significantly more effective and valuable market research, by ensuring that respondents are more engaged. Findlay says of his research, “It is important to stress though that gamification generally does not imply turning research applications into video games with bright colours, flashing lights and cute mascots. It can be far more subtle than that. Gamifying a research methodology could rely on something as simple as changing the way in which a question is worded by framing it as a challenge to respondents.”

Three More Views on #Gamification Kapp Notes 10/8/2012 In case your eyes are strained from reading too much, you can jump over to Kapp Notes and check out their compilation of gamification videos. Everything from TED talks to animated comedic shorts.

LinkedIn Decides Recommends Aren’t Worthless Enough, Adds Endorsement Gamification Business2Community 10/13/2012 If you are on LinkedIn you might have noticed this change and wondered what the point was. You aren’t alone. Chris Voss talks about the decision and why it is an example of poorly thought out gamification.

The Gamification of Philanthropy Calgary Herald 10/13/2012 A new app is under development in Vancouver called iBeg and its purpose is to help users understand the difficulties of homelessness while raising money for charity. This is a great example of the ‘games for good’ trend and it will be interesting to see what the app looks like when it is released.

Gamification: Some More Views Business2Community 10/15/2012 A few weeks ago Andrzej Marczewski posted an article that featured various experts opinions on gamification, what it is and how to use it. He has posted the same article, featuring random people who filled out his survey. This is definitely an interesting read that highlights how different people think about the gamification trend.

Maximize your collections! BankersLab gamifies debt collection (exclusive) VentureBeat 10/16/2012 A new training simulation has been created to help teach bankers the ins and outs of collections. It’s called BankersLab and it uses gamification principles to coach bankers through the complex process of debt-collection. While many people facing collections may not appreciate the idea of better training for bankers, this is definitely a new and interesting use of gamification.

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

I saw The Dark Knight Rises last night for the second time and spent much of my drive into work this morning trying to come up with a way to relate that movie to gamification or customer loyalty. If you have been reading here long, you might remember my Hunger Games post from earlier this year and my love of connecting gamification with things in my daily life. Unfortunately, my pre-coffee brain was unable to come up with anything coherent enough to be worthy of a post here on mygamification.com. Instead, I turned my attention to something with much more value to the readers: another gamification tip! The Batman post will rise (ok, that wasn’t funny).

Gamification Tip #4: Analytics Matter!

Gamification in its best form allows publishers to increase engagement and loyalty, while creating benefit and reward systems for their users. The ongoing maintenance and success of a customer loyalty program should rely heavily on analytics allowing publishers to see what works and what doesn’t. Just as you should know your users before implementing gamification, good analytics should help you grow your program and understand its strengths and weaknesses. Not to mention analytics are key to justifying the expense/effort of implementation and program management.

I don’t feel anyone would argue that analytics don’t matter in the context of brand success, but check out any good gamification example and you will see that all of them provide either the user or the brand with analytics. Gamification of fitness sees its biggest success when users are given simple ways to understand their fitness data and progress. Enterprise gamification succeeds when employers and employees can measure their progress and understand failings, trends and set goals. Consumer focused gamification often relies heavily on understanding user actions and channeling those actions into successful advertising and content.

How your company measures the success of its program will vary greatly depending on the end goal, which means that analytics must be flexible enough to be valuable to all types of publishers. BigDoor’s analytics provide both at a glance and drilled down measurements measuring your user’s engagement with your program, loyalty to your program and virality. Our platform features RAMP technology which creates a no-exposure control group used to compare data between users seeing and participating in the program to those who haven’t been exposed.

Whether your company is seeking more user registrations, looking to track employee progress or any number of other valuable actions, analytics is the backbone of gamification strategy and success.

Posted in: Blog, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Success

I’ve been travelling and unable to stay on top of my usual weekly gamification news recap. This morning. I spent a bit of time playing catch up on gamification and industry news. Without further delay here are my top gamification news articles of the past week (or so).

Does Gamification Work for a Customer Community? Eloqua 10/7/2012 Skeptics of gamification are often asking for proof that gamification is capable of increasing community engagement. Topliners, an online community, produced some of the data from their gamification implementation in July of this year. The chart shows a 55% lift in community activity after the gamification implementation. They also share some user comments about how the changes affected their activity on site. Congrats to Bunchball for this successful implementation!

The Basics Behind How Gamification Increases Site Conversions and Builds Your Brand Business2Community 10/5/2012 As gamification grows and matures as an industry, people are beginning to understand the core value of gamification, namely building your brand’s user base and engagement. This is a great overview of how gamification can boost your brand, as well as a couple of examples of good and bad gamification.

Coursera makes Penn courses more accessible The Daily Pennsylvanian  10/1/2012 If you have checked out the #Gamification tag on Twitter, you have likely seen numerous people talking about the free Coursera gamification course, taught by Kevin Werbach. The course represents one of the many courses offered free online through Penn’s Coursera program. Participants of the courses range from college students to business executives and participants are located all over the world. These courses are changing the way that learning occurs outside a traditional classroom and will be interesting to watch as they grow more popular.

Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It MailChimp Blog 10/2/2012 While many of our clients already have their own login system, some of them have chosen to use Facebook or Twitter authorization instead. At BigDoor we decided to offer integration with both options to provide flexibility but many of the people we talk with are still deciding which direction to go. This is an excellent study on social login versus site specific registration and the benefits/downsides of both.

Plea to the Games Industry to Embrace Gamification and Get Involved Business2Community 10/4/2012 Gamification evangelist Andrzej Marczewski put together this plea asking game industry experts who are critical of gamification to do more than just sit and criticize.  The gamification industry could definitely benefit from game designers insight and it is great to see someone trying to bridge the gap.

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