How does gamification drive engagement?

This graphic illustrates how gamification principles can be applied to drive user engagement and achieve business goals.

In this article you will learn about:

Why is engagement so important?

On the opposite side customer engagement leads to more sales, higher retention and referrals. An analysis by Gallup found that fully engaged customers are more loyal and profitable than average customers. A fully engaged customer represents an average 23% premium in terms of profitability while actively disengaged customers represent a 13% discount. The power of fully engaged customers show an array of positive results across different industries.

• In retail banking fully engaged customers bring 37% more annual revenue than actively disengaged customers. They also have more additional products and higher deposit balances.
• The consumer electronics industry showed 44% more visits per year from fully engaged shoppers. They also spent 29% more per visit than actively disengaged customers.

Customer engagement strategies have a big impact on apps and digital products as well. Nir Eyal, author of the book Hooked – How to build habit-forming products created the Hooked Model to show how successful platforms such as Facebook succeeded into making their product a part of our daily lives. Illustrating a similar pattern in gamification for apps.

User engagement for apps is important because it is directly linked to overall revenue and profitability. Highly engaged users are more likely to return and share your app with friends. Thus, the right user engagement strategies can lead to a reduced mobile app churn rate, an increase in the number of active users or time spent on your app, and user growth through referrals.

How can gamification drive engagement?

Gamification can be implemented in customer and employee engagement strategies to solve the key challenge of acquisition and retention. Gamifying an experience does not equal creating a game to engage customers. It is about applying game-like mechanisms to a non-game context, to encourage your target audience to carry out certain behaviors and can be used in customer and employee engagement strategies.

Businesses use gamification to work towards their business goals. By integrating gamification and engagement strategies, companies create a captivating user journey that drives desired behaviors and supports key business goals. Game mechanics can be leveraged to encourage users to stay engaged and motivated, making it easier to achieve success at every stage of the journey. Certainly, the best plan for behavior change includes gamification. When companies implement gamification features such as badges and prizes, they nudge customers towards positive behaviors, due to the expectation of an award at the end. Eventually these behaviors become habits, resulting in sustainable engagement.

How to get started with gamification? Get a free consultation today and we’ll show you what steps to take!

#1 Gamification for training

Enterprises like Salesforce and Deloitte employ gamification in their employee engagement strategies to tackle the challenge of engagement. Deloitte gamified their leadership training program with a series of gamified elements such as an employee badge, leaderboards and status symbols. By doing this time to certification for participants reduced by 50 percent.

#2 Gamification for marketing

Luckily these game mechanisms also serve marketing goals for all kinds of industries. This can be proven by several examples of company digital marketing strategies that employ gamification in their media. According to a study in cooperation with partners like Pepsi, Nike and Dell, gamifying your website boosts comments by 13%, social sharing by 22% and content discovery by 68%! M2 also found a 100% to 150% increase in engagement metrics including unique views, page views, community activities and time on site.

#3 Gamification for apps

Gamification is used to attract new potential customers and retain existing customers by keeping them actively engaged. Using gamification for customer engagement strategies resulted in a 54% increase in trial usage and a 15% increase in buy clicks.

So customer engagement impacts profitability, and if done right, it drives revenue.

Add a little fun to your mobile app, without all the development struggles? Check out StriveCloud's App Gamification Software!

The psychology behind gamification and engagement strategies

What is it about games or gamified apps that makes us want to keep using them? Multiple reasons are given for this technology craze. In a way, we are addicted to dopamine hits and are using our phones to satisfy our constant need for instant gratification. That is partially correct, although other neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins also come into play when implementing gamification in your employee or customer engagement strategies.

In regards to engagement people get motivated on two different levels. On one hand, we have extrinsic motivation, where we are motivated to do something because of the external reward we will be achieving. Extrinsic motivators are often established through gamification in the form of points, milestones, achievements, rewards or notifications.

Most existing reward systems today are built on extrinsic motivators. For example when you need to complete a task in order to get paid. External rewards are a good initial motivator however, once it is overused the effects tend to be lost. Once someone starts to focus too much on the external rewards they often lose initial engagement, this is called the Overjustification effect.

Where does true motivation come from?

On the other hand, we have intrinsic motivation. This is when we gain rewards internally because the activity in itself is rewarding and fun. The self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan is a theory concerning innate psychological needs. It shows the motivations behind choices we make. Our three most basic psychological needs are:

#1 Competence

This recognizes our need of wanting to be in control of things. It also explains why we enjoy discovering new skills and practicing them to eventually achieve mastery.

#2 Relatability

Humans are social animals! We like interactions with each other and to feel and be connected with others, showing and experiencing genuine care.

#3 Autonomy

Again showcasing our strong will to be in control of our own journey and life decisions.

Intrinsic motivators include relationships such as competition, collaboration and community feeling, the feeling of accomplishment through progress, achievement and collection, empowerment through autonomy and feedback, unpredictability through surprise, exploration and scarcity and lastly constraints through scarcity, loss and avoidance.

This diagram contrasts intrinsic motivators like passion and purpose with extrinsic motivators like money and social status, both of which are key in gamification design.

Looking to drive user motivation on your app? Check out our App Gamification Platform!

Measuring the impact of gamification on employee and customer engagement strategies

Before you are trying to add gamification to your business strategy, you need to be clear on what your business goals are and how adding game mechanisms will help you achieve those goals. You can do this by identifying the actions and behaviors you want your target audience to take.

Think about how their actions might affect you. If you want to get more organic traffic to your website you might want existing customers to share your social posts more. If you want to foster brand affinity, you might want customers to refer their friends and repeatedly interact with your product.

The same principles also help for retaining customers. Let’s say you want to increase the retention rate after your free trial. In the case of customer engagement strategies you will probably want to motivate actions such as:

• Number of sign-ups after trial
• Sharing your social media posts
• Liking your social media posts
• Following your pages

Engagement metrics to help you track your efforts

Along with the right goals it’s important to have the right metrics in place. Therefore you need KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to help you measure success. These indicators refer back to the previously stated goals, for example:

• Retention rate after trial
• Retention rate per cohort
• Number of shares
• The amount of likes
• Total number of followers

Examples of gamification in employee and customer engagement strategies

#1 SAP’s Roadwarrior sales training game

Gartner believes that up to 40% of Global 1000 organizations will adopt gamification to transform business operations in the near future by using gamification for training and incentive programs. SAP already put this to practice in multiple internal programs such as their SAP’s Roadwarrior sales training game (a program based on Who Wants to be a Millionaire). It was developed to help sales people study new product offerings so that they could better serve customers with their knowledge.

Their program utilizes multiple game mechanisms like badges, leaderboards and even battles on who has the most product knowledge amongst sales people. This interactive and gamified system sparks employee engagement and helps them retain up to 90% more information compared to someone who simply studies texts about the product.

#2 LinkedIn progress bar

Apps often use gamification elements to create a more playful experience for users. Mobile advertising platform App Samurai states that gamification in apps encourages users to share information about the product with others. A great example on how gamification inspires app usage is the progress bar LinkedIn uses to show your profile strength. It reinforces feedback to the user who might enjoy seeing the bar being completed and therefore will put more work into polishing off his or her profile.

The LinkedIn profile strength bar is a classic example of using a progress tracker to motivate users to complete their profiles.

#3 OpenText leaderboard

Well designed gamification experiences increase user acquisition and drive loyalty. Gamification enables word of mouth promotion and encourages social sharing by offering new experiences. OpenText, a company operating in Enterprise Information Management got a 250% increase in business usage and adoption only by implementing a leaderboard. After a couple of weeks of beta testing the IT level of active participation was well above 60%.

The 4 stages of a gamified experience

In every gamified experience you will go through these 4 stages. Every stage represents a different point in the decision making process and thus will have different content needs. The way you design the experience depends on your business goals. For instance implementing gamification for apps, using gamification for marketing or leveraging gamification for training have different goals and uses.

#1 Discovery

In the discovery phase people come across your offering for the first time. When you first hear about a product you want to understand the core value proposition to see what’s in it for you. That way you can decide if it’s something worth checking out.

#2 Onboarding

During the onboarding stage you are first getting to know the system. The goal of your users here is to feel welcome, to learn how everything works and to achieve small goals. It’s important to have a great first experience so that you will want to keep coming back.

#3 Habit building

In the habit building stage you are a regular user of the game. You want to see new content, try out new activities and expand on your previous actions. As a habit builder you want to get satisfaction out of your game by achieving a desired goal.

#4 Mastery

In the last stage of the process you mastered the gamified system meaning you learned everything there is to do in the app. Your goal is to earn more privileges and rewards or get through to limited access facilities. To keep your masters, which are also your biggest fans you need to include exclusive triggers.

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FAQ

Why should you use gamification for your app?

Using gamification for apps increases user usage and adoption rate and often makes your product more habit-forming.

How does psychology explain the effectiveness of gamification?

Games and gamified apps keep us engaged by providing instant gratification and frequent dopamine hits, along with other neurotransmitters like oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. They leverage both extrinsic motivation through rewards like points and achievements, and intrinsic motivation by fulfilling our internal desires for mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

Which engagement metrics are best for tracking results?

That depends on your goal. If, say, you wish the user would spend more time on your app, session length is appropriate. Always look at your objective first and then start from there.

The 6 stages of the customer experience and the best ways to improve them in 2023

This article explores how optimizing the customer journey through the mobile app funnel, enhanced with gamification, can drive user retention and growth.

2022 was an impressive year for mobile apps. In the US alone, consumer spending on apps increased by a whopping $7 billion compared to 2021! But such rapid growth also brings challenges. Is your app ready for what 2023 will bring? Right now, trends are encouraging app publishers to develop customer experience optimization strategies for the complete mobile app funnel. That means building acquisition engines, as well as a sticky reward system that boosts user retention!

In this article, let’s cover how you can optimize your customer journey with the Mobile App Funnel & what gamification can do to power up that strategy.

• How 2022 was a big year for apps (and why 2023 will be too)
• Introducing the Mobile App Funnel: a customer experience optimization technique
• The 6 stages of the mobile app funnel (and how to activate user behavior)
• How StriveCloud can help with your app gamification journey

How 2022 was a big year for apps (and why 2023 will be too)

With a market set to grow 21% every year between 2021 and 2025, things will not stay the same for long. Indeed, a steady ship is rare in a rising tide.

Looking at the app market at the macro level, we see accelerated growth from top to bottom. More than 2 million new apps were published in 2022, bringing the total to a record over 21 million. Of that number, 233 apps make over $100 million annually, up an incredible 20% in just 1 year.

So the statistics show that the stakes are getting higher, the prizes bigger, and the competition stiffer. But 2022 did pick some winners when it came to growth:

Some app categories are excelling when it comes to mobile app engagement

This graph illustrates the significant growth in the average number of apps used per month across various categories, with finance, food, and mHealth leading the charge.

Out of all the app categories, finance is the sector that new users are flocking to most. In 2021, the average number of finance apps used monthly increased by 32.5% compared to 2019. That higher level of mobile app engagement gives more finance apps a chance to gain a loyal customer base! In addition, food retail and mHealth are growing in this metric. However, the market is headed for a shakeup in 2023 due to one development:

5G is on the rise - and users expect speed and efficiency improvements

By the end of 2027, nearly half of all devices will support 5G connections. This will drastically affect the customer experience users can expect to enjoy:

• 5G is 100x faster than today’s 4G
• 5G will allow for more integration of AR and VR tech
• Latency times will reduce from 50 milliseconds to just 1 millisecond!
• Fintech will process faster and more secure mobile payments
• Deeper mHealth integration with wearable devices will eventually become possible

As these trends indicate, the mobile app market is evolving rapidly, demanding a proactive approach to the user journey.

In short, you need to be confident that your customer experience can steer you through the changes up ahead. That means discussing customer experience optimization.

Introducing the Mobile App Funnel: a customer experience optimization technique

The customer journey is a popular concept among marketeers. It helps to visualize what users experience, all the way from acquisition up to becoming a loyal customer. In other words, inquisitive product managers and marketeers looking to optimize their customer journey can benefit from the ‘mobile app funnel’ model.

It may seem overwhelming to picture all your challenges and goals, but a systemic approach can help break it up into manageable segments. The mobile app funnel, or User Lifecycle stages model, gives you the clarity you need to identify the best interventions you might want to take during every stage of customer interaction.

This diagram visualizes the mobile app funnel, a model that breaks the customer journey into distinct stages from acquisition to advocacy.

Of course, your challenges and goals will differ depending on the stage. To tackle and achieve them, you must develop a tailored strategy for every segment of the journey. This might seem obvious, but it’s easy to miss some crucial details when you are looking at the big picture. This model helps identify what solutions you need for each stage.

The 6 stages of the mobile app funnel (and how to activate user behavior)

The mobile app funnel helps to map out your customer experience optimization strategy - but to give it extra legs you may want to consider gamification!

Gamification is the use of game-like elements in a non-game context that aims to integrate a genuinely enjoyable and satisfying reward system. StriveCloud knows the potential benefits of mobile app gamification, from a 9% boost to conversion to a 250% jump in social activity just from a simple gamified leaderboard!

Just getting started with gamification? Catch up to speed on our What is Gamification page!

With that in mind, let’s see how gamification can activate your users in all 6 stages:

#1 Acquisition: increase your user base

Acquiring users can be difficult and costly. At the end of 2021, the cost per install (CPI) rate across the Google Play Store was $1.22. That’s higher than the average, and much higher than in December 2019 when it was $0.97. In essence, it’s getting more expensive to acquire new users. But that doesn’t mean you are without a solution: a successful App Store Optimization (ASO) strategy can boost your conversions by 10%.

For ASO, word-of-mouth and social media tactics are indispensable. Smarter use of keywords, images, and other tags will increase your app’s ranking in the app store!

The gamification boost: How Revolut gained hundreds of users with a leaderboard

When starting out, Revolut had university leaderboards that encouraged students to sign up. This taps into the need for social relatedness. Simply put, competition is fun. In addition, the reward system built on the prize of a premium membership entices users to sign up! This could generate a buzz, like reviews and high star ratings in the app store that will acquire users and boost your ASO strategy.

Revolut's use of a university leaderboard demonstrates how competition and rewards can drive user acquisition effectively, setting the stage for the next phase: activation.

#2 Activation: convert acquired users to engaged users

It’s not enough to acquire users, you have to activate them. This entails demonstrating your customer value early on. Most apps lose around 80% of new users in just 1 day! Don’t be like that - instead, optimize and concentrate on your onboarding. In doing so, you could see a 4x times boost to activation metrics!

Onboarding should be short, sweet, and personalized! Fitness apps may want to ask new users their experience level, or fintech app users’ priority (like investing or saving). Subtle touches like this can tell a person that their needs will be met; that they are not simply downloading a one size fits all experience. That’s crucial!

Another thing you can do is give your users a headstart. People are more motivated to complete a goal when there’s already some sort of artificial advancement to it. This is called ‘the endowed progress effect’. Companies like Paypal or Dropbox for instance all use this in their onboarding process, and rightfully so as it can increase onboarding completions by over 10%.

