🎮Gamification Blocks

This section is a set of best practices related to setting up a successful Gamification environment with Smartico tools. We keep updating this document over time and leaving it available for all our clients. Before we start, there is one suggestion that we want to highlight...

Don't try to build a perfect setup from scratch, better go in iterative approach with small improvements in every next cycle

Introduction

Gamification is the simple idea of introducing game-like elements into marketing, training or other important business activities. It may be trending as a marketing concept, but in hindsight, several successful campaigns of the past have leveraged the idea, and humans have designed and enjoyed games for as long as we can remember. It seems to be part of our DNA to interact with each other in this way, so it just makes sense that we would enjoy interacting with brands and products this way as well. In a time when our marketing platform is working hard, we also provide our clients with alternative ways to attract and retain their customers more than ever, gamification could be an interesting and creative way of achieving the goals we set.

Here are four ways we use gamification for our clients:

• Stickiness: One of the most important concepts for any digital platform is the idea of repeat visits and ongoing interaction. In the past, this was achieved by changing banners, making sure content was new and fresh, and providing valuable functionality that required repeat visitation. Because games by their very nature are repeat affairs, and humans love playing the same game over and over, we can use this idea to create stickiness on our platforms.

• Rewards, Retention and Loyalty: There are some great apps that highlight how this works. The Nike fitness app and similar, are making great use of games to increase engagement, and reward and retain customers.

• Training: Humans learn very quickly in gamified environments. There is a vast amount of psychology that shows how fun, interactive activities provide enhanced learning and training outcomes (gamify compliance process for example).

• Personalization: Games are inherently personal affairs. My interaction with a gamified environment will look and feel different from yours, and this creates a personalized environment in which to communicate with customers.

The longevity of gamification

One of the real draw-cards of these ideas, and one way you could convince clients to consider them, is that campaigns and marketing investments tend to be limited to a certain time frame. However, a gamified environment is a genuine investment that, done well, can be used to achieve your goals over far longer time periods. A well-implemented, interactive platform can be enjoyed for years, rather than campaign messaging that could last a few months.

Gamification mechanics works in the following way

• Players are completing missions by making bets, deposits, logins, etc.

• By completing missions, players are getting rewards in the form of Points By collecting Points players are leveling-up

• Based on collected points during a specific period (day, week, month), they can get winning positions in the Leaderboards and get more Points as a reward

• Players can participate in Tournaments, receive attempts to Spin the Wheel

• Collected Points can be exchanged for Bonuses, Free spins, or other types of product benefits in the Marketplace

• All the listed actions are shown in Activity history and supported with Communication channels (e.g. mails, popups, push notifications like ‘You just unlocked mission X’, ‘You took 2nd positions in weekly board’, ‘You are upgraded to Level X’)

• Additionally to the Marketplace, the Bonus items can be used in Campaigns (e.g Campaign to start on Registration → wait for Deposit → wait for Balance to be zero → give Bonus)