Modern consumers prioritize experiences over other factors. Therefore, brands that offer good customer experience become more popular even if they are expensive and offer similar quality as other brands. One of the contributing factors to a good customer experience is a well-designed loyalty program.

However, you must keep in mind that not every loyalty program is successful. To ensure that your loyalty program works, you need to take into account your customers’ interests and align the program with your brand’s objectives.

Not only this but putting in some additional effort is also essential to stand out in the competition. The best additional effort you can make is to incorporate gamification into your loyalty program. Gamified loyalty programs drive higher engagement and improve customer experiences, which further results in higher customer loyalty. Let us dive deeper into the topic to understand the role of gamification in loyalty programs and how it can enhance your loyalty strategies:

What is Gamification in Loyalty Programs?

The concept of a game can just make anything more interesting. This applies to loyalty programs as well. By incorporating gaming elements into loyalty programs, brands can make their programs more interesting to participate in for the customers. Instead of directly offering rewards for purchases, brands can design their loyalty program in such a way that it creates a sense of winning when customers earn a reward.

Many successful brands are already using gamification strategies to enhance their loyalty programs. It has been observed that programs with gamification drive higher engagement than generic rewards-based programs. Gamification not only helps drive higher engagement, but brands can even collect customer data with such programs. This data can further be used to understand customer interests, preferences, etc, and offer personalized experiences to them.

Some of the best examples of gamification loyalty programs include Scratch2Win programs, Spin to Win contests,

How is Gamification Changing the Loyalty Program Landscape?

With the increasing popularity of gamification, the loyalty program landscape has changed to a great extent. Here’s how gamified strategies impact loyalty programs:

1. Building Emotional Connection

Gamification can be highly effective in building emotional connections with customers. It makes customers feel more emotionally connected with a brand. And emotional connection further encourages them to stay loyal. Gamification appeals to the human nature of competing and winning. Every time a customer gets a reward, they get a sense of accomplishment and are encouraged to perform the same action again. As you are offering them the opportunity to win, they feel connected to your brand and want to continue purchasing to win more rewards.

2. Gamification Resonates with The Interests of Gen-Z

Another significant reason behind the increasing adoption of gamification is that it is Gen-Z driven. Gen-Z is believed to be the most influential generation ever and these people prioritize experiences. They prefer experiences over any other thing when it comes to choosing a brand to purchase from. And gamification proves to be very effective in enhancing customer experiences, especially with Gen-Z and millennial consumers. By catering to the needs of the most influential segment of customers, i.e. gen-Z consumers, you can make the most out of your loyalty program and drive maximum engagement.

3. Boosting Customer Engagement by Going Beyond Rewards

Transactional loyalty programs are fine, but in order to strengthen relationships with customers, brands need to go beyond transnational offerings. This is where gamification becomes a major player. The way you are rewarding customers matters equally as what you are offering as the reward. Even if you are offering the same types of rewards and incentives with a generic loyalty program, it will not drive as much engagement as a gamified program can drive with the same rewards.

Therefore, your approach should be focused on going beyond rewards and enhancing customer experiences. Make their purchasing journey fun and they will themselves be encouraged to stick to your brand.

Benefits of Gamification in Loyalty Programs

Some most significant benefits of running gamified loyalty programs are listed below:

• Better Results: Humans have a natural desire to win. By running a gamified loyalty program, you can directly appeal to their desire and give them an additional reason to continue purchasing from your brand.
• Improved Engagement: Gamification makes a loyalty program more interesting for customers. They are more likely to participate in gamified reward programs and hence these programs can drive higher engagement.
• Better Customer Satisfaction: Gamification in loyalty programs gives customers a sense of winning after every purchase they make. This makes them feel that they are receiving something in return for their purchase, which further gives them a sense of satisfaction.
• Better Brand Awareness: When your customers are happy and satisfied with your brand, they are highly likely to recommend your products or services to their friends and family members via social media or through word-of-mouth marketing. This improves your brand awareness in the market.

Gamify Your Loyalty Program with RewardPort

If you are still running a generic loyalty program, you might be missing out on a large number of customers. Gamification in loyalty programs is no more a choice but is becoming a necessity for brands to survive in today’s highly competitive market. Customers will easily switch to your competitors if they are offering better experiences. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, you must build a strong relationship with your customers and the best way to do this is to incorporate gamification into your loyalty program.

RewardPort is a top loyalty program company having years of experience in the field. Having proper knowledge of the latest market trends and gamification strategies, the team of marketing experts at RewardPort can come up with the perfect loyalty program plan for your brand. YOu get plenty of gamification options to choose from, such as Scratch2Win, sweepstakes, and more.

For any further information or queries, you can connect with our expert