The gamification boost: MuscleBooster uses personalized onboarding to become a Top 10 fitness app

The first thing you want when new users install your app is to immediately see the potential benefits. So when MuscleBooster personalized the customer experience, they gave customers ownership over the user experience – making them more likely to stay.

MuscleBooster's personalized onboarding process gives users a sense of ownership from the very beginning, which is a key factor in moving them from activation to long-term retention.

#3 Retention: incentivize habit formation

To stick around, people need to love your product. That much should be clear! At this stage of your customer experience optimization journey, it’s important to have the right data. Here, user retention metrics on Days 1, 7, and 30 are the most important KPIs to keep in mind. Not only will this help you compare your app to the competition, but it will also provide an anchor point to base your efforts on.

At this stage, one of your most powerful tools is customizing in-app communication.

The gamification boost: Personalization gives Calm a 3x boost to user retention

Calm achieved success by letting users set their own push notifications reminding them to meditate. By personalizing push notifications, Calm not only avoids frustrating new users with clutter, but also helps facilitate habit formation, and in turn, retention.

StriveCloud’s gamification building blocks can boost your app. Gamify your app in no time – all suited to your goals!

By allowing users to personalize reminders, the Calm app masterfully encourages habit formation, a cornerstone of user retention.

#4 Re-engagement: a reward system that wins back inactive or churned users

Don’t miss out on users who might lapse, after all, you spent this much effort to get them to this stage! It can be super effective to incentivize lapsed users to return with an enticing reward system, such as by offering ‘free stuff’ like premium membership or discounts on exclusive events/features.

The gamification boost: Cashback offers brought back lapsed users for Revolut

Revolut users were given 6 days to benefit from half-price cashback on purchases at the Notes Coffee café chain in London. The results were incredible! They achieved a 15% user retention rate, improved visit repetition, and won back lost customers.

This example of a time-sensitive cashback offer from Revolut shows how targeted perks can re-engage lapsed users and pave the way for monetization strategies.

#5 Monetization: increase revenue & convert free users to paying customers

At this point, your user loves your app! But what can you do to increase user activity and improve that customer’s lifetime value? There’s a range of monetization strategies you can go for, from in-app purchases to monthly subscription models. Each has its advantages that you need to consider, depending on what you can offer users.

The gamification boost: BBVA bank monetized 100,000 loyal customers through a smart reward system

BBVA, a leading Spanish bank, created a gamification strategy fit for the loyalty and monetization stage. As part of their strategy, they launched the BBVA Game, a web app with app tutorials and explanations on how to pay taxes and do transactions online.

With their reward system, customers can spend their earned points from completing challenges by redeeming them for music downloads, movies, smartphones, or even tickets for the La Liga football league. This is the sort of ancillary income that can boost your bottom line. After only 6 months, the BBVA game had over 100,000 users and its users showed an 18% higher satisfaction rate!

The success of the BBVA Game, with its tangible rewards and high satisfaction rates, illustrates how to effectively monetize an engaged user base and turn customers into advocates.

#6 Advocacy: a smart strategy that makes people talk about you

A 2015 Nielsen report reveals that 83% of people would trust the recommendations of family or friends. However, only a few brands have mastered the word-of-mouth technique and succeeded in converting their users into proud advocates. Here’s where gamification can make the difference.

Exclusivity is a powerful tool that brands can use at this phase. Think about what would make your users proud to display in front of their friends. More than that, you can reward your advocates for using referral links to register for a new account or simply implementing new incentives that would transform advocacy into a habit.

How StriveCloud can help with your app gamification journey

Just like putting a new splash of paint on artwork is stressful for an artist, implementing new features can be troublesome for app developers. How do you know what you are doing is right? Is this reward system suitable for your app’s users? Will it be easy to adjust or take off, should you need to? With StriveCloud’s app gamification building blocks, you need not worry.

The app gamification blocks allow app publishers to insert, remove, and adjust new features to best suit their users’ needs. It doesn’t require code and can be customized to fit your user experience entirely. Ultimately, this lends your business flexibility - to be sure a competitive advantage in 2023’s fast-moving app market!

Start your own gamification journey with a personalized workshop - Bring your goals & data & go home with an actionable roadmap!

65+ fan engagement lessons traditional sports can learn from esports

Even the leading organizations in traditional sports are falling behind when it comes to sports fan engagement. For example, top-tier football club Manchester United only appointed a head of fan engagement for the first time in 2022! But the esports market has been leading the way in fan engagement and can provide lessons for sports organizations of all kinds. And that leaves a big opportunity for sports companies.

This visual introduction sets the stage for the deep dive into esports fan engagement strategies that traditional sports can adopt. In this article, we’ll cover 66 of the best examples of sports fan engagement in the world of gaming and esports.

Learn what’s happening in the sport (and align your message)

With esports achieving incredible growth, the debate around the sport has changed. While esports used to be a niche, esports is now watched by 1 billion people globally.

This background inspired the partnership between the Austrian bank ERSTE Group and the League of Legends World Championship in 2021. Having done their research, ERSTE created a humorous video poking fun at the debate of whether esports is a ‘real sport’. In the end, the video tells esports players and fans to #believeinyourself. To be sure, this is a clever case of knowing your market and how they feel! Since the video’s release in August 2021, it has earned an incredible 6.6 million views.

ERSTE Group's #believeinyourself campaign is a prime example of understanding and aligning with the esports community's culture.

Use the power of independent influencers

Do not underestimate the power of streamers! In 2022, Nvidia sponsored over 1,400 Streamers in a Geforce NOW Campaign. The campaign goal was to bring awareness to NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW cloud-based game streaming service. The brand tried its best to be non-disruptive, and prepare advertisements that would blend in with streaming content. Consequently, this campaign was their largest one yet, and the results were impressive:

• Over 600 thousand views
• A 2.73% CTR
• Over 18.5 thousand clicks

NVIDIA's successful campaign with streamers demonstrates the immense reach and impact of influencer marketing in the gaming world.

Inspire your fans with user-generated content

Esports fans are well-known for their high engagement - and this opens up great opportunities for user-generated content (UGC) campaigns. Not only will UGC extend your campaign’s reach - and cheaply - but research also shows that 2/3 of consumers prefer UGC over brand-created images.

One of the most successful recent examples of sports fan engagement using UGC was a partnership between the esports group Fnatic and beef jerky producer Jack Link. For the campaign, Fnatic & Jack Link created a custom map for the popular first-person shooter game CS:GO and encouraged players to share videos of them using #BeefMode. What’s more, the player who submitted the best video would win a FNATIC-branded headset!

The Fnatic and Jack Link's #BeefMode campaign showcases how user-generated content can create viral engagement and a sense of community.

Reach your audience where they are

When Marriott International opened its first Moxy hotel in Shanghai, it needed to find a way to connect with Moxy’s younger Gen Z audience. The solution? Gaming! By partnering with 150 famous gamers and creators in Shanghai to release 3o videos on platforms like TikTok, Moxy reached an incredible 25 million people in just 4 months!

Make product placement an interactive fan experience

Gamers are digital natives - and they can spot fakes a mile off. Given this attitude, it can be difficult to run a successful product placement campaign. But Tesla shows you how to do it! In 2020, the futuristic car brand partnered with Peacekeeper Elite, a Chinese battle royale game. However, Tesla didn’t just slap their logo over the game. Instead, they worked with the game developers to create the Cybertruck and Roadster in the game! The items were extremely popular and also boosted the anticipation for Tesla’s next car.

In short, this is a great example of reciprocity. Put simply, many fans feel that if they must put up with commercials and logos in their game, they ought to get something for it.

Tesla's integration of the Cybertruck into the game 'Peacekeeper Elite' is a masterclass in interactive and value-added product placement.

Cross over between digital and real-world

When Sony released the PlayStation 5, they made a splash by playing with some cultural icons in London. Underground stations across the city were rebranded to fit the PS5 brand - and as a result, Sony achieved 960 million media impressions and their most successful console launch in the UK of all time, achieving a 69% market share!

Sony's PlayStation 5 launch in London, which rebranded underground stations, illustrates the power of blending digital brands with real-world experiences.

Tap into cultural trends

Cultural trends are hugely powerful and can better embed your campaign into the market. In China right now, ‘guochao’ is a hot topic. Essentially, this is a renewed appreciation for Chinese culture, history, and design - and Gen Z is leading the trend!

To capitalize on this, the Chinese beauty brand Perfect Diary used traditional folklore in their partnership with Honor of Kings. Why Honor of Kings? It is not just because it is China’s most popular title and reaches 100 million players daily! In fact, 54% of players are women. That made them the perfect partner to showcase a limited edition cosmetics range, featuring folkloric characters that players will know and love.

The partnership between Perfect Diary and Honor of Kings leverages the 'guochao' trend, demonstrating how cultural relevance can create a powerful connection with a target audience.

Go global by being local

Gaming might be a sport without borders - but each country has its own distinct streamers, teams, and favorite games. Indeed, the top 10 streamers on Twitch include English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers. Thus, localization is useful in reaching different markets. Inarguably, there is around 1 billion people who's second spoken language is English, but around 65% of these people still prefer content in their native tongue. In short, to achieve a broad reach and still connect with different audiences, you should localize your esports marketing.

Be smart about where to put your logo

It can be tempting to make your logo as prominent as possible. After all, a prominently placed logo in esports is 300% more memorable than a less obvious placement. But then you need to consider how you want the audience to remember your brand. To be sure, a bad link can backfire spectacularly! That’s why OnePlus took a smart decision when they sponsored the League of Legends European Masters. During broadcasts, OnePlus presented the top plays from each match - associating themselves with success!

Provide fans with a unique fan experience

In 2021, esports tournament organizer BLAST partnered with streaming platform Twitch to provide a special fan experience. Instead of broadcasting their upcoming Apex Legends event like any other tournament, BLAST worked with Twitch to maximize their fan engagement. How did they do it? By developing unique features such as rewards for loyal viewers and a more integrated chat experience. As a result, the tournament racked up 28,000 viewers who watched for nearly 200,000 hours!

This Apex Legends tournament by BLAST and Twitch shows how unique features and integrated experiences can significantly boost viewer engagement and watch time.

To improve sports fan engagement outside of major events, segment your fans by loyalty

Not all fans are created equal. For example, 71% of esports fans only follow one game! Furthermore, those fans could be casual viewers who only tune in for major events, or they could be fanatics who check forums daily. Learning who is who will improve your sports fan engagement strategy all year long - major events or not.

To easily engage your most loyal fans all year long, you could take the lead of esports team Rogue and offer fans a tiered loyalty system. Belonging to ‘Rogue Nation’ provides benefits like VIP tickets, free in-game dropboxes, and even meetings with the players!

Rogue Nation's tiered loyalty system is an effective strategy for segmenting fans and providing exclusive benefits to the most dedicated supporters.

How to make a sponsorship successful? Make it a win-win situation

A sponsorship ought to be so much more than a simple transaction. Instead, it should be a win-win situation for everyone involved! To start, sponsors should give teams new ways to monetize their product or brand, while introducing fans to interesting and relevant offers. For instance, Swedish esports organization Ninjas in Pyjamas teamed up with ‘A Good Company’ to offer sustainable water bottles. Like this, everyone wins!

The collaboration between Ninjas in Pyjamas and 'A Good Company' for sustainable water bottles creates a win-win scenario for the team, the sponsor, and the fans.

Personalize your experience to the segment

Personalization is a hugely powerful tool, especially in the fragmented market of esports. Each game has its own unique fanbase, just as each sport does, and so your communication should be tailored to that.

For instance, the Swiss tournament platform GameTurnier, which is one of our clients at StriveCloud, builds dedicated hubs for different types of games. That way they can tailor their messaging and campaigns for different target groups.

Find out why leading sports brands & esports agencies choose StriveCloud! Get a demo with our experts & discover how having your own platform can benefit you.

Lay things out clearly for casual viewers

We’ve all been in a room where someone watching doesn’t know the rules of the sport. That confusion can be magnified in esports, where casual viewers can easily lose track of events. To avoid that and achieve higher engagement, communication with fans should aim to simplify the state of play - ensuring that fans can enjoy the action!

So when BMW sponsored five of the best esports teams in the world with the United In Rivalry campaign, they played up the rivalry between the teams. This campaign helped frame the drama at the 2021 BMW Berlin Brawl for casual viewers and expose them to the different teams.

BMW's 'United In Rivalry' campaign effectively simplified the narrative for casual viewers by highlighting team rivalries, making the event more accessible and engaging.

Challenge your fanbase to drive engagement

When Burger King sponsored the humble English football club Stevenage, many were skeptical. But the fast food giant turned that around with a clever campaign!

To start, Burger King asked FIFA gamers to challenge themselves and play as the fourth-tier side. The two-week “Stevenage challenge” campaign made Stevenage the most used team on FIFA and Burger King one of the most visible brands in the game!

Alex Tunbridge, CEO of Stevenage - "It actually shows the digital space is now worth more than what you have in real life. We had something like 1.2 billion impressions on the campaign.”

The "Stevenage challenge" sponsored by Burger King is a brilliant example of how a creative challenge can turn a low-tier team into a viral sensation in the gaming world.

Reward fan participation to create an engagement loop

Our client Jantje.gg, the tournament platform owned by KPN and the Royal Dutch Football Association, rewards users not just for winning competitions, but also for just for participating! For every check-in, every match played, and so on you earn coins. Later on, you can exchange these coins for prizes or enter a lottery system.

In turn, that feeling of reciprocity and belonging to a community encourages further engagement and transforms casual fans into fanatics!

Learn how to engage & monetize a gaming community in just 2 weeks. Check out our 360° tournament platform!

Partner with related brands to expand your audience

Expanding your audience can be as simple as partnering with brands that serve similar audiences. For instance, when BMW ran their United In Rivalry campaign in 2021 they also partnered with DC Comics to release a manga starring professional esports players. Not only does this utilize another common interest of the gaming audience, but it also creates a unique campaign!

Alexander Albrecht, MD of Esports consulting agency - “It's not the budget that guarantees success in the [esports] industry, but rather an authentic and relevant dialogue with the target audience.”

BMW's collaboration with DC Comics to create a manga demonstrates how partnering with related brands can expand audience reach and create unique, shareable content.

Show that you truly understand the sport

Gaming is an extremely fragmented market. Obviously, you wouldn’t get a golf player to star in an advert for baseball - and the same goes for esports. For instance, it might be easy to see PUBG and Fortnite as a part of the same “Battle Royale” gaming world, but the audiences are totally different. For Fortnite, the top esports players hail from the USA, France, the UK, and Canada. However, on PUBG, you are more likely to see Chinese, Koreans, Russians, and Finns playing.

It might seem obvious at first, but that’s why Lamborghini sponsored the car football game Rocket League and its tournaments over any other sports game. Traditional sports can learn from this by recognizing that each fanbase is also unique!

Create campaigns that are worth sharing

Riot Games took a risk by releasing Arcane, an animated TV series set in the world of League of Legends. But their marketing campaign was almost too big to ignore - and was specially made to excite and engage LOL fans!

