Gamification is the strategic process of inserting game-like mechanisms into any digital experience to boost user activity and drive engagement and loyalty. It takes the user, customer, fan, and employee data, and turns it into actionable behavior that supports business goals.

Additionally, Gartner’s latest Gamification definition is: “the use of game mechanics to drive engagement in non-game business scenarios and to change behaviors in a target audience to achieve business outcomes.”

The key elements of Gamification include:

In today’s digital era, grabbing people’s attention is one of the hardest things to do, and yet is critical for business continuity. Rather than using conventional strategies, clever companies are employing Gamification mechanisms to reduce churn and drive engagement and loyalty. This is how:

In practice, consider implementing a platform within your Gamification strategy, that can plug-in Gamification mechanisms into any digital experience, and work for you towards achieving your goals. Such a gamified system must:

Motivation involves the interaction between a person and a task, in a situation and at a time. One of the most influential behavioral theories of motivation, the Self-Determination Theory, suggests that people have an internal desire for growth. But they need the external environment to support it.

Game mechanisms are what make games exciting and act as a social motivator to interact and connect with people in a form of competitive play. There is often a common misunderstanding between Gamification and Games, yet they are not the same thing.

Gamification is not about creating a new game to engage customers and employees. It is about taking the best parts of games (the game-like mechanisms that motivate players) and applying them to non-game contexts. The main goal is to encourage the target audience to spark positive behaviors. With Gamification, the user experience is the epicenter, and the Gamification mechanisms go around it. We often see that when companies choose to gamify high-value interactions with customers and employees, they drive more sales, stronger collaboration, better ROI, reduced churn and employee turnaround rates, and more.

Two categories of game mechanisms are relevant to Gamification: Game Dynamics and Game Mechanics. In practice, each Game Mechanic is tied to one or more Game Dynamics. The mix depends on the business outcomes the gamified experience aims to serve.

The Game Dynamics refers to a set of emotions, behavior and desires Gamification nudges in people. These are core intrinsic motivational drivers that carry out behavior. To supercharge engagement and retention, the most important Game Dynamics are: 

Overall, these game dynamics not only define, but drive Gamification.

Game Mechanics are the basic processes that drive the user action forward in a gamified system. These are extrinsic motivators that guide the gamified experience.

Today, most of our business world is built on external rewards systems designed to motivate customers and employees to take actions that support business goals. This strategy has its benefits. Besides enhancing focus on completing grunt tasks, it triggers initial interest and desire for the activity. For example, companies using engagement initiatives based on Extrinsic Rewards (such as offering gift cards, money, merchandise, and discounts) can be very successful in the discovery phase. They provide a compelling reason for audiences to engage in the experience in the first place.

However, as we have seen earlier, if people continue doing an activity justified by Extrinsic Rewards, their intrinsic motivation lowers, and initial engagement is lost. This is what psychologists identify as the Overjustification Effect.

Gamification, on the other hand, has the power to ensure sustainable engagement by making the experience more intrinsic. To sum up the psychology behind it, Gamification uses Extrinsic Rewards (Badges, Points, Physical or Virtual Goods) to attract users to the engagement experience. Then a good gamified system will transition the user’s interest through Intrinsic Rewards (Progress Bars, Notifications, Social Status in Leaderboards), and will finally use intrinsic motivators to ensure the user’s long-term engagement.

As you might know by now, adding Gamification to your business strategy will offer customers and employees a sustainable level of motivation and will help them reach a higher level of engagement so that they use your application or service more. To measure the success of your Gamification program, you must first define a set of key performance indicators (KPIs).

Choosing the right set of KPIs to track is essential for Gamification success. First of all, KPIs are important in defining the game mechanisms deployed to the digital experience. Second of all, KPIs will help you assign a monetary value to the gamification program and measure its ROI.

Aside from your business goals, it is necessary to know the distinction between process and performance KPIs. A process KPI is the behavior you’d like to change through Gamification. For instance, your goal might be to increase the quality of the data your sales team inserts into the CRM system to improve the accuracy of the sales forecasts. In this case, a process KPI can impact a performance KPI, and result in more sales.

In marketing, Gamification can help in the various stages of the conversion funnel. Take this technique into account when you define your customer loyalty strategy. For example, in most gamification strategies applied to digital applications, conversion is one of the main aspects to monitor. This will be one of the KPIs you want to track.

While Gamification can be a powerful tool to supercharge engagement, reduce customer churn, and drive loyalty within business systems, not all gamification programs are created equal, and some managers are struggling to achieve desired results. So when does Gamification fail?

One reason why some gamification programs result in failure is the non-definition of clear (and realistic) objectives and KPIs to monitor the results of their strategy. When programs start with a vague idea, without drilling down sufficiently into each business goal, results will fail to come.

An engaging gamified experience starts with an intimate understanding of the target audience. This means analyzing the data, segmenting the audience by creating personas, and understanding what motivates each group. If the motivators are not defined, the program will have a limited impact on inspiring behavior, especially high-priority behavior, limiting the ROI.

Some companies get their audience right, but then they motivate users into taking actions that don’t support the overall strategy and business goals. Identifying the desired audience behavior (e.g. signing-up, buying more products, writing reviews, spending more time on the app or platform, closing more high-value deals, etc.) can make or break the program’s success.

While some gamification programs successfully motivate user sign-ups through extrinsic rewards (discounts, loyalty points), they fail to keep users engaged. That’s a problem – one that signals a flaw in the program design. A good Gamification experience transitions the user’s initial focus on extrinsic rewards, to the emotional engagement found in getting intrinsic rewards (peer recognition, being part of a community). This means the program is designed to inspire active participation because participating is interesting and satisfying in itself.

Gamification is a powerful business tool when the program is designed and implemented effectively. To succeed with Gamification, you need a partner that not only provides the scalable technology you need to execute the strategy. In addition, the partner must also have the knowledge and experience to consult you throughout the process. At StriveCloud, we understand the fundamentals of human motivation and the game mechanisms that deliver sustainable engagement, rich insights, and high ROI, within any digital application.