Top 5 gamification features to power up mobility app loyalty programs

Mobility will continue to expand in 2023 – but how mobility operators grow will change. Today, loyalty programs are a major growth driver. That makes building customer loyalty more important than ever! A powerful way to foster mobility app loyalty is with gamification. A gamified loyalty program improves your customer experience and can be used to incentivize your riders to book more trips. Discover the 5 best loyalty examples in mobility, what you can learn from them, and how you too can grow with gamification.

• Why gamification is so effective at boosting mobility app loyalty
• How to use gamification in your mobility app loyalty program
• The 5 best gamified loyalty examples in mobility
• How you can gamify your mobility app with StriveCloud
• FAQs

Why gamification is so effective at boosting mobility app loyalty

Gamification is the use of game-like elements such as points and challenges to make an experience more fun and enjoyable. That’s because gamification satisfies a combination of motivational drivers. It fulfills intrinsic needs like progress and achievement and offers extrinsic rewards like points and free riding minutes. As a result, customers gain motivation to use your app. And that’s crucial in mobility where your app is everything!

Without a doubt, your app is the primary way how your customers will interact with you. Given this, it is easy to see how introducing gamification into your mobility app can enhance the overall customer experience, and in turn, create valuable brand loyalty.

Studies show how gamification has already been found to increase customer loyalty:

• 22% rise in brand loyalty for apps after introducing gamification
• 30% of apps that gamify improve conversion rates by at least 50%
• 27% of Millennials continue to use a loyalty program because it features gamification

 

How to use gamification in your mobility app loyalty program

You can’t just tack gamified features onto your app and hope it works. Instead, you need to tailor your approach to suit your audience and your goals! In other words, that means you must create a plan. That plan should define how gamification will improve your customer experience – and how that eventually leads to customer loyalty.

Your plan to boost mobility app loyalty with gamification should consist of 4 basic steps:

1. Define your goals. Do you want to increase the rides that each customer makes, boost customer loyalty through the app, or something else entirely?
2. Understand your audience. What do they like? What do they respond to? Learning what makes your customers tick is a crucial step in the process.
3. Design your gamification plan. This should align with your goals and trigger your audience. How will you use features like challenges and other rewards to incentivize your audience to book more rides or pay for a premium service?
4. Implement, evaluate, and improve! Gathering feedback and data lets you throw out what doesn’t work, and double down on what does.

The 5 best gamified loyalty examples in mobility

Points system

Points are a great way to incentivize customers to complete a certain action. For instance, you can increase referrals by handing out points. However, to truly motivate customers these points need to have a sense of value. It should act as a type of currency within your app. Customers can exchange coins for things such as free-riding minutes, rewards, and more. That’s a win-win!

When e-scooter operator EVO Sharing came to us, they had one clear goal: to boost the number of rides that each customer makes. Together, we implemented points that acted as a reward to encourage customers to ride more often. As a result, we also helped EVO Sharing differentiate its app from the competition!

“Our business model is very suitable for gamification. Receiving rewards based on distance, kilometers or minutes driven makes a lot of sense to use and goes well together.” – Jennifer Dittmar @EVO Sharing

Why does it work so well? Here are several reasons why points are so effective:

• Points create a sense of achievement, and in turn, motivation to achieve again
• They encourage friendly competition, fostering a sense of community
• Earned points act as a status symbol or proof of loyalty
• And offer a tangible way to track progress

Leaderboards

Leaderboards create friendly competition within your loyalty program. Simply put, when customers compete for the top spot, they start to feel a part of a community. As a result, you fulfill the ‘need to belong’, which social psychologists describe as hugely powerful! In short, that’s how you keep customers around for longer, and in turn, boost loyalty!

One of the great loyalty examples in mobility is Chromaroma. The app awards customers points for every trip they take. Customers can earn extra points when they complete missions and discover new places. After all that work, the ultimate prize is the top spot on a leaderboard which gives you a boost of positive reinforcement! But that’s just one way how leaderboards work their magic:

• Ability to clearly track personal progress compared to your peers
• Can be used to quickly and fairly define the criteria for winning a reward
• The social mechanics in leaderboards positively affect reuse intention
• Provides meaning to tasks, as leaderboards act as a form of instant feedback

Challenges

Challenges are unpredictable – and that’s exciting! This freshness gives customers a reason to return to the app. One of the best loyalty examples in mobility comes from Santander Cycles. Their app regularly features several challenges for customers to complete. But that’s not all! To make their challenges extra motivating, the app rewards successful customers with a lottery entry and the thrilling chance of winning a prize.

To recap, challenges can benefit your mobility app loyalty program because they:

• Triggers customers to complete actions aligned with your business goals, for example, to take more rides
• Keep the customer experience fresh and exciting
• Give winners a boost to their self-confidence and feelings of expertise
• Unlock a real sense of achievement

Lottery

Given that they are so simple to enter, lotteries are a great way to drive engagement. You don’t even have to win to get that emotional rush – just taking part is exciting! For the best results, you can offer customers tangible rewards like accessories linked to your brand, or simply financial ones such as discounts and free rides.

By implementing a gamified loyalty program, we helped HumanForest grow its e-bike business to the point its customers make over 150,000 trips each month across London. To enter HumanForest’s lottery, customers can exchange their points for entries, giving them a shot to win prizes like a branded bike helmet. But why are lotteries so effective?

• Helps you stay top-of-mind as customers anticipate the lottery’s result
• Lotteries provide positive reinforcement, giving customers a reason to earn points
• Prizes lend value to your points system (and a lottery is more affordable for you to run than simply dishing out prizes to everyone)

Levels

If you want a powerful gamification mechanic that creates loyalty, use levels. A leveling system segments customers, usually based on how many points they have accrued. When customers do finally achieve a higher level, your recognition of their loyalty will encourage reciprocity – and customers will return that loyalty back to you!

Sweden’s Voi. is a market leader in e-scooters, and their loyalty program, Voialty, is one of the most successful loyalty examples in mobility. In Voialty, loyal customers of higher levels get bigger discounts on their rides. Talk about a reward! Given that loyal customers spend more, Voi. has created a scalable growth and brand loyalty strategy.

In short, levels work because they:

• Help create order in the community and establish social status
• Gives customers something to strive for
• Levels with inventive names can communicate your brand identity
• Provide a clear tracker of personal progress

How you can gamify your mobility app with StriveCloud

Want to create loyalty? StriveCloud can help! Our gamified loyalty software is designed with shared mobility in mind. Using our software, you can turn your mobility app into a fun and social gamified customer experience like no other. Points, levels, social feeds, and more – it’s all about giving you the option and the power to implement your vision.

And starting with us is easy! We have 3 simple steps to put you on your way to success:

1. First, we help our customers identify the best loyalty & gamification solution according to their business challenges and target audience during a gamification workshop.
2. Second, we create a gamification design plan based on the needs discovered. This includes expert recommendations for additional in-app loyalty and gamification features.
3. Finally, we set up our software to integrate the new features straight into your mobile application. Our customers can easily iterate the experience live into their app from a simple control panel.

 

What’s your next step? Build your own gamified loyalty program & increase ride bookings by 3X!

 

FAQs