PTG Marketing Team

The Plum Tree Group Marketing team explaining how we become a part of our client's businesses and work together to bring marketing strategy to life, through PPC, SEO and Social Media.

Winning Engagement with Gamification

What Is Gamification?

First let’s talk about what gamification isn’t. Some people think gamification is about making games, but they are wrong. Gamification is the process of identifying the things that make different kinds of games fun, exciting and engaging and then applying those concepts to non-game situations. Gamification practitioners deal with game dynamics and game mechanics and try to implement them in different ways. Today marketers and digitally savvy gamification practitioners are using gamification to drive user engagement and loyalty to online presences and social media.

Game dynamics are the underlying forces that drive engagement and motivation in a game. A great example of a game dynamic is status. In the first person shooter Call of Duty, the game is not about collecting badges, but players proudly display badges as status markers in their profiles and are motivated by the desire to have a better status. Some other common dynamics include reward, competition and discovery. 

Game mechanics are the nuts and bolts of what makes a game work. Turns are a classic example of game mechanics. Turns are a way of structuring gameplay that usually limits the player to performing a set number of actions  or a set amount of time in which to act. Other mechanics include points, time, and space.

Great, but why do you care? Gamification has been growing for the past couple years and the verdict is in: it gets results. Companies have sprung up that design gamification platforms for websites that take advantage of a mix of game mechanics and dynamics.

Gartner research shows that the Gamification industry is on target to generate $2.5 billion within the next 3 years. Sites participating in the beta version of BigDoor’s platform saw 153% lift in User Loyalty; 672% lift in User Engagement and 355% in Social Sharing. This month BigDoor has reached $13 million in funding. Badgeville published this infographic last year to showcase their success:

Playboy

Playboy wanted its audience to become more engaged with the brand than it otherwise might be. Bunchball helped customize the social part of their Nitro platform to create a Facebook App called “Miss Social.” Miss Social was a competition for women who wanted to be in Playboy. Each month the competition ended and started over. The winner was chosen by finding whoever had the most friends vote for her. Each month the winner of the month was crowned Miss Social and won the opportunity to have her pictures (nude or clothed) in Playboy.

This competition used status, competition and reward dynamics to great effect. The mechanics involved “Likes” functioning as points and the time-based competition mechanic to limit the time in which points could be earned. In addition, users could perform additional actions to win more votes and encourage their friends to share the app and its relationship to Playboy subscriptions.

The results were unequivocally successful: Playboy experienced an 85% increase in re-engagement from its audience and a 60% increase in revenue from one month to the next. The app launched in December 2010, and 6 months later the active user base for the app had grown to 80,000 women. 

Getting Started With Gamification Platforms

A number of companies have been successfully implementing gamification on websites and driving engagement and loyalty online.

1. Badgeville

Badgeville’s director is a white label company that attributes its fast growth and success to the easy implementation and flexibility of their Social Rewards & Analytics Program which is customized to meet client needs.

Their main offering is The Badgeville Platform, which “leverages gamification mechanics to create engaging web experiences” and drive behavior and engagement valued by clients. Their platform is customized for each client, and they offer a consulting service wherein clients are partnered with an implementation planner in order to customize their product for each business.

2. BigDoor

According to CEO & Co-founder Keith Smith, BigDoor's approach is to be open and flexible, which means that their API (Application Program Interface) is easily accessible by clients and others interested in developing the gamification platform.

One of the philosophies central to BigDoor’s business identity is that gamification needs to be adopted more widely and accepted as legitimate by more businesses owners, who at present remain skeptical. To this end BigDoor offers their platform free of cost to small businesses with roughly 25,000 monthly visitors or fewer. They hope to grow gamification from the ground up by focusing on small businesses and making adoption simple and easy.  Finally, BigDoor stresses that there is no omnibus gamification solution, and gamification requires the constant supervision that they provide.

3. Bunchball

Bunchball’s founder Rajat Paharia writes, “At the end of the day, we all need to provide something of value to our customers, and they need to pay us for it. So when thinking about which companies have momentum, you should … focus on which companies are signing meaningful customers, generating meaningful revenue from them, and delivering meaningful results... at Bunchball we are doing all of the above.”

Unlike BigDoor, which wants to involve as many new businesses in gamification and even offers a free way to implement their gamification software, Bunchball hopes to position itself as the business that goes after the big clients, and already boasts the most “blue chip” clients such as major television networks, Warner Bros., Adobe, HP, Chiquita, and Playboy to name a few.

4. YOU

There is nothing to say that you need to turn to one of these platforms to provide a gamification solution for you. These platforms have all been proven to do a good job at making users engage more fully with websites, but your whole business isn’t your website, and there’s more to gamification than just an online presence.

Anyone can apply gamification to their product, service, or public presence. All you need to do is start thinking of your own creative solution. Gabe Zichermann says that the most important dynamics are SAPS: Status, Access, Power, and Stuff. Go through your own memories of games you’ve enjoyed and think about how those kept your attention. You were probably challenged and rewarded with something from the SAPS dynamics.

Try and find ways to implement some fun into your service too. At the end of the day, gamification is about using game mechanics and dynamics to boost engagement and garner loyalty. It’s up to you to decide how to positively reinforce what you want your audience to engage and to what you want them to be loyal. Gamification is your new tool for engagement, go use it.

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Source: AYTM Research

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