Mysterious pop-ups with LOL items began to appear in major cities across the world, but no event was bigger than lighting up the tallest building in the world with LOL characters. When the video of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai started spreading in fan circles, it quickly reached 600,000 views!

Riot Games' marketing for Arcane, which included lighting up the Burj Khalifa, shows that creating "too big to ignore" campaigns generates immense buzz and shareability.

Tell a story around your main characters, or personalities

For sports organizations, athletes and well-known personalities often have huge followings! So when Riot Games came out with Seraphine, a Twitter account for a fictional LOL character, they wanted to do more than sell or promote.

Rather, Seraphine built awareness for the Worlds Tournament by posting just like a fan! Mostly, that meant tweeting selfies with a unique style that mixed illustrations and real-life objects. Seraphine regularly garnered around 15-40k likes on her posts, in addition to reaching 340k followers! In the end, viewership rose a huge 61% for the next Worlds Tournament.

It all starts with great content

Just like any form of entertainment, the fan journey starts with great content. Luckily for people looking to engage younger audiences, there are lots of possibilities in the esports and gaming industry. Red Bull was one of the first brands to fully commit to esports. They produce related video content and sponsor players and esports teams alike. This gives Red Bull not only many possibilities to distribute beverages and goodwill but also to harvest a ton of exclusive content.

The secret to Red Bull’s success in the esports market is its captivating storytelling. In August 2019 Red Bull’s gaming channel posted an 80 minutes long documentary called Against The Odds. The documentary tells the story of the OG’s esports team's comeback after losing the Dota 2 tournament the year before. Since its launch, it has received over 2.4 million views and 53K likes with people in the comments praising Red Bull for their effort to the community.

Use the power of storytelling to add value for fans

For the release of Blockbuster movie King Arthur, Warner Bros. integrated itself into the livestream of Dreamhack Tours in France, aligning key themes of the movie with authentic and engaging content formats that resonated with fans. Alongside the live stream they also produced video content where they interviewed the “King of the Match”. The activation worked because it added value to the esport event and its fans.

Find what truly motivates your fans

While some esports tournaments like the Fortnite World Cup can go up to 30 million dollars in prizes, it’s not the only incentive to participate. League of Legends, Overwatch and other games offer variable rewards to players just for playing the game. At the end of every season, players are awarded for their ranking. This makes players committed to the game by working towards a goal and contributing to the community. It comes as no surprise that some of these players will enjoy watching competitive play as well.

24/7 engagement in esports competitions

What if you could keep your fans engaged 24/7? That’s exactly what the international esports platform Kayzr does for over 100,000 gamers. Kayzr is a platform where people can compete in online tournaments and win virtual coins which they can exchange for sponsor prizes in the online shop. As part of their partnership with StriveCloud, Kayzr shifted from a tournament system to a League system where users can compete around the clock. The launch boosted daily active users with 60% and got 1 year of 24/7 eyeball time in just a day.

Scalable long term engagement vs expensive loyalty programs

With the new League system in place Kayzr needed a more scalable way than physical prizes to keep their users engaged. Thanks to StriveCloud’s knowledge in gamification they were able to shift motivation from rewards-oriented to experience-oriented. By adding elements of surprise with lottery systems and guaranteeing peak times with “Hotzones” where rewards are doubled, made the game experience in itself better. Finding what truly mattered to their audience helped them achieve a 350% jump in users without increasing loyalty spendings.

Know your fanbase community

Swiss esports agency eStudios noticed how important it is to understand your audience’s behavior. After hearing FIFA players being unhappy about the tournament system on their gaming platform GameTurnier, they decided to partner up with StriveCloud to create a better experience.

Tobias Egartner, CEO Dayzero - "It's important to understand the needs and challenges of your target group and fanbase. It doesn’t matter how big the obstacle, if the challenge is a specific button, take it seriously even if it’s as simple as changing a word to make the experience less confusing."

Discover new broadcast and distribution channels

Engage fans who aren’t present on match day. The live stream of a tournament can considerably amplify an audience and with that, the participatory factor. What the digitally natives like millenials and gen Z’ers like is interaction and feeling part of something. This approach worked for leagues like the NBA and Premier League as well when they started streaming on Twitch.

Emmet Shear, CEO Twitch - "We really believe that live interactive video with chat works for any live video, works for any genre whether its sports, politics, music… It’s just a matter of figuring out the right format, the right recipe to bring it to that vertical."

This chart illustrates the massive viewership hours on streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube, highlighting the shift in media consumption towards interactive, live content.

New engagement models

Unlike traditional sports, every single esports match is available to watch on digital platforms free of charge. Some organizers even reward audience engagement. The Esports Championship Series organized by Faceit even rewarded viewers on YouTube with ‘loot drops’. Loot drops are points that could be exchanged for tangible prizes including gaming hardware, apparel and automobiles.

Move your fanbase online

As a response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Belgian sports broadcaster Proximus and the Belgian Football Pro League decided to partner up with StriveCloud to win back eyeballs for clubs using esports. Fans could register to represent their favourite team in FIFA tournaments. Players could win points and prizes to incentivise them to play more matches. Gamers could compare ranks to one another and socialize through the general chat. Clubs had the opportunity to connect with fans at home while simultaneously being introduced to a new esports audience that was out of reach in the classical business model.

Low-cost and highly scalable

Coca-Cola which is a big sponsor of Olympic games and soccer worldwide is also invested into esports. Coca-Cola’s partnership with game publisher Riot Games allowed them to do brand activations at its tournaments. They soon realized fans from all around the world are interested in watching these tournaments. What started as a small test program to broadcast the tournaments in cinemas, quickly became an extraordinary event with over 200 simultaneous viewing parties on screens across the entire world.

Alban Dechelotte, Senior Manager-Entertainment Marketing and Head of esports at Coca-Cola - "We’re not looking to do ‘takeovers’ with these in terms of exposure and branding; people know Coke, we don’t need to promote the name, but what we want is for them to have this great experience with Coca-Cola."

Enable tournaments & fan entertainment

On TwitchCon 2018 Doritos organized an esports brand activation called the Doritos Bowl. Four Twitch streamers – Ninja, DrLupo, Shroud and CouRage were invited to participate in a live stream tournament of Call of Duty to bring awareness to their brand while offering entertaining content for the fans.

A strong sense of community empowers targeting possibilities

There is a very strong sense of community in the gaming audience. While younger generations might show more resistance against intrusive ads, they are more receptive to it than you think. Esports players often have a bigger online presence than their traditional sports counterparts. They can reach their target audience with a multichannel approach which allows for new and exciting ways to build awareness.

Craig Barry, Exec VP-Chief Content Officer for sports Broadcaster Turner Sports - "I hear words like 'mainstream' around esports, and although it's getting there, it is still very much niche, but it's a huge niche and an extremely engaged community."

Fans value authentic brands that are immersed in the community

Finding sponsors for esports is not just about exposing the brand name. For new fan generations doing a logo slap is not enough to be remembered. These young consumers actually prefer when brands are immersed into the community. Credit card company Mastercard for example made itself cool by sponsoring branded content gaming influencers instead of disruptive advertising.

Brian Lancey, VP and Global Head of Sponsorships, Mastercard - "We didn't want to over commercialize it because it was about [building] trust with these fans," Brian Lancey, VP and global head of sponsorships, said of Mastercard's fledgling esports marketing program. "We're a financial institution ... we're not a Nike, we're not a Red Bull — we're not a really cool brand."

Be inclusive and empowering

Although many believe esports only attracts millennial males, they actually reach an entire spectrum of target demographics. Dating site Bumble committed to bringing an all-female team to the Fortnite League in cooperation with esports agency Gen.G Esports. The team stands as role models for young girls who want to get into professional gaming. What makes this activation so great is the fact that they are the first all-female team that are inspiring younger girls to break the stigma.

Find where your target audience lies

After you have figured out your target audience, it’s time to find which channel they are using. Esports is a great place to reach the younger generations but not only. The market is rapidly growing and opens lots of opportunities to create branded content and experiences.

The projected growth of the global esports audience underscores the rapidly expanding opportunity for brands to connect with this highly engaged demographic.

It’s not about the competition, it’s about the fans

When you go to an esports tournament you will notice it’s not only about the competition.First and foremost an esports tournament it’s a place for the fans to connect with their favorite gamers and content creators, participate in tournaments and meet up like-minded people of the community.

Gaming influencers for integrated content

As professional athletes are seen as celebrities today, the same counts for gaming influencers. This offers a lot of possibilities in terms of content creation such as unboxing, reviews, partnerships, trailers and many more. It’s important to find the right personality that fits both your brand and message. Since the lockdown American esports team 100 Thieves started a partnership with audio company JBL was a perfect match that created continuous exposure for JBL.

Ralph Santana, Chief Marketing Officer at Harman, JBL’s parent company - “Our partnership with 100 Thieves highlights our drive and commitment to launching the world’s best lineup of gaming headsets and speakers to date. These are some of the top competitive gamers in the industry, so we are proud to offer the JBL Quantum Range to help them reach countless more victories.”

Traditional sports as esports

The way leading gaming company EA elevates esports through the association with traditional sports resonates with the leading brands. Under EA SPORTS they have published games like FIFA, Madden NFL, NHL, NBA 2K and even the UFC. It’s a great way to engage existing audiences while also reaching entirely new target groups. Since the COVID-19 lockdown many sports clubs turned to esports as an alternative to entertain their fanbases.

Leverage partnerships to create experiences for your target audience

Counter Strike, is a first person shooter game that requires quick reaction times, precise aim as well as constant teamwork and communication. It has long been the favorite game of current and former members of the Armed Forces. When esports organization Cloud9 announced their partnership with the US Air Force it was a perfect match and one of the greatest brand partnerships in esports so far. The US Army got exposure to their ideal audience and the fans got some amazing entertainment.

Frank Muth, Head of US ARMY Recruiting - "We think that esports and the digital plane is going to become the number one lead generator."

Gain exposure in entirely new target markets

To promote its new Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces mashup bar, chocolate company Hershey’s gained huge exposure to an engaged audience of game influencers Ninja and DRLupo. What made the campaign so successful was the unique collaboration between the two game influencers and their clever cross promotion on Twitter and Instagram.

Putting the social in media

Another partnership by esports League Cloud9 and PUMA illustrates how much more engaged digital natives are. Using social listening tools, research company Nielsen found that social media sentiment around the partnership was 700% higher than the traditional sports industry norm for similar campaigns. That’s because they didn’t just post for likes but to engage in conversation. And with the fans actively participating in creating the apparel, engagement skyrocketed.

Matt Shaw, Team Head of Digital Marketing, PUMA - “Esports occupies a large and growing percentage of our audience’s media consumption. But more than that, PUMA has witnessed the nature of sports and sports culture change over the course of the last decade, and it has become apparent that esports has a valuable role to play in how the next generation shapes sports culture. We are a brand that charges itself with driving sports culture, and so this is naturally an area we feel we must lead.”

Don’t sell. Speak the language of your community

It’s important to be on the same wavelength as your audience if you want to keep them engaged. Just like Michael Jordan is the number one ambassador of his shoes, some influencers in the gaming space have tremendous amounts of loyal followers. Having esports influencers unbox or review your products in their own un-scripted style is a perfect way to get it in front of your target audience and gain some brand association while you’re at it.

Nathan Lindberg, Regional Vice President Twitch - "Everyone today feels like Gen Z millennials are anti-advertising ... They just want transparency."

Highly engaged audience with lots of goodwill

Just like traditional sports the main revenue in esports comes from sponsorships. Additionally you have advertisements and media or streaming rights, ticketing and memberships which all capitalize on the eyeballs of a hard-to-reach target audience: millennials & gen Z. The average gamer spends an average of 7 hours per week on gaming with almost 10% over 20 hours. For some streamers the goodwill is so high that fans spontaneously donate money to support their favorite gamer!

This data on weekly gaming hours across different countries reveals the high level of engagement within the gaming community, presenting a valuable opportunity for brands.

Always keep it fun

When KFC first started their gaming channel it became clear they would provide funny and relatable content. To promote their new vegan esports Performance Burger they created another comedy style parody which would redefine the industry forever as eating it would make you the perfect gamer.

Millennials and Generation Z need instant gratification

Esports targets a young audience that broadcasters are afraid of losing to other on-demand video platforms. Platforms such as Netflix and YouTube Gaming have millions of viewers all around the world and are available for personalized experiences 24/7. When consuming digital media, the fans are in control of what they want to see and what not. With over 140 million monthly users a platform like Twitch captures an average of 95 minutes per day. During the COVID-19 lockdown they broke a total of 3 billion hours watched on the platform with a 23% increase compared to the previous quarter.

Personalization and interaction is key

With an oversupply of content and media, marketers must adapt to the power shift and use technology to learn more about their target group so they can better serve them. As sport audiences are growing older, sport clubs are looking for ways to engage younger fans. The reason platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming are so popular is thanks to their interactive and personal experience.

Low-entry barrier & fun to watch

Esports is probably one of the most accessible competitive leagues in the world. It’s fun and often doesn’t require a lot to start. Besides being able to play, esports has also stood its ground as a spectator sport. Filling out entire arenas and garnishing millions of views. Game developers have worked on creating a more interesting game to watch and the esports entourage has perfected it through live commentary, behind-the-scenes content and easy to follow gameplay.

Participation creates engagement

Esports fans are very active in their community. Most of them started out playing the games they watch as well. The social part of the community is more important than it seems. As people are naturally motivated to compete against one another, the mechanisms in esport communities often make for a truly engaging experience.

Be authentic

Esports fans can smell fake from miles away. They prefer brands that are immersed into the community and are trying to add value. For example by supporting their favourite content creator or adding value to the live tournaments or streams. Think about what content your audience wants to see and how your brand can relate to it.

Bring your ideas to live

Electronics company Lenovo believes that gaming is for everyone. And they put their money where their mouth is when they introduced a Swedish team of elderly people to compete in Counter Strike all over the world. Swiftly the news became a global cultural phenomenon which created PR-wave worth over 10 million dollars in earned media and over 1 billion, unique media impressions. It’s through their inspiring message and unique approach they ended up becoming the PR campaign of the year.

Esports is global

Due to its globalised and online nature, viewership for esports is significant, making it comparable to traditional sports. In 2019 League Of Legends brought in over 100 million viewers, beating every sporting event, even compared to the Superbowl in 2019 which was watched by 98.2 million people. Nearly all esports tournaments are streamed for free on platforms like Twitch and Mixer. It allows fans to watch their favourite team or gamer while chatting with other spectators.

Enable real time interactions between streamers and viewers

What’s great about streaming platforms is the real-time engagement going on between fans and streamers. Old Spice took advantage of that with their “Old Spice Nature Adventure” marketing activation in which they let Twitch viewers control a man’s life for three days. Hundreds of gamers swiftly helped the adventure unfold in a funny and highly engaging way.

Leverage the brand and fanbase of esports influencers

Streaming platforms like YouTube or Twitch have created a new type of celebrity. These are often gaming influencers that a young target audience can relate and feel close with. Dr. Disrespect, one of the most viewed content creators on game streaming platform Twitch took on a partnership with natural energy drink G FUEL to create his own drinking cup. The brand has been wildly popular among gamers, largely due to the relevancy of their ad campaigns.

Building anticipation through branded content

Mountain Dew created a native hub to raise awareness of their esports League. On the platform fans could discover branded content like weekly League Recaps, custom videos with exclusive predictions for the Global Finals and integrated links to the gamer hub. The fan engagement strategy focused on creating season highlights to build anticipation for the Global Final.

Provide exclusive behind-the-scenes content

As part of a partnership between Toyota and Overwatch League partnership a branded content series called “Access Granted” began. It was a behind-the-scenes look at an esports competitor’s journey in the League. Every episode one of the players joined a host in a Toyota C-HR for a casual interview. The series gave fans an inside look at some of the biggest stars in the League while building goodwill for Toyota.

Integrate your brand into the fan experiences

As one of the sponsors in the Overwatch League, Sour Patch Kids did not just give away products at tournaments but also drove brand awareness by using its sponsorship to create short-form, shareable social video content around its brand slogan “Sour, Sweet, Gone.” The video series featured players in-game moments while turning a sour situation into a sweet one.

Crossover with celebrities

While esports has been gaining popularity over the years, mainstream celebrities will always bring in tons of new traffic. When Canadian singer Drake and rapper Travis Scott dropped in to play Fortnite on the live stream of pro gamer Ninja they broke the world record for most live viewers in a single-player stream. The record almost doubled from 388,000 viewers to 628,000 viewers and gained over 13 million additional views on YouTube.

Create a central hub for fans

As an effort to better capture the attention of their fans online NBA created an app to boost digital fan engagement. With a flawless onboarding process it’s easy for fans to get started. The app serves as a central hub for fan news, videos, games and interaction between fans. It also boasts an in-app store with merchandise and apparel. Fans can participate and compete in games which boosts the amount of interaction and engagement.

Connect fans with each other

Esports fans are enthusiastic and passionate about the games they are playing. That’s also why they enjoy watching others play as entertainment or purely to hone their own skills. Bringing all these fans together online creates great moments of sharing to further fuel the community with user-generated content.

Ever-evolving gameplay

What’s so entertaining about esports is the fact that those games are often optimized to be fun and exciting to watch. Compared to traditional sports, game developers are constantly trying to improve their game by adding new elements or layers to it and making it a greater experience both for players and spectators!

The power of content

After the success of the League of Legends Championship in 2016, online betting company Unibet wanted to gain more awareness in the gaming community. They created a branded platform called Esports Champions that tells stories about the highlights of gaming and its growth over the past few years. The platform includes information on the top earners, most played games and viewership stats in shareable, interactive graphs. The goal of gaining coverage was met with 3,767 total shares by Yahoo, Mashable and The Mirror.

Solve the problems of your fans

As the international crowd of esports continues to grow, some large, multi-day tournaments bring in lots of tourists. One challenge for many of them is transportation. Taxi-service Citymobil anticipated this by organizing transportation for the tourists and offering discounts to anyone going to the event. Besides a booth presence at the tournament finals, they also provided premium cars to pick-up and drive competitors to the tournament.

Become part of the fun

One of the brands that really immersed itself in the experience is shipping company DHL. As part of a video series DHL’s automated warehouse robot called EffiBOT came up as a character in the game Dota 2 to deliver equipment to players on the battlefield. The video series strongly resonated with the fans even creating a DHL chant at the ESL arena.

Kristina Müller, Head of Strategic Partnerships ESL - "For ESL it is always important to create something that has value for the fans. Working together with DHL for a year now, we are very happy they share the same approach on this. "

Gaming is a social activity

What people often forget due to the digital nature of gaming is that it’s a social activity. It’s about doing something with and against your friends or like-minded people in the community. Games like Fortnite or World of Warcraft bring together fans and players from the whole world to collaborate and have fun together.

A wide range on in-game data

What digital experiences such as video games do really well is collect data. Of course they won’t straight up ask for your data. As a matter of fact the signup-process is often low-barrier and usually as simple as giving up a name or email address. Once you’re in the game though, they start gathering all kinds of information such as the dates and times spent on games, scores, money spent and so on.

Alex Cybulski, Researcher Information Security and Game Studies - "Achievements act as recognition of a player’s video gaming prowess and these trophies are facilitated by complex surveillant algorithms and code built into the architecture of contemporary videogames, gamers are basically rewarded for taking the actions gaming companies want the to take"

Bring your community to life

During a tournament of Counter-Strike in Denmark, McDonald’s had matched a lign of street signs with items from the game. The signs quickly spread around the esports world, taking a local activation global through social media.

Gamification for apps: 10 ways to drive engagement & loyalty

This article explores ten key strategies for using gamification to boost user engagement and loyalty within mobile applications.

You will learn about:

• How game mechanisms trigger motivation
• How companies like Facebook create in-app engagement
• Steps to creating the Hooked Model
• Why companies fail in gamification for apps
• 10 ways to drive engagement & loyalty with gamification

How game mechanisms trigger motivation?

There are two types of motivation that make people take action: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivators are often tangible or visible rewards to motivate participation in a task or behavior. Intrinsic motivation on the other hand is a drive that comes from within which relies more on emotions and desires. It’s when you complete a task because you enjoy the activity in itself. Game mechanisms are the game-elements that are applied in non-game context to nudge a desired user behavior.

Most apps today are already using some form of extrinsic motivators in the form of game-like elements such as monetary credits or freebies. While this can be a great way to trigger initial adoption, it can lose effectiveness over time due to the Overjustification effect and thus fail to keep users engaged over the long haul. You can trigger extrinsic motivation using Game Mechanics.

In order to harvest sustainable engagement you will also need a way to intrinsically motivate your target audience. You can drive intrinsic motivation by using Game Dynamics. One framework that is often used to understand intrinsic motivation is the Self Determination Theory. This theory relies on autonomy, competence and relatedness.

This graph illustrates how extrinsic motivation provides an initial boost, while intrinsic motivation is key for long-term, sustainable engagement.

The most important Game Dynamics to engage your audience are:

• Relationships
• Accomplishment
• Empowerment
• Unpredictability
• Constraints

These are often supported by Game Mechanics such as:

• Points, Badges, Leaderboards
• Milestone unlocks
• Achievements
• Variable rewards
• Challenges
• Progress bars
• Notifications
• Social feed

How companies like Facebook create in-app engagement

We have already mentioned the Hooked Model by Nir Eyal in the article on How gamification drives engagement. This is a model that works on creating habit-forming apps or services with a goal of high-frequency engagement. Nir Eyal spent years in the video gaming and advertising industries, where he learned the ins and outs of behavioral psychology and motivation. Nir realized one of the biggest challenges in app development is continuous engagement. For most apps engagement is a direct indicator of revenue as the time users spend on the platform directly impacts the bottom line. Nir studied how some of the worlds biggest apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube managed to get their users so engaged.

Steps to creating the Hooked Model

From the Hooked model, you can learn 3 important steps on how to motivate people and reward them: trigger, reward and engage users to participate in certain behaviors. The hook is meant to build habit-forming apps which we often use without conscious thought such as checking messages or emails. Every time a user goes through one of these loops, personal investment increases as well as engagement with the platform.

Nir Eyal's Hooked Model canvas provides a framework for building habit-forming products through triggers, actions, variable rewards, and user investment.

#1 Trigger

The trigger is what generates the desired behavior of your target group. In order for it to work you need both an intrinsic and extrinsic trigger. For example when you see a Facebook notification you are looking at an external trigger. This is a facilitating mechanic that moves the process forward. The urge to click on it and start scrolling your feed is the internal trigger. There are lots of motivational triggers which work on internal needs, drives and incentives.

#2 Action

In order for a desired action to be carried out, a few things need to be in order. According to B.J. Fogg, a behavior scientist at Stanford University, a user should have sufficient motivation, the ability to execute the action and a trigger. On Facebook that can be as simple as liking your friend’s post or even sharing your own thoughts.

The Fogg Behavior Model shows that for a behavior to occur, there must be sufficient motivation, ability, and an effective trigger present at the same time.

#3 Reward

While most companies today are already using some form of reward systems in both customer and employee engagement strategies, not a lot of companies are adding the element of uncertainty and therefore curiosity to it. Recent study in neuroscience found that making rewards variable skyrockets our dopamine and supercharges attention stating that it’s not about pleasure from a reward but the anticipation of pleasure. Gamified rewards, which introduce elements of play and unpredictability, have been shown to significantly enhance engagement and motivation by tapping into this anticipation. Evidently, they are a great solution in your Hook Model reward system.

However, gamification or not, we divide variable rewards in 3 categories:

1. The Tribe

Social animals as we are we clearly enjoy other people’s activity online. It allows us to fulfil our social needs and is fueled by our drive to feel connected with other people such as when people like your post and give you recognition.

2. The Hunt

When we’re on the infinite scroll, we’re unconsciously looking for ways to stay informed. This could be something like a news article or a funny meme which answers our need for unpredictability also referred to as Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

3. The Self

This leans heavily to the Self Determination Theory and its 2/3 core psychological needs: autonomy, and relatedness. On Facebook that could be as simple as going through all your notifications, or replying in a group chat on Messenger.

#4 Investment

Lastly there is also the investment. To create habits within your app, truly engaged users are a must. Therefore you need to give users the possibility of contributing to the platform. On Facebook you can see the investment as liking or commenting on a post or even contributing your own content. The more users invest into your app, the more prone they are to keep coming back.

Why companies fail in gamification for apps

Unfortunately not all companies succeed in applying gamification for apps. Back in 2014 Gartner reported that 80% of all gamification efforts would fail due to complexity of understanding human psychology. Below are some examples of successful companies that failed in gamifying their customer and employee engagement strategies.

Zappos is an online shoe store known for their brilliant marketing. That’s why it came as a big surprise when their effort to gamify their customer experience with a VIP program, it failed. Zappos created a reward system that gave out badges, points and levels. So why did it fail? All these gamification mechanisms didn’t have a clear purpose. You could not use it for anything and it didn’t motivate users to invest more into the platform.

Another example of failed gamification is the case of Omnicare. In 2013 the healthcare company Omnicom tried to reduce customer service wait times by implementing a leaderboard with cash incentives. The initiative backfired because employees felt monitored, leading to an increase in wait time and causing some staff to leave.

To successfully apply gamification into your app or platform to support your customer and employee engagement strategies, you need to clearly understand what motivates your user and make sure all game dynamics and mechanics are in order for it to work. That being said, gamification for apps can fail for a number of reasons. Some of the most common ones are:

#1 You put too much emphasis on your business goals

On one hand, yes your gamification systems are built to help you achieve business goals. Without it a clear gamification strategy can not exist. That being said, gamification is not only about rewarding users for carrying out behaviors. It is about finding the true underlying motivations of your target audience and then constructing a well thought out journey around it with game elements.

#2 The game has no purpose and your are only using extrinsic motivators

When people are not engaging with your gamification system something is wrong with your motivational design. If you are solely relying on extrinsic motivators you will be leaving out opportunities to engage with your audience over the long term. To establish sustainable employee or customer engagement you need to figure out the intrinsic motivations that help your users achieve their personal goals.

#3 You are using the wrong game mechanics

The intrinsic motivations of customers and/or employees are activated by a game mechanic. This is the external trigger we mentioned previously. Every mechanic is a vehicle that has the potential to trigger internal motivation. If there is insufficient internal motivation the user won’t participate in the activity. To succeed in creating lasting engagement you have to carefully pick which mechanic to use every step of the user journey, to keep your user move forward.

10 ways to drive engagement & loyalty with gamification

The truth is while gamification can be hard to implement, it has a major impact on your business and workforce.

M2 Research - "Vendors say gamification strategies can lead to a 100% to 150% increase in engagement metrics."

Let’s explore 10 gamification strategies that can drive user engagement and customer loyalty in marketing, providing real-life examples of how companies like Starbucks, LinkedIn, and Dropbox. You will learn the benefits of gamification in improving customer and employee engagement and retention rates, and how gamification in mobile apps can increase awareness, conversion, and usage. In addition, you will find out how through gamification you are encouraged to reward yourself for reaching milestones, fostering a deeper connection and sustained interaction with the app.

#1 Grab awareness with a quest

Perhaps one of the best known ways to apply gamification is in the awareness phase. Lots of companies host online competitions or giveaways. An amazing example of this is a game organized by Dropbox called Dropquest back in 2012. It consisted of an online scavenger hunt with a series of puzzles and challenges. If you complete the game you will get 1GB of free extra space, and if you had come in first you get 100GB free for your entire life!

#2 Use progress bars in your onboarding process

An all time favorite example of this is LinkedIn’s profile strength indicator. It’s an interactive tool that serves as visual feedback and natural human desire for progress. The bar also shows users suggestions to improve their profiles. It motivates members to work on their LinkedIn page in an easy and intuitive manner.

LinkedIn's profile strength indicator is a classic example of using a progress bar to visually motivate users to complete their profiles.

#3 Keep your customers engaged with redeemable rewards

This is a game mechanism that focuses on long term customer engagement strategies and addresses our motivational drivers to get instant feedback and collection. The Starbucks app is a well known example that rewards users during onboarding and throughout the lifecycle. Customers can collect points and later redeem them. It also allows for Starbucks to keep track of valuable data such as where, when and how often do their customers come to Starbucks and what do they usually order?

#4 Educate customers in a fun way

Spanish bank BBVA uses the BBVA Game to promote its online banking services. The game is a web application where customers can earn points for watching educational videos on how to make simple banking transactions, use the mobile banking app or pay taxes. These points can later be used for music downloads, movie streaming or variable giveaways.

#5 Add a sense of achievement with badges

Online review site TripAdvisor is spot on when it comes to giving instant feedback to their users which triggers their desire for empowerment and community. Contributors regularly receive emails letting them know how their reviews helped other travelers with carefully designed badges. They even go as far as to mail physical badges to top reviewers' home addresses. That’s how you create true fans!

TripAdvisor uses a system of collectible badges to reward contributors, creating a sense of achievement and encouraging more user-generated content.

#6 Get your customers to the next level

We as humans have a great drive for achievement and progress. You can never underestimate the reward power! Adding milestones to a long term goal is what keeps us motivated and engaged in the first place. Navigation app Waze levels up its users with a point system that rewards and reinforces user generated content, helping them build out their product further.

Waze effectively uses a leveling system to gamify user contributions, motivating drivers to report traffic conditions and improve the app's data.

#7 Turn tasks into challenges

Language learning app Duolingo has frequent challenges to make their app more engaging. Completing a challenge definitely sounds better than doing homework. Besides the motivational drivers of exploration and autonomy Duolingo also adds a sense of competition and community with game mechanisms, such as leaderboards which has shown to increase app usage and adoption.

#8 Empower customers with instant feedback

Fitness app Fitocracy allows you to track all your health efforts and even provides a personalized nutrition plan with custom workouts to meet your fitness goals. With an in-app reward system, this app tracks progress and gives continuous notifications on progress, achievement and rewards to keep you engaged.

#9 Get your community to contribute together

Habitica is a gamified productivity app that turns your life into a game. With over 2 million users worldwide you can find people with common goals to work together which refers to the game dynamic of relationships linked to the motivational drivers of collaboration and community. This is a great example of how you can create highly engaging communities.

#10 Get creative with your recruitment

One of the most famous examples of gamification is the Multipoly by PwC Recruitment. It is a game that simulates the first year of work as an employee and has grown the candidate pool with 190%! The job candidates hired after playing the game said that the transition to the company was easier because of the game.

Recap

There is a true art in figuring out the motivations of your customers or employees and carefully designing a gamified experience around those to supercharge engagement. We learned that game mechanisms are the triggers for our motivation. External triggers are helpful for rapid initial adoption while internal triggers establish more sustainable employee and customer engagement strategies.

We know how the most used apps such as Facebook are using the Hooked Model in their user engagement strategies to continuously trigger and reward users to create a habit-forming product.

Lastly we provided 10 examples of game mechanisms throughout the buyer journey and common pitfalls to avoid when using gamification for apps. In conclusion, gamification for apps is shown to be beneficial in both customer engagement strategies as well as employee engagement strategies.

• Gamified apps have higher engagement
• Apps with gamification mechanisms have a higher retention rate
• App gamification can increase awareness and conversion
• Adding game elements in apps increase usage and adoption

This icon introduces the focus of the webinar: capturing audience attention through gamification.

How to win the attention of a distracted audience and maximize engagement using #gamification

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The webinar presenter Freek Borghgraef is featured here, ready to discuss modern engagement strategies.

As the digital space turns into a saturated space, grabbing and keeping people’s attention is one of the hardest things marketers today need to accomplish. Brands and organisations are no longer competing in their own market segment, but compete against every other entertainment source for a moment of attention.

So how can modern marketers win back the attention of a distracted audience and maximize engagement? The answer is simple. By gamifying the digital experience.

Join us for this on demand webinar hosted by Vlerick Business School to learn about the different gamification tactics you can start applying now to get your audience attention and inspire them to interact with your brand or organization. We tackle:

• Why the product or service alone is no longer enough if you want to keep your audience engaged
• How gamification moves the needle between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to maximize engagement
• How you can use game dynamics to spark emotions
• How you can use game mechanics to inspire action
• A brief look into the The Hook Canvas: a tool from the book ‘Hooked’ by Nir Eyal explaining how habits are formed, and engaging products are built
• A practical example: Zack’s journey from a young bystander to an active supporter on a gamified digital experience on StriveCloud

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About the presenter

This is a portrait of Freek Borghgraef, the co-founder of StriveCloud and Kayzr.

Freek Borghgraef
Co-founder @StriveCloud and @Kayzr

Freek is a serial entrepreneur and one of the co-founders of Kayzr and StriveCloud. He is currently leading the Customer Development and Strategic Partnership teams for both companies. He built from ground up both companies, and by doing so, he scaled Kayzr to a community of over 100k users, and launched memorable activations for brands and sports organisations by putting gamification at the core of the user experience.

About the host

Vlerick Business School

Vlerick Business School is a triple-accredited, international business school at the heart of Europe – ranked number one in the Benelux for executive education and 19 in Europe.

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Want to learn how modern marketers are using StriveCloud to create engaging digital activations?

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The secret to seize & sustain the attention in a distracted world

Attention is one of the most valuable resources of the digital age. Unfortunately for marketers, the demand for instant gratification and constant connectedness makes it difficult to capture and keep consumers’ attention. A recent study by Microsoft concluded that the human attention span has dropped to 8 seconds, shrinking nearly 25% in just a few years. To put that in perspective, an average goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds.

This illustration humorously highlights the challenge marketers face with dwindling human attention spans.

Think about it. How often have you looked at your phone only to be sucked in by a simple notification? Or maybe you have gone down a binge-watching spree on YouTube? This phenomenon is also called the Vortex. It is a user-behavior pattern that begins with a single intentional interaction followed by a series of unplanned interactions. So how do some companies succeed in capturing and keeping your attention while others are losing goodwill through online advertising.

In this article you will learn about:

• Fighting short attention spans with gamification
• What digital experiences use gamification to keep audiences engaged
• How to boost digital engagement with the Hook Model

Fighting short attention spans with gamification

For most of human history, access to information was limited. Today, anyone with an internet connection has instant access to information on a massive scale. This creates a new digital experience that differs from traditional media consumption because of its user-driven experience.

Someone surfing on the web usually has a specific purpose and will not likely be distracted by an advertisement. This leads to consumers ignoring page elements that they perceive to be ads, an occurrence that we call banner blindness.

We live in an attention economy, where consumers receive services in exchange for their attention. Facebook for example, is the most popular social network in the world with over 2.6 billion monthly active users. Facebook’s business model doesn’t run on fees by users, but they make revenue from advertisers who want to gain exposure to a highly engaged online audience.

Companies like Facebook succeed in having you come back every time because they understand their users. That’s where gamification comes in. By using behavioral psychology and motivational theory you can reengineer experiences in order for them to be more rewarding and eventually support your business goals.

Tired of being overlooked? Stop missing out on precious eyeball time! Learn how to win back attention and maximize engagement with gamification with our free webinar 🔥

What digital experiences use gamification to keep their audiences engaged?

Human motivation is a tricky thing. Superstar companies distinguish themselves from others by understanding the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and when and how to trigger each. You’re extrinsically motivated when you want to obtain material assets.

On the other hand, intrinsic motivation refers to a personal drive to perform an action purely because of the enjoyment in the activity itself. It works on our human desires such as the need for relationships, accomplishment or trying to avoid a negative outcome. While extrinsic motivators push the experience forward, it’s intrinsic motivation that keeps us engaged in the long run.

Take the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 as an example. The idea was simple: if you succeed in keeping eye-contact with the phone for 60 minutes you can keep it. What the passengers who started this challenge didn’t know is that there would be outrageous distractions…

Although the original motivation might be winning a phone, that’s just an extrinsic reward. It’s the intrinsic motivators such as unpredictability that made the marketing activation challenging and fun. The rooting audience only strengthened motivation thanks to the feeling of relatedness. Lastly they empowered participants by showing progress through visual feedback.

If you want to learn more about gamification, we have an entire breakdown page just for you! 👉

It’s an extraordinary time to be a media consumer. More content is available than ever before. 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute and Netflix released more than 1,500 hours of original content in 2019. With an overload of choice, consumers are looking for personalized on-demand experiences. Let’s look at some great examples of companies that use gamification for their marketing to capture and hold the attention of their target audiences.

Kayzr is the largest esports platform in Benelux. They provide brands with access to the hard to reach millennials and generation Z target group. Gamers can compete in multiple video games online tournaments and earn rewards.

With over 60,000 users it’s unattainable to give prize rewards to everyone. That’s why Kayzr’s reward system works with two types of currencies. On one hand you can earn hard currency by making big investments in the platform such as joining and winning multiple tournaments. With these coins you can order real physical rewards in the Kayzr online shop.

The Kayzr platform uses a lottery system to create unpredictable rewards, engaging users with a chance to win high-value gaming gear.

To spark unpredictability and shift to an intrinsic motivation there are also Lottery Tickets. These are seen as a soft currency to reward actions that stimulate user behaviors linked to Kayzr’s platform experience goals. For example you can gain lottery tickets by logging in daily which stimulates daily activity on the platform and thus increases eyeball time for brands. With those tickets you can make bets on certain prizes with a chance of winning it. Making the reward system unpredictable sparks users’ curiosity and creates a more sustainable engagement than cash rewards.

Another case comes from the cloud storage company Dropbox, who is well known for hacking viral growth through gamification. They created a ‘7 steps checklist to get started with Dropbox’ quest to stimulate referral marketing. The steps are as simple as inviting friends or linking Dropbox to Facebook. For every completed step in the process you get free extra storage space and once all steps are completed you gain the social status of Dropbox Guru. Creating a status in a gamified experience creates competition among users and a desire to climb up the ladder. Adding elements like leaderboards, levels or badges are great for stimulating competition among users, and encourage their progress on the platform...

Activity tracking company Fitbit employs game elements as well to support people’s intrinsic goal of becoming healthier. At first they help you crystalize your goal by defining it. For example reaching 10,000 steps every day.

To motivate users into carrying out their goals they include all types of game elements . First off, you earn badges and trophies for special achievements. Your steps are exchanged into a currency and can be used for competitions and leaderboard ranking. The app also provides instant gratification through feedback. As soon as you take your first steps you will see the progress in your steps counter and as a progress circle.

Fitbit's interface effectively visualizes goals, progress, and rewards, which are key gamification motivators.

This is powerful because we’re motivated by progress or striving towards a goal even more than to the actual reward. In order for motivation to work you need freedom of choice and freedom to fail. If a game obligates you to play at certain times, it won’t be fun anymore. For example, Fitbit realized that punishing people for not achieving their goals would lead to giving up easier.

When it comes to notifications there is a fine line between nudging and nagging. Fitbit does this well by providing little encouraging contextual notifications when a goal is reached or close to being reached. To add a dash of competitiveness and play with our innate desire for relationships, Fitbit allows users to set up groups with friends where they can chat and compare stats.

Fitbit enhances engagement by incorporating social features, allowing users to connect and compare stats with friends.

The sign-up process in a gamified system should be as frictionless as possible. At StriveCloud we learned that by only asking for a name and email address in the beginning, users are less prone to churn right away. Our technology helps the data flow by linking static CRM data to the experience and setting milestones to guide desired actions. People are motivated with rewards and achievements which allows you to collect personalized data based on the choices made in the gamified context. Lastly notifications are used as a trigger to reinforce those actions and keep the user engaged. As the amount of interactions increases so will your data. You can literally learn anything about your audience just by adding a motivational trigger and emotional drive.

Boost digital engagement with the Hook Model

The Hook Model by expert on behavioral design Nir Eyal, is a system used in digital products to increase user engagement and retention by subtly influencing their behavior. It’s what makes apps like Facebook, Pinterest and others so addictive. The Hook Model is a four-phase process used to create high-frequency engagement. It follows a series of steps which conditions users to link certain emotions and triggers to carrying out behaviors.

Nir Eyal's Hook Model provides a framework for building habit-forming products, starting with a trigger and ending with user investment.

Your experience always starts with an external trigger. This can be something simple such as a notification, email or clicking a link on your newsfeed. What’s absolutely critical to forming long term habits is an association with an internal trigger. Internal triggers are tied to an emotional drive such as our desire for self-growth or social contact.

For the behavior to be fulfilled there should be a trigger, motivation and the ability to take action. Doctor BJ Fogg who founded the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University created the Fogg behavior model to understand the interrelatedness between motivation, ability and triggers. It states the action should be as easy as possible, however still challenging enough to execute.

The Fogg Behavior Model illustrates that for an action to occur, motivation, ability, and a trigger must converge.

To reinforce desired behavior (e.g. the actions a user takes) you have to immediately reward them. Research actually shows the anticipation of a reward is what truly spikes dopamine levels. It explains why we keep scrolling our feed waiting for a piece of content we enjoy. What makes the experience so addictive on social platforms like Facebook or Instagram, is the fact that our reward is variable. The scrolling effect is similar to slot machines back in the days. You never know what you are going to get which produces variable dopamine spikes and finally a trance-like state of anticipation.

Lastly, to make the user more prone to return, you ask for an investment. The investment stands for work that is done to build commitment and increases the likelihood of returning. Unlike actions, investments are about the anticipation of a reward and not immediate gratification. When you set-up an Instagram profile for instance, you will not immediately be hooked on the app. However, the more work you put into it, such as customizing your profile, following friends and posting your own pictures, the greater the personal value of the app and your likelihood of returning.

Too long, didn’t read? Here's what you missed:

With people at the wheel of their own digital experience and an overflow of content to consume it’s becoming increasingly difficult to capture someone’s attention. Finding what motivates your audience and redesigning your digital experience will help you make it more appealing.

There are lots of digital experiences out there that use gamification to support their business goals. They stimulate behaviors such as word-of-mouth through both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Other game-like elements are also used to advance user onboarding and to continuously harvest new and personalized data.

Once you have someone’s attention, it’s still a challenge to maintain that digital engagement. Luckily the Hook Model - created by behavioral designer Nir Eyal - gives us a four-step process to create high-frequency engagement in digital products or services. By going through the phases called ‘the hook’ the probability of returning increases. The right mix between investment and reward creates an almost addictive experience which not only increases lifetime value but supercharges growth.

Tired of being overlooked? Stop missing out on precious eyeball time! Learn how to win back attention and maximize engagement with gamification with our free webinar 🔥

Live events are dead.
Time to gain ground in the digital space

With over a third of the entire world population in some form of lockdown, consumer behavior is shifting towards the digital environment. Brands from all around the world are working hard to adapt and find new ways to connect with their audience during these times.

One heavily impacted industry is the sports world. The postponement of all major sport events such as the Summer Olympics, Football leagues and NBA are leaving sport clubs, athletes and sponsors with lots of uncertainty. On the other hand millions of sports fans miss watching the games and the social aspect that comes with it, such as going out and discussing sports with co-workers and friends.

On the bright side, crisis is also a time for opportunity. Fan engagement hasn’t stopped during this pandemic, it’s just changing. Marketing departments are being creative in finding new ways to build up digital engagement with their audience and keep their communities alive. Some broadcast reruns of classic sports competitions and others like Formula 1 are organizing online Grand Prix series where F1 drivers go head to head in a virtual race.

How are you handling this major change? In this article we challenge you to think out of the box and be proactive in coming up with innovative solutions.

You will dive into:

• The impact of Corona on sports events
• How sponsors & sports clubs are adapting
• Proven solutions to maintain fan engagement
• Why esports & games create lasting engagement

The impact of Corona on sports events

Due to the Corona-outbreak forcing us into social isolation, almost all sports events are postponed or cancelled across the world. Major events such as The Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 have been postponed until July 2021 and others have followed in their footsteps. The restart dates of significant competitions such as the Premier League are uncertain and constantly under review. Unfortunately, it seems that large public events such as festivals, sports competitions and concerts will be among the last to recover from this crisis.

This infographic illustrates the wide range of major sporting events, from team sports to racing, that have been postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic.

The impact for everyone in the ecosystem, from athletes and sports clubs to sponsors and fans is devastating. The sports business model has three main income streams. The first being broadcasting of competitions, secondly sponsorships and lastly ticketing and hospitality during matches.

Consulting company KPMG calculated that the cancellation of the five most important football competitions in Europe could cause a loss of around 4 billion euros in revenue. The industry has to find new ways to engage fans in order to capitalize on the spike in media consumption.

Event marketers have to drastically turn directions as they are under great pressure to find new ways to create sponsorship opportunities. The marketing budget is also the first thing organizations drop down to cut costs. But in a world where in-person brand activations are being put to hold, event managers have to pivot into an entirely new way of working

How the sports world is shifting direction

With all sports clubs and organizers having to find new ways to create digital engagement, this pandemic has shown how much the sports business model relies on TV broadcasting and live audiences. Some have been transitioning to a more digital broadcast ecosystem and are seeing exciting results. Others have used the power of gamification to drive explosive digital engagement.

The NFL has made every game since 2009 available for streaming. Mark Tatum, COO of the NBA went even further by stating the league’s strategy to the World Economic Forum:

Mark Tatum, COO of the NBA - "We’ve launched an NBA 2K competition (an esports form of the game) with players streaming from their homes. We’re hosting live quarantine parties on social media with current and former players and we’re showing classic games every night. All things to continue to engage our fans during this time."

The NBA's 2K Players Tournament bracket visualizes how the league transformed its competition into an engaging esports event for fans during the lockdown.

In response to the cancellation of real life races NASCAR launched the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, with pro drivers from all around the world racing from simulators in their homes. The series aired on Fox Sports 1 and drew in over 900,000 viewers! The entitlement sponsor of this event is Coca-Cola. The sim-race is the longest running championship featuring 40 racers that compete for a share of $300,000.

Chris Bigda, Director of Sports Marketing Activation for The Coca-Cola Company said:

Chris Bigda, Director of Sports Marketing Activation for The Coca-Cola Company - "eNASCAR presents a unique opportunity for us to engage with consumers through some of the best esports competition that exists today. Through our new position as a NASCAR Premier Partner we’re exploring innovative ways to activate across the sport. This series allows us to connect with race fans, identify new talent and ultimately, celebrate champions with refreshing ice-cold Coca-Cola."

This image showcases the Coca-Cola sponsored eNASCAR iRacing series, a successful pivot to virtual events that captured significant viewership and brand engagement.

The Chief Digital Officer at NASCAR continued to say the audience of the eNASCAR platform had been growing strongly in 2019 and is now ready for the momentum coming to the Iracing Series. Esports have grown massively in recent years and already sports leagues across the world are using esports to maintain engagement and a sense of competition during lockdown.

Sports communications professional Joe Favorito - "If you want to be disruptive and engage with your fans, this is a time they are literally sitting around waiting to hear from you."

Belgian's largest telecommunications company Proximus is one of the biggest broadcasters of live sports in Belgium, dedicated to growing esports in the region. Following the covid-19 crisis, it decided to partner up with the Belgium Pro League and engage the league’s fans with esports. The two decided to work with StriveCloud as a technology partner.

After joining forces the Proximus Pro League e-Cup was born - an explosive online tournament and community digital arena. The league invites fans to register online where they can represent their favourite Pro League team in a FIFA 20 esports competition, and play online matches against their friends and their idols.

The Proximus Pro League e-Cup provides a digital arena for fans to compete, demonstrating a successful gamified experience that drives high engagement.

A perfect mixture of behavioral psychology, motivational theory and gamification techniques sparked an engaging fan experience. With 2,000 registrations within the first hours after launch and over 3,000 matches played in just 2 days (this is almost 300 hours of fan engagement!), Proximus and the Belgium Pro League and the Belgium Pro League ultimately succeeded in gaining precious eyeball time during lockdown.

The benefits of digital engagement

Technology is a powerful leverage in every industry. Now that all live events are cancelled, event marketers and sponsors have to find alternative solutions to connect with their audiences. Fortunately, using gamification in marketing activation has proven its worth in retaining digital engagement.

More interaction & connectivity

Believe it or not, online events have a lot more interaction amongst participants than normal events do. 30% of people are more likely to speak to a person in a virtual environment. That’s because virtual events offer tools such as polls, Q&A, live chat and even downloadable resources so your fans can fully engage with your content.

Easy to scale

When you are hosting an event you are always limited to its physical venue. Virtual events make it much easier to scale, so you can host more attendees in a time-effective manner. It might require some set-up time but requires overall less people and can cut costs with over 75%.

Gain more data

Data is power. Online events allow you to measure everything so you can analyze and improve after or even during your event. You can gather in-depth data about the entire digital fan experience as well as the individual participants.

Reach new target demographics

Sports clubs are seeing their audience getting a little bit older every year. Many sports executives fear that it’s because young generations aren’t interested in sports anymore. But that is not true. New generations enjoy sports just as older generations, they just consume it in a different way. For example, the game streaming community is growing fast and heads of BT, ITV and BBC have said they expect it to be on broadcast channels soon. With a global audience of over 134 million people, esports is an attractive channel to connect with these heavy digital consumers.

Gamification for marketing activations: the digital engagement jackpot

Bringing gamification into your marketing activation is when you use all the mechanisms that make a game fun and engaging and use it to inspire participation. Have you ever wondered why games are so popular? Or how they create such vivid fandoms and keep players engaged for hours? Well, video game makers expertly craft experiences to fulfil our basic psychological needs. That’s why they are so engaging.

What is gamification? 👉

A gamified experience leverages a combination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational drivers. Intrinsic motivation is when an activity in itself is an enjoyable experience whilst extrinsic motivation are the triggers that push the process forward. It’s a jackpot for digital engagement if you know an average gamer spends around 6 hours a week gaming, and some even up to 20 hours plus.

Gamification techniques

What truly puts the experience in place is the use of gamification techniques. Gamification is the use of game-like mechanisms to inspire active participation in the experience, by making it fun and engaging.

Curious to learn what are the game-like mechanisms and how do they work? Further your knowledge with this article 👉

Don’t miss out on opportunity!

As former United States president John F. Kennedy once stated during times of crisis: the Chinese notation of the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters being danger and opportunity. Nobody saw this coming, but those who are ready to innovate can imagine no better time than now.

The Chinese characters for "crisis" illustrate the concept of finding opportunity within danger, a key theme for brands navigating the current landscape.

With esports having been on the rise, with a projection to grow even further this is the moment to gain a new type of awareness. As competitive gaming is becoming a part of the mainstream popular culture, global investors and brands are all paying attention to the over 454 million viewers. Large part of this growth is thanks to the social component of live streaming and gaming. Platforms such as Twitch and YouTube allow gaming fans a direct connection to the players and teams.

Want to learn how modern marketers are using StriveCloud to create engaging digital activations? Let's start a conversation 🤙

Too long, didn’t read? Here's what you missed:

The impact of COVID-19 on all live events is disastrous. Major sport events like the Olympic Games are impacted widely and postponed due to 2021. Others are evaluating regularly on when they will be able to restart and what precautions will be needed.

Sport organisations are shifting gears swiftly by moving fan engagement online. Athletes are turning into gamers and sponsors are pivoting into esports for marketing activation.

We live a historical moment, that opens up new opportunities as the esports market is rapidly growing, sports organizations might hop on the trend, discover new revenue streams and tap into new audiences.

All eyes are on digital. The question is: are you?

Sparking engagement in times of Corona

You will learn about:

• The battle for attention
• The impact of Corona on digital engagement
• What sports clubs and their sponsors are doing to keep fans engaged
• How to practice digital engagement at scale

The battle for attention

As the years pass, sports clubs are slowly seeing their audience grow older. Sports executives fear that the newer generations are not interested in sports anymore, although nothing could be further from the truth.

Generation Z, also known as digital natives are seen as a tough target audience to reach due to their low usage of traditional media channels and resistance to advertisements. By 2020, Gen Z is expected to account for 40% of all consumers. They are also one of the most powerful consumer forces in the market with a buying power of $44 billion expanding to $600 billion when considering the influence they have on their parents’ spending. Soon they are going to make up the majority of the workforce which will only further increase their buying power.

This graph illustrates the demographic shift, with Gen Z becoming a significant consumer group whose media habits are transforming the market.

The newer generations enjoy a more fast-paced and personalized way of consuming media. Due to their habit of gaining instant information, it’s important to feel part of a community where they have a voice and can give feedback. They like personalized and interactive experiences and engaging with others. Ultimately they are a difficult audience to keep engaged due to their need for immediate gratification. That's why having the right reward systems in place is critical in guaranteeing long-term engagement.

How to win back the attention of a distracted audience and maximize engagement using gamification? Watch our webinar hosted by the renowned business school Vlerick 👉

Video games are the most engaging digital experiences due to their ability to play into both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Today sports clubs are not only competing against other teams but also against platforms such as Youtube, Netflix or video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite to gain and keep the attention of a younger audience. Afterall, video games continuously succeed to suck players into their online experience and create true digital engagement. Taking away precious eyeball time from sports clubs.

To illustrate how video games are establishing themselves in the market, Fortnite, the most popular battle royale game in the world has over 250 million players worldwide. An average player spends between six and ten hours per week in game. Some even play up to 21 hours per week. And that is not taking into account the time spent watching other gamers or socializing with friends about the game.

Digital usage is skyrocketing

With people having to work from home and not being able to go out anymore internet usage and media consumption are increasing drastically. As people are spending more time online they are checking social media up to 29% more and the news with 39%.

With all sports events being cancelled, there is a large group of fans left that are seeking for entertainment. Which explains why platforms such as Youtube and Netflix are also gaining attention. The latter of which is having a worldwide 51% increase in usage. Both streaming services have announced to lower their bitrate to prevent network problems from happening, anticipating the rise in number of users and time spent on the platform.

This chart highlights the dominance of streaming services like Netflix and YouTube, showing where consumer attention is shifting.

Sports leagues were already on TikTok, the Coronavirus accelerated the trend even further. TikTok is a mobile app filled with short clips. For instance, super star athlete LeBron James is learning TikTok dances while others are taking on toilet paper challenges.

The app is most popular with the younger generation, which might be a way to attract younger audiences back to sports.

With all major-league games called off, video game consumption is also on the rise. Twitch, the market leader for streaming video games had a traffic boost of 20 percent. This year alone over 269 billion minutes of watching other players have been registered on the platform which is over 32.4% more compared to the previous year.

Not only the streaming services are seeing a big change in their platform usage. Steam, a game distribution platform, broke several records in the last weeks. Esports game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive got 1 million players at the same time, while the platform in itself reached a pique of 22 million users. As all the stadiums go quit, Esports are booming. Call of Duty released their new game Warzone on March 10 and reached 30 million players within 10 days of launching.

The spike in concurrent Steam users demonstrates the massive migration to digital entertainment platforms, a trend which sports clubs are now tapping into.

Sports clubs are shifting to online fan activation

With no live sport to watch, the media teams of leagues, clubs, and athletes are coming up with ideas to keep their fans engaged. We listed below some examples of how fans stay engaged with the club through various out of the box initiatives:

Make personal & interactive content

Sports leagues and clubs are coming up with challenges and interactive games to keep their fans active during Corona. Keller Sports is launching an app that provides home training challenges on which fans can collect points to be redeemed for exclusive rewards. Two basketball players of Alba Berlin also offered digital sports lessons on YouTube to keep children busy during quarantine.

Get creative on social media

Athletes and their PR teams are stepping up their games by coming up with fun ideas to entertain and engage with their fans. The game broadcast organized by baseball player Trevor Bauer lasted over an hour and gained 250,000 viewers. A number that continues to rise as fans watch the archived videos.

Ishay Tsur, a psychologist for Mental Jump - "What athletes everywhere need to remember is that at the end of the day the fans are still there, they are just at home, craving two coronavirus-free hours."

Spreading positivity & making an impact in the community

Lots of sport clubs have used their influence to spread positivity across their fan community. English football club Everton for example is leveraging their customer data to reach out to fans in need. Through their charity Blue Family they are offering assistance such as delivering groceries, picking up prescriptions, providing home learning opportunities and even donating food.

On the business side of things Everton keeps their fan base engaged even with the suspension of matches. That’s why right now Everton is committed more than ever to provide content. According to CRM manager Danny Harris lots of Everton fans never get the opportunity to go see a live match, but that doesn’t mean they can’t support the club in a different way:

"The experience has to be tailored to every individual."

A perfect example is the team sending personalized birthday message videos from players to fans, which generated an open rate of 45% and lots of positive social media feedback.

Sports are moving to esports

English football club Leyton Orient immediately organized a Football Manager game via Twitter where fans could vote on polls to determine everything from the team’s tactics and substitutions to the tone of the manager’s half-time talk. Even though in the simulation the team lost 1-0, fans still enjoyed the experience of participating and engaging with their favorite team.

A few tweets later the Ultimate Quaran-Team, a FIFA 20 esports knockout tournament featuring professional clubs from around the world was born. Clubs are being encouraged to stream their matches on Twitch to gain more exposure and engagement from their fans. Since launching the online competition Orient’s Twitter has increased by 22,000 followers.

Leyton Orient's "Ultimate Quaran-Team" tournament is a perfect example of how clubs can create viral engagement by moving competitions online.

Cycling organizer Flanders Classics also gained international success with their live streamed digital Tour of Flanders. The cycling race was watched all over Europe and not surprisingly also reached a younger audience, again confirming that young people are still interested in sports, as long as it’s brought in the right manner.

The digital Tour of Flanders proved that virtual sports can capture a broad audience and attract a younger demographic.

Tomas Van den Spiegel, CEO of Flanders Classics said:

Tomas Van den Spiegel, CEO of Flanders Classics - "In Flanders cycling will always be popular, but internationally you have to look for concepts that can reach a younger audience. They are not watching their TV for 6 straight hours. Now we have discovered something that might work in the future."

So, how do you practice digital engagement at scale?

Online activations are undoubtedly a worthy alternative during this pandemic. Fans are hunkering for interaction with their favourite clubs. While the initial engagement is often generated with extrinsic rewards such as offering gift cards, money, merchandise or discounts , in order for engagement to be sustainable it has to rely more and more on intrinsic motivators such as the human desire of making progress and leveling up.

An engagement platform that is only focussed on cash or prize rewards will eventually become unsatisfying and unscalable. The overjustification effect explains that if a person expects a certain reward from an activity, and he/she doesn't get it over time the intrinsic motivation will get lost because he/she is focussed too much on gaining the rewards instead of the activity.

Kayzr, the largest esports and online gaming platform in the BENELUX partnered up with StriveCloud to launch Kayzr 4.0. The original system rewarded players with coins which they could use to buy things in the online shop. This created a scalability challenge due to increasing prize cost per user.

The Kayzr 4.0 platform UI demonstrates a shift towards a more engaging, 24/7 league system that fosters intrinsic motivation.

The tournament system only allowed competitions at specific times in the afternoon with a moderator from Kayzr monitoring the match. Kayzr wanted to shift to 24/7 matches without adding any additional costs. However, from a players’ point of view this means less virtual coins for participating in the matches.

In order for Kayzr to grow its user base scalably, the cost of retention needed to be reduced without risking massive loss of engagement. To help Kayzr succeed in this transition, StriveCloud redesigned the experience to a 24/7 League system without the need of moderators to supervise the matches. To ensure no engagement would be lost, the experience was made more competitive. By adding more excitement to the platform with elements such empowerment, unpredictability and surprise the game in itself became more intrinsically rewarding.

This new achievements page for Kayzr 4.0 shows how the updated system focuses on intrinsic rewards and user empowerment.

Pieter Verheye, Community Manager @Kayzr - "People are coming for the rewards, but if you take them away engagement suffers. With StriveCloud’s help we created a new reward system focused on moments of surprise and user empowerment, and engagement is higher than ever."

The results were astonishing with 30,000 gamers spending 15 years straight of playing esports 24/7 in just one month of using StriveCloud. That is 1 year of 24/7 concentrated eyeball time for sponsors!

Too long, didn’t read? Here's what you missed:

With infinite amounts of content to watch, younger generations are turning away from traditional media. While sport executives fear that younger generations are no longer interested in sports, it’s actually the platform which has become obsolete. Fans these days enjoy a more personalized and interactive experience. With the internet at their fingertips the battle for eyeballs is real.

To scale that engagement without adding additional costs, the experience should be intrinsically rewarding. Meaning that the reward system is not solely focused on prizes, as the activity in itself is exciting through elements of surprise, unpredictability and empowerment.

COVID-19 has only increased our digital usage. Big winners during lockdown are platforms like Netflix, YouTube and Twitch. In anticipation of this trend, and with no live competitions to broadcast, sport clubs and athletes are going online. Teams from all around the world are doing their best to publish fun content, create social media challenges or do charity work. Instead of live competitions, leagues are organizing esport events where they can engage with fans.

Curious on how we create lasting, scalable engagement for clients like Kayzr? Let’s start a conversation 🤙

The strategy you should focus on right now to drive instant fan engagement

In this article you will learn about:

• How esports went from a geeky trend to the global industry it is today
• Esports as the ultimate fan alternative during the Corona crisis
• How to use esports to keep your fan community engaged and fill the temporary content void

Esports - from geeky trend to global industry

Esports is a form of sport competition using video games. Professional gamers get together to compete in a multiplayer environment either individually or as teams. It is a rapidly growing market expected to almost double in 2020.

Breaking the stigma

In 2011 the streaming platform for video games Twitch was launched. With the rise of Twitch and other streaming platforms everything changed. Twitch would later be acquired by the internet giant Amazon and turned out to be the most popular streaming platform in the world. The insane engagement on the platform made esports viewership numbers explode.

In august 2013 Riot games sold out the entire Staples Center (known for hosting the NBA finals and Grammys) for the world championship of League of Legends. Between 2011 and 2013 the total numbers of viewers went up from a respective 1.7 million to 32 million. This marked the introduction of esports as a spectator sport to a lot of mainstream consumers.

This packed arena for an esports championship illustrates the massive scale and spectator appeal the industry had already achieved by the mid-2010s.

All eyes on esports - the most diverse and booming audience

After that the esports market continued to grow rapidly. The low barrier-entry and viewer friendly design of video games made it an easy trend to fall into. In 2015 the League of Legends world championship gained over 36 million unique viewers. An impressive feat, considering the 2015 NBA finals had a total number of 23 million viewers.

Following this the esports market started gaining authority and brands like Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz and T-mobile started investing into esports as a way of brand activation. From the total market revenue of 900 million dollar in 2018, 353 million dollars came from sponsors. The revenue of the esports market is expected to surpass 1.5 billion dollars by 2023.

Today, with the mainstream media’s full attention and the numbers to back up its success the industry plays among the big leagues. In contrast to the stereotypes the esports industry manages to reach a very diverse audience. Given the age and broad demographic of esports fans, traditional media might find a rare opportunity to access and monetize these consumers in many ways.

The growth chart clearly visualizes the rapid expansion of the esports global audience, which is projected to continue its impressive trajectory.

While esports isn’t seen as a replacement for the sports industry, it is still an explosively growing industry with tens of millions of fans. Leading accounting and professional services firm, Deloitte, reported that even if the esports market size reaches it’s expected revenue of 1.5 billion in 2020, that would represent only one percent of the global sports revenues. That being said, esports does reach hundreds of millions of people on a regular basis. As such it is comparable to many traditional sports with large audiences and big sponsors. A recent publication by another Big Four professional services firm, PwC, predicts that esports will have more viewers than NFL football by 2020. They go on and describe the market as an “advertising goldmine” due to the various monetization possibilities such as paid subscriptions, donations, ads, sponsors and merchandising.

Esports still standing - the fan escape from boredom during the Corona outbreak

Now all live sports are cancelled, and fans that are left with free time are tuning to esports. Professional esports organization Team Liquid stated that viewership is up 30% higher than any month in the company’s history. Streaming platform Twitch itself went from 33 million to 43 million viewers between March 8 and March 22, surpassing 3 billion hours-watching time on the platform.

With all sports events being cancelled, there is a large group of fans left that are looking for entertainment. Which explains why platforms such as Youtube and Netflix are also gaining attention. The latter of which is having a worldwide 51% increase in usage. Both streaming services have announced to lower their bitrate to prevent network problems from happening, anticipating the rise in number of users and time spent on the platform.

Video games use gamification mechanisms to keep players engaged. They use reward systems that spark the players’ intrinsic motivation to continue playing because the activity is fun and rewarding by itself, such as empowerment, unpredictability and social fulfillment. StriveCloud learned how to link these mechanisms to non-game situations and create insane digital experiences that keep eyeball time focused for hours.

Learn the ABC’s of gamification on our introduction page 👉

Pro athletes like NBA star Kevin Durant are turning to esports during coronavirus to keep his fans engaged. Darren Cox, CEO of Torque Esports says:

Darren Cox, CEO of Torque Esports - "The possibility that esports could serve as a distraction for not only fans who are already on board, but could also lure new viewers while much of the public is stuck at home certainly exists."

The coronavirus is creating a new generation of gamers and game spectators. Verizon reported a 75% increase of video gaming during peak-hours. Traditional sports are joining the party with Formula One being one of the first organizations to pick up esports and live stream virtual grand prix series across Twitch and YouTube with stars such as Max Verstappen.

Long before the covid-19 outbreak, the management consulting firm McKinsey reported that many sports executives fear that the root cause of declining ratings and aging audiences is the disengagement of younger audiences from live sports. However, in the same report it is stated that esports fans are mostly also regular sports fans and that the problem isn’t in the disengagement from sports but in the platform. Clubs aren’t losing fans, they are fighting short attention spans. That’s why newer platforms that provide an interactive experience are gaining popularity so rapidly.

This demographic breakdown shows that esports reaches a diverse and significant audience, particularly younger demographics that sports leagues are keen to engage.

Using esports to fill up the content gap

As traditional sports are completely on hold for now, sponsors and broadcasters are looking to esports to fill the live content vacuum.

Nicole Pike, managing director of Nielsen Esports - "The changing environment is turning both consumer and advertiser attention toward the video gaming content space, with esports being a major part of this."

More and more sports organizations are realizing the opportunity too, and organizations such as the Premier League are taking a turn into esports.

On the 21st of April the ePremier League Invitational Tournament started - a weeklong FIFA tournament aired on NBC. All matches are broadcasted and livestreamed on nbcsports.com, the Premier League’s site and social media as well as Sky Sports’ Twitch and YouTube. A number of star athletes partake including Alexander-Arnold from Liverpool and Raheem Sterling from Manchester City, and all prize money from the tournament are donated to the National Health Service.

Major League Baseball’s latest video game collaboration is a tournament of all-time greatest players called “The Dream Bracket”. An online competition made up of all 30 MLB clubs, whose 26-player rosters comprises the greatest stars in team history. The entire competition is live streamed by the title sponsor DraftKings, on MLB’s Twitch channel and social media from April 21 to May 4.

Proximus, one of the biggest broadcasters of live sports in Belgium is also dedicated to growing the esports scene in this region. As an effort to keep sports fans digitally engaged they partnered up with the Belgian Pro League and launched the Proximus Pro League e-Cup. With StriveCloud as a technology partner they created an online FIFA tournament in which fans can enrol to represent their favourite team and play against each other. Fans are invited by Proximus and the Belgian Pro League to register on the platform where they are able to compete against other players for points and prizes.

This screenshot shows the Proximus Pro League e-Cup platform, an interactive hub where fans can register, compete, and follow the tournament.

By organizing digital competitions, all football clubs in the Belgium Pro League were able to turn fans’ eyeballs back to the club and retain engagement during the coronavirus lockdown. Within the first hours of going live, the platform registered over 2,000 fan sign-ups. Moreover, the fans liked the experience so much that over 3,000 matches were played in just 2 days. One player even played 100 matches in that time which is over 12 hours daily. That is equal to watching over 3 football matches a day!

The tournament leaderboard is a key gamification element, fostering competition and encouraging players to return daily to improve their rank.

The Belgium Pro League and Proximus launched an insane 24/7 online tournament and community platform in just one week time.

• Give your fans an engaging experience
• Get insane eyeball time for sponsors
• Keep the fandom alive

Too long, didn’t read? Here's what you missed:

With the postponement of all live sport events, fans are left in a loophole without new content of their favourite sports.

Esports is an attractive and valuable alternative for sport organizations and brands to fill the live content vacuum and provide fans with a fun digital alternative. It’s a great way to pivot and handle the lockdown period like a boss.

Over the years esports has grown from a geeky trend into a global industry. Streaming services created a highly engaged, worldwide and diverse audience for esports which is why the market is projected to almost double its revenue in 2020.

During the Corona lockdown, esports are still standing. Fans are looking for online alternatives to engage with their favorite clubs. The online fan activations are also helping sponsors gain back precious eyeball time, resulting in a win-win for all parties. Sport organizations like the Premier League and Major League Baseball are turning to esports during these times. What will you do?

Are you looking for ways to get started with esports and drive instant fans engagement? Let’s start a conversation! 🤙

Here’s why AB InBev is focusing on digital engagement (and why you should too)

A portrait of Michael Codd, AB InBev's marketing and innovation lead, who provides his insights throughout this interview.

In the last months, we have seen a massive shift in the way people are going about their days. Sports have been affected with leagues from all around the world postponing seasons and cancelling live events. As a result, brands have been left with no stadiums or tv screens to spread their message. As fans are spending more time online, digital has become the main channel to interact with consumers.

But how can brands stay connected with their audiences without any in-person events? In what way should they communicate to keep a positive brand image while also not being pushy. The main focus right now is adding value to consumers in different ways than usual. As an effort to stay connected with consumers, some brands are turning to esports to fill the empty content hole left by sports broadcasters. Streaming online tournaments and commentary to regular sports audiences have shown very strong engagement and revenue potential. Game streaming company Twitch recorded a 60% jump in viewership since the start of the lockdown climbing up to a total of over 1,3 billion hours watching time.

We spoke with AB InBev’s marketing and innovation lead Michael Codd to find out how they are handling the COVID-19 crisis both as a leading FMCG brand as well as a ferocious sports sponsor.

Can you tell us about your role at AB InBev?

M.C.: As a marketing and innovation lead, I work within our IT organization the Europe zone and I’m responsible for the marketing scope. So basically all related projects for the marketing function come through me.

What are three implications you see in the way brands market to consumers following the COVID-19 crisis?

M.C.: Firstly, most brands are and all brands should be conscious about how they are communicating. Marketing the product itself should not be a priority at this point in time and they should think more about their customers' more urgent needs and what is good for the world.

With us, some of our initiatives are not even using our brands, or if our brand fits we might try associating it. Furthermore, we switched production to hand sanitizers and we started switching some of the production to ventilators. We try to stay creative in making an impact. For example, we have a brand like Hiball which is an energy drink we’re delivering to hospitals as well.

This image shows AB InBev's pivot to producing branded hand sanitizers, demonstrating their commitment to social good during the crisis.

M.C.: I think brands should be very careful communicating as they normally would. Some things might be misinterpreted. It’s not the time to push the product, rather the intention should be in helping your customers. Brands should be mindful and try to do initiatives that will help this problem we have and the situation we are in.

Secondly, I would say what’s changed is consumer habits and how they are spending their time. Of course, everything now is happening online and people are switching to more digital ways of socializing. Or within a family, they are probably spending more time together. So you need to change your offerings a bit to be more in-home-focused.

Content-wise for us as a beer company at this moment in time is not around bringing friends together in a bar or something like that. We try to do better for the world in our communications by for example spreading content on how we still can connect and be social in a digital environment. I think this concept of social distancing is a strange term. What I find is people are being way more social than ever before. I think it’s more a sort of physical distance but I think people are really connecting. I have connected with friends I haven’t connected with in a long time. You just call them, because now it’s just normal again.

Thirdly, I think a lot of the brands are planning to tap into the excitement of when this is all over and people are on the streets again. Planning for that momentum that is going to kick off in June, July or whenever will be critical. There are going to be huge opportunities. People that have probably not spent as much money in the last couple of months are going to have some savings and will want to spend that and see their friends and whatnot.

So trying to be ready for when governments decide to open up again so that you can be meaningful and take full advantage of people out on the street who are invested in having a good time.

What actions do you currently take at AB InBev to engage with the consumer? What do you expect to change in the future?

M.C.: There’s these ideas for good as we’re calling them. We have a very famous example in Belgium around Café Courage. We set up a website platform where we allow people to donate money to their local bar and once the bar opens again, that is credit to the bar. So they are basically buying their drinks now but consuming it later. For every dollar they give, AB InBev matches. The campaign started out in Belgium but is now being done all over the world and the one in the UK just overpassed half a million investments from consumers to their bars. That’s really exciting.

The 'Café Courage' campaign is a prime example of how AB InBev is fostering community support and customer engagement during challenging times.

M.C.: Besides those ideas for good, from a marketing perspective, we’re really not doing any communications at all. I find it's better to keep quiet than to say the wrong thing in these times. For the other marketing stuff, we’re just planning for when the business opens again so we can just share that excitement that people will have when being out and being with their friends again.

What trends do you see? Do you expect them to last?

M.C.: What I’ve learned is firstly how closely connected you can be in a digital environment. With video chat, you’re opening up your house and it has now become more normal when you hear dogs barking or kids appearing on the screen. That was something that before the virus people were hiding and now it has become normal.

That leads to a more intimate relationship already. You ask about their dog or ask for their kid’s name etcetera and then you get to know people closer even though you have the distance. I think that will continue and people will continue to feel more comfortable sharing parts from their work-from-home life.

Secondly, I would say, the creative people are seeing. With the budget constraints, I have been seeing a lot of creativity here internally on coming up with ideas, initiatives that are low cost and still have an impact.

Some of that stuff has to do with esports. With my team now, it’s all about how we can give fan engagement just by helping them set up tournaments or just working with influencers to do something nice for the fans that don’t cost money. That’s the kind of initiative, this creative thinking on how we can do things that are lower cost and still have an impact is something I hope to pull forward.

Third, having my team be actually remotely. I have a lot of people in Prague and Ukraine and in Belgium and London. This kind of happy hour or lunches we do virtually, I’m going to continue. Now it’s kind of become normal just having informal catch-ups where we do not talk about work with the rest of the team.

What problems do you see following the live events cancellations? How do you tackle it at AB InBev? How does it impact you?

M.C.: In terms of our events, one of the things we’re often seeing in internal presentations is something we learned from China. In Chinese, the written word for crisis stands for two words: danger and opportunity.

This image illustrates the Chinese characters for 'crisis', which combines the symbols for 'danger' and 'opportunity', reflecting a key theme of the discussion.

M.C.: We’re seeing this kind of opportunity arising. In the past, we have always wanted to do something with initiatives like esports, but never really put the full effort, money, or resources behind. Whereas now that will happen because all of a sudden there’s this opportunity of stuff that we had planned that cannot go ahead anymore.

It's allowing us to innovate a bit more. Because it's allowing the innovation to get more time from the people, more attention, and budget. That’s something great I think.

In terms of the other events being canceled, often the events are being switched to online. We’re trying to push the e-commerce channel more and trying to help organize events like pub quizzes or any kind of live music event.

A really nice example was a concert in Brazil. Brahma, the biggest AB InBev brand there is sponsoring a lot of country music. The two most famous country musicians in Brazil linked up together in their garage and gave a live concert. They received the biggest number of concurrent viewers on YouTube live ever. It had 3.5 million concurrent viewers and within 24 hours 37 million views. So that was huge and expanding that and bringing an element of e-commerce in there is something we’re definitely trying to take advantage of.

Let’s talk about esports and consumer engagement. What role does it play in your current marketing strategy?

M.C.: I’ll try to give an overview of the three parts of the world and the status of esports there.

To start off, the area that is furthest ahead is for sure China. They have been investing quite heavily in esports since 2016. You can really see they are more matured. They have a fully worked out strategy that includes packaging, digital influencers, teams and leagues sponsorships, mobile products, integrations with Tencent. It’s an important part of their local brand called Harbin, it’s their number one pillar and where they get their highest engagement from.

In the US they are probably like second. It’s a little bit behind China where they’re still mostly focusing on sponsorship and content. Right now they are sponsoring 3 or 4 of the games over there and they have their own Bud Light Twitch channel. But it’s not as holistic as in China.

In Europe, we’re following the same model as China in terms of strategy but it’s still very early stage. It will be different because we’ll see a lot of stuff coming, especially in the UK where we will start trying to do new, novel stuff within esports rather than just focusing on sponsorship at a scale where we are still trying to get a coherent strategy between digital and real-life. That’s a bit where we’re at now.

What we have been doing for six months now is organizing viewing parties for fans but very local and smaller at scale. We’re trying to help bars by showing how they can stream professional esports and helping them market those events so they get extra people through the door. That way the fans actually have another option than watching esports from their home.

In Ukraine and Russia, we launched online competitions together with Bud Light, where we’re offering fans to play against each other in tournaments. We’re offering some incentives such as nice prizes for Bud Light if they win. They are competing on a local level, within their city let’s say. Once they become top 5 in the city, they can start competing against other cities. Once they become the top there they can start competing against other countries and so on.

Why brands that use gamification have higher engagement: Check out the ultimate gamification resource page! 👀

Lastly, we’re looking into working with influencers to do some fan matches. Getting the fans of one influencer to play the fans of another influencer and have a fan battle. And then we still have some ideas that are floating around right now.

What’s the single most important takeaway from our discussion?

M.C.: I would say that it’s better to not communicate than to communicate in the wrong way. The amount of emails that I have received is enormous and mostly out of sync with how I feel. Therefore I think it’s better to keep quiet than doing something that does not make sense because it’s not authentic.

[Interview] How a popular Swiss esports agency turned event cancellations into digital engagement

The global shift from live events to digital engagement has created new opportunities for industries like esports, which thrive in a virtual environment.

The cancellation of all live events left people from all around the world in a void. With the real world turned upside down and more people turning to digital, sports clubs and brands are looking to esports to keep their fans engaged.

Previously we interviewed AB InBev’s Innovation lead Michael Codd to find out why the world’s leading brewery is focussed on digital engagement.

Right now is the ideal time to get involved. While esports has been growing explosively over the past few years, millions of new people have just recently gotten to know the industry during the lockdown. With new fans comes a new appeal, especially for sponsors and rights deals. With the lack of exposure and live content at the moment, could esports be a solution for fan engagement?

We spoke with Tobias Egartner, the CEO of the Swiss esports agency eStudios who is committed to taking esports to the next level in Switzerland. He told us about their goals, the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, and how they are going full digital using StriveCloud as a platform solution.

Can you tell us a bit more about eStudios and what you do?

T.E. - "eStudios is a 360 degrees esports agency that works on every aspect a brand needs to go into esports and gaming. We consult companies to enter the section, organize live or offline events, and do content production. We also have our own gaming community called GameTurnier where people can compete in video games and train to become a professional player while brands can advertise to the esports target group."

The GameTurnier brand provides a dedicated space for the Swiss gaming community to compete and grow, central to eStudios' digital strategy.

How did you handle the outbreak? What are the implications?

T.E. - "Since Corona, our focus has shifted a bit due to all events moving online. We do more live production such as the hockey e-Playoffs, Swiss Football League, and professional FIFA matches. Lastly, we do lots of content production for big tv stations right now. With no football matches, they are looking into the opportunity of esports to fill the vacuum. Right now esports is the professional playing of sports, and this will continue after the Corona crisis."

This setup shows a typical esports competition, where teams face each other in a professional gaming environment, a scene that has now moved primarily online.

What’s your mission as an esports agency?

T.E. - "Gaming is becoming more and more present in the broader community. It's no longer just a 'nerd' thing. One in three Swiss people plays at least one game. It can be Candy Crush on mobile or other games like FIFA. Esports, the professional playing of video games has been on a rise for a while although Corona just moved it forward faster. Now esports has a bigger role in the interest of fans. It will not replace traditional sports but it will play a more important role in brand activation towards younger audiences especially."

What are you trying to achieve in the world of esports?

T.E. - "Esports is moving forward faster and it's on top of minds of fans, especially for younger generations. However, in Switzerland, the structure is still missing for pro teams to flourish. They have questions about how to participate in tournaments and what they need to do to get better. In the USA or Japan for example the market is way more advanced. At eStudios we want to act as an ecosystem both for fans and hobbyists, as well as for aspiring pro players to train, grow, and have fun."

A team's perspective during an esports event highlights the focused and competitive atmosphere that eStudios aims to foster in its digital communities.

What is your vision about the future of online competitions under the pandemic outbreak?

T.E. - "We focus on building a more professional structure to support more players into becoming professional e-athletes. Corona moved the behavior online and the cancellation of live events brings awareness to esports. However, the market, in general, is not progressing in Switzerland. Esports is gaining awareness now that all live sports events are postponed or canceled. They will not replace traditional sports although they will take a more prominent position in the mind of fans and sports organizations."

Do you see this as a long-term trend?

T.E. - "The challenge is how to build up an interesting sport for each market. Some markets are more evolved than others. Looking at Europe, esports it's no longer a trend. It has been around for over five years but how it's going to proceed in each direction will dictate the further growth of esports. While Corona helped to get esports on top of mind we are still figuring out how to grow our over 440,000 current esports fans in Switzerland."

What challenges were you facing that made you look for a platform like StriveCloud?

T.E. - "GameTurnier has its largest player community in FIFA. Every community is different in behavior on the platform. Before we worked with StriveCloud we got a lot of complaints from our community. It was disappointing to see our FIFA players unhappy with the situation of online tournaments. It was clear our users needed a platform for FIFA behavior. The behavioral design approach from StriveCloud simply worked, even though it might sometimes be in the small things."

Learn how behavioral design and gamification drive digital engagement in our gamification breakdown page.

Why did you decide to work with StriveCloud?

T.E. - "Everything about the partnership was right. The mutual understanding, the price, and the culture made it easy to work together. StriveCloud thinks in solutions instead of problems, the language barrier on the platform, for example, was swiftly provided with translations."

How does your engagement platform fit in your business?

T.E. - "Right now it's the main focus of our business because everything is digital. We wanted to build a community for fans to connect with esports athletes or become pro themselves. Employees who were normally working on tons of events all day are now on StriveCloud. The motivation and interest within the company show that this is a great product. Employees want to try out organizing tournaments and teams say they want to organize their own cup."

What benefits have you seen since the launch?

T.E. - "It has been easier to build partnerships with brands due to the possibilities we can offer with the platform. The B2B part is really important in the growth of esports. What if more brands want to have their own Swiss Pro League platform?"

This example of a branded e-football cup demonstrates how the StriveCloud platform facilitates B2B partnerships and white-label tournament solutions.

T.E. - "Additionally, the possibility to implement the platform for other campaigns. We can now build white-label platforms while still building up the community on GameTurnier. StriveCloud allows us to handle our own platform and those of partners at the same time."

What have you learned from working with StriveCloud?

T.E. - "On a knowledge level, we already matched with our thoughts and needs. It was a good match in how people interact with each other especially during these stressful times. We are really good at organizing FIFA competitions while StriveCloud is really good at making the platform work for the community."

What would you say to other businesses facing the same challenges as you did?

T.E. - "It's important to understand the needs and challenges of your target group and fan base. It doesn’t matter how big the obstacle if the challenge is a specific button, take it seriously even if it's as simple as changing a word to make the experience less confusing."

Why you're not retaining fan engagement and what you should do about it

Don’t you just hate it when you’re getting spammed with ads for products that have nothing to do with your interests? One of the greatest challenges in sports marketing today is sparking fan engagement through digital experiences tailored to the individual needs of the fans.

You’ll discover:

• How personalization drives fan engagement
• The role of data in crafting a frictionless fan experience
• What kinds of different behaviors exist in the esports community
• How eStudios overcame their community challenges through personalization

How personalization drives fan engagement

First of all, what does it mean to personalize a digital experience? When it comes to user experience, small tweaks can make a big difference. As Tobias, the CEO of eStudios, noticed: trivial details like naming a button can confuse the users and impact their overall experience as well as fan engagement.

In short, personalization is a process that enables you to tailor customer journeys and experiences to suit the individual needs and preferences of a customer. Your website, app, or any digital experience anticipates your users’ needs based on previous interactions.

Personalization is often mistakenly equated with customization. Unlike personalization, customization happens by the user's actions. In those cases, the users select their preferences. On the other hand, personalization stems from the system itself. Both can enhance a user’s experience, but only when carefully implemented.

While you may think of personalization as a nice-to-have luxury, research shows its fundamental impact on revenue. A 2017 study by personalization company Monate found 79% of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy.

Also, a 2015 study released by market research company Forrester concluded personalization is crucial for marketers seeking to enhance customer centricity and engagement.

For instance, streaming service Netflix illustrates how powerful personalization can be to drive engagement as 80% of their views come from personalized recommendations alone.

Netflix's success with personalized recommendations highlights a key principle for fan engagement: using data to understand and anticipate user needs.

The role of data in personalization

According to a 2019 article by consulting firm Mckinsey, personalization will be the prime driver for marketing success within five years. The rise of data and analytics are the major factor in this increasing importance and viability of personalisation.

Data is the key to understanding your users. It all starts with knowing who your fans are. Once you start to learn the behaviors of your users, you can use that information to better meet their needs and even predict what they might want at a particular touchpoint going forward.

When deciding which data to use for personalization, you need to keep three critical factors in mind. First, you need to use genuine data. Every fan is different. That’s why your system should learn user preferences along the way. While general industry data might be great to create an initial experience, it’s not merely enough to stay up to date with today’s user expectations.

Secondly, you have to use data from all customer touchpoints. This allows you to analyze the entire customer journey from end-to-end. The more interactions they have, the more tailored the experience will be.

Finally, you need to ensure if the data is fit-for-purpose. Data privacy has become a big subject in society. Balancing both personalization and data privacy is often referred to as “The privacy paradox” by research firm Gartner.

Penny Gillespie, VP Analyst @ Gartner - "Organizations that combine identity data with behavioral data will outpace those that don’t. The key is to bring value to customers and keep data use in context."

Different behaviors in the esports fan community

The esports community continued to rise during the global pandemic. With tons of traditional sports turning to esports, fan engagement is on a rise, further fueling the industry’s growth.

Just like in more traditional sports, esports offers games for everyone. You have sports games like FIFA or NBA 2K, first-person shooter games like CS:GO, or multiplayer online battle arenas such as League of Legends and Battle Royale games like Fortnite. They all offer a different experience and typically attract diverse audiences.

This diversity in gaming preferences, as illustrated by the variety of popular titles, requires a nuanced approach to community engagement.

Tobias Egartner, CEO @ eStudios - "With GameTurnier the biggest community is in FIFA. Each gaming community has different behaviors. Before StriveCloud we had lots of complaints from the players. We needed a platform for FIFA behavior."

While the esports community is often looked at as a whole, it’s important to remember every game has its very own fanbase. Insights company Pulsar found that different games have dedicated communities. The noteworthy thing is they rarely talk about games other than the ones they are playing. Additionally, fan communities also use different social platforms for different purposes.

In contrast to fans of ‘traditional’ sports, fan loyalty doesn’t lie with a specific team. Instead, fans follow individual Twitch streamers and games. The influencers for this audience can be found in real-life sport. For instance, FIFA fans follow footballers and brands associated with football. This means you will need a separate strategy for every single community when it comes down to personalization and esports fan engagement.

How eStudios solved the challenge of esports fan engagement through a personalized experience

eStudios is a 360 degree Swiss esports startup focused on every aspect a brand needs to go into esports and gaming. They also own GameTurnier, the largest gaming tournament platform in Switzerland.

After testing out several fan engagement technologies on the gaming tournament platform, they noticed some difficulties with the FIFA community. After multiple complaints, it became clear the user experience had to be improved.

Not only did the broken user experience make the GameTurnier community unhappy. It also made it hard for eStudios to launch campaigns and engage a restless audience for its agency clients.

First off the gaming tournament platform needed a behavior-driven approach for designing a gamified user experience that lifts esports fan engagement.

Furthermore, they needed a platform that works for multiple campaigns.

That’s where StriveCloud comes in! StriveCloud’s white-label solution made it so eStudios can set up new platforms for their client portfolio in no time! Additionally, a team of gamification experts helped analyze the FIFA behavior to create a frictionless experience for gamers.

The new GameTurnier platform provides a clear overview for users, streamlining the process of finding and joining competitions.

Drilling down into a specific tournament page, the design focuses on a frictionless experience, which was a key factor in improving community satisfaction.

Tobias Egartner, CEO @ eStudios - "We are really good at organizing FIFA competitions. StriveCloud is really good at making the platform work for the community."

The new platform was launched one day before the corona lock-down in Switzerland, and in Tobias’ own words: “It was one of the best launches ever.”

The results were astonishing. With a rapidly growing and active esports community, Tobias and his team were able to build new partnerships with brands. Not to mention how the platform shift doubled their user growth and acquisition targets with over 4,000 hours of eyeball time in just two months and 600 weekly played competitions.

Nevertheless, they don’t plan to stop here. There is an even bigger opportunity to use StriveCloud in other campaigns...

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