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#Gamification News You May Have Missed

December 21, 2012 by

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

A stolen wallet and a lesson in brand loyalty

December 12, 2012 by

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

#Gamification Revolution with BigDoor’s Keith Smith

December 11, 2012 by

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

#Gamification News You May Have Missed

December 7, 2012 by

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

Understanding Gamification Trends

November 28, 2012 by

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

#Gamification News You May Have Missed

November 16, 2012 by

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

Solving The Puzzle: Management of Gamification Solutions

November 14, 2012 by

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

#Gamification News You May Have Missed

November 6, 2012 by

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

Happy Halloween From All Of Us @BigDoor

October 31, 2012 by

Happy Halloween!

While we believe that it is always acceptable to dress up as your favorite thing, Halloween is the day where you don’t have to explain! From all of us at BigDoor, we wish everyone a fun and safe Halloween. For those in the Storm Sandy affected areas, who might be postponing Halloween, we are thinking of you and hope you enjoy the festivities soon.

If you want to check out some of the photos from last years Halloween, you can check them out here.

Posted in: Holiday, Startups

BigDoor’s Gamification Tips for Publishers – #5

October 30, 2012 by

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