Gamification in Promotions: How Play Boosts Engagement, Sales and Loyalty

Dare I say we’ve all been there – we look up from our phones and realise ‘some’ time has passed, and we’ve found ourselves in the dreaded doom scroll. Whether its CandyCrush, Duo Lingo, or just good old social media, the choice of distraction is endless. Attention grabbing, and difficult to escape, a challenge for personal lives – but a recipe for success for a sales promotion!

That’s the appeal of gamification in promotions: it transforms a familiar moment of play into an engaging brand experience that can motivate participation and action.

At Mando we define gamified promotions as ones that bring fun, play and gamified elements into the promotional experience, to encourage participation and motivate the desired attitudes and behaviours. They sound exciting and cutting edge right?!

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Gamified promotions have been around long before the invention of smart phones and digital screens. From a simple match and win snap style interaction, to the infamous Bullseye TV show with a dart board and prizes to be won, these play and win style games have been with us for decades.

This long history shows that gamification in promotions is not simply a digital trend; technology has expanded how brands bring familiar play mechanics to consumers.

With the development of technology, and more compact portable devices, gamification has evolved and become a distraction whilst on the move and woven itself into daily live. The acceptance and expectation from consumers is at an all-time high. Interactive play to collect tokens, spin to win wheels, slot machines, target practice and skills based games – all have evolved with the development of technology.

Throughout the evolution, one thing remains the same, gamification is loved and enjoyed by the nation. And this is reflected in the promotional landscape and the engagement gamified promotions can achieve.

Our recent White Paper, ‘What Brits want from Promotions 3.0’ confirms that we are a nation that loves gamification, with over one third of Brits thinking Gamified Promotions are fun, and 55% of Brits confirming they take part in Gamified Promotions.

These stats show the appeal that adding an element of fun gameplay can have to strengthen a campaign.

But why should you consider running a gamified promotion for your brand?

From standing out at shelf to encouraging repeat purchase and gathering first-party data, gamification in promotions can help brands deliver value at multiple stages of a campaign.

A gamified promotion is a brilliant way to create differentiation between your brand and your competitor brands. It creates ‘a reason’ to purchase and will see consumers reaching for your product on shelf over alternatives.

At Mando we love date and track all our promotional redemption rates in our in-house insights engine. The impact a gamification has on a promotional campaign is astounding – we typically see +440% increase in redemptions for a campaign. Not only do more people enter in the first place, we also see more repeat entries, with 54% increase in repeat entries. This double whammy effect, adds extra bang for your marketing spend buck when its spent on a gamified promotion.

The gamified experience will add dwell time and connection with your brand. Getting the consumer journey and the win probabilities right is imperative in ensuring this connection is a good one.

Gamified campaigns are one of the best ways of keeping consumers sticky to your brand in the short term. That short term stickiness can be developed into long-term loyalty if the correct marketing approach is taken post campaign…which leads me onto point 4.

Promotions are one of the best ways to gather first party data and get to know your consumers and their purchase habits. Adding some qualitative questions into the promotional journey to enhance your understanding of your consumer is also possible. Wrap it up into the gamified campaign and and making it fun will ensure you can gather as much data as possible.

Gamified promotions are here to stay. I can’t wait to see how they continue to evolve and how their appeal increases and changes over time. What unknown technology may be developed in the future to ensure the development of gamified promotions continues and remain a loved mechanic for consumers.