If you’ve been following our series on technology and your small business, you recently read about gamification as a way to improve customer retention. If you find the concept confusing, don’t worry. In this post we’re going to explain gamification and how it can help your small business. As a matter of fact, users of our free inventory software will see some of these ideas incorporated in Stockpile.
Gamification is a relatively new concept. According to Zac Fitz-Walter, a PhD candidate who has extensively researched gamification, the terminology was first used in 2002 or 2003 but the concept didn’t really start to gain traction until after 2010. In the past four years, gamification has garnered quite a bit of attention. In fact, technology research group, Gartner, predicts that 50% of organizations that manage information processes will gamify them by 2015. You know the old saying about peer pressure, right? By providing real-time views and reports of your stock counts and such in our free inventory software solution, we create a game aspect to managing stock (thus creating peer pressure to do your job because others can see you haven't).
So what does that mean? According to Gartner Research Analyst, Brian Burke, gamification is“the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.” In other words, it’s introducing fun into tasks to motivate people to participate. Arguably, not a new concept. What parent or teacher hasn’t used the same technique to encourage children to engage in less desirable activities? What is new is using technology to create entire customer retention strategies using gamification.
According to Badgeville, a company that focuses on gamification, “techniques strive to leverage people’s natural desires for Competition, Achievement, Status, Altruism, Community Collaboration, and many more.” You are likely already using a gamified app and don’t even realize it. A loyalty program that rewards you for completing a task, one that awards badges or points for completing activities, or one that posts a user leaderboard on its website are all utilizing gamification to encourage continued support of their business.
A recent post on Forbes.com says gamification can be used to address common marketing problems such as: getting people engaged, keep them coming back, make them feel involved, and change the average into exciting. If you can do all that, you should have a loyal customer. We do this by incorporating user feedback directly into our free inventory software. There's nothing more satisfying to a customer than to know their opinion counts!
Intrigued yet? Want to learn more about how you can use gamification to improve your customer retention? Keep reading.
Badgeville offers a variety of gamification solutions. Their customer loyalty solution has options for community engagement, social loyalty, customer acquisition, omni-channel commerce and marketing campaigns. Wells Fargo, at&t, Philips, Samsung and Expedia have all used Badgeville for gamification. In 2013, Badgeville was honored with the Gartner CRM Excellence award.
Another “player” in this space is Bunchball. They have solutions to help you activate your online community, grow your audience and increase customer loyalty and sales. Their Nitro gamification platform works well with a variety of platforms and can be used to effectively motivate your customers. Ford, Chiquita, USA Network, T Mobile, Warner Brothers and Wendy’s have all used Nitro to enhance their marketing efforts.
Gigya also focuses on incentivizing users with points, badges and special offers. Gigya’s solutions allow you to connect with your customers, collect valuable data about them and then convert that into marketing gold. They have solutions for publishers, e-commerce, travel, finance and brands. They have helped kate spade, Toyota, Fox, Red Bull and more gamify their marketing.
Gamification is a great way to capture and keep your customer’s attention. Rewarding them with badges, points or special offers will motivate them to keep coming back. When they are having fun, you won’t have to work as hard to convince them they should stop by.
Ready for an instant reward, just for you? Try Stockpile today - it's the world's best free inventory software! Once you implement our free inventory management solution you’ll have some extra time to treat yourself.
