Incentive marketing is a tried-and-tested method many businesses use to encourage leads to sign up for their e-mail newsletters, persuade clients to upgrade their existing products and services, and basically entice consumers into responding positively to their calls to action. However, the problem with many of these marketing strategies is that a significant percentage of companies that use them fail to update them with the times. What happens to these businesses is that they get low overall participation rates in their incentive programs, which then translate to decreased conversions and the ineffectiveness of their campaigns. In this day and age of saturated markets and cutthroat competition, you can easily improve your stale incentive marketing campaign with gamification, or incorporating the elements of video games into your marketing strategy.
Gamification for Your Incentive Program
While many conventional incentive programs do work because of the reward system (wherein a consumer acts to accumulate points to exchange for physical rewards), gamifying an already interesting incentive campaign can make earning rewards even more attractive to participating consumers, emphasizing both the so-called journey as well as the destination. In addition to the typical structure of a customer incentive program, these features may be added to make the customer experience more compelling than before:
1.Badges for achievements
2.The use of levels
3.In-level challenges
4.Scoreboards or leaderboards
5.Rewards system currency
6.Actual mini-games or casual games
When the mechanics of video games are used to make incentive programs less conventional and more exciting, leads, casual clients, and loyal customers are more engaged in these programs. This improved degree of engagement encourages positive behavior towards your business because of the psychological tendency of the average consumer towards games. Gamification can then persuade individuals into undertaking tasks that they would typically find boring, including survey participation, browsing through your websites, or studying your promotional correspondence (plus the desired responses mentioned above).
While critics across the many industries that find gamification applicable to their business ventures dismiss it as a fad or buzzword, you should consider the effects of gaming principles on the success of your incentive programs and the bottom line of your business for a long time to come. There have not been that many promising breakthroughs in the evolution of these programs, and as such, the concepts of gamification merit consideration (if not urgent implementation) from you and your incentive marketing specialist. You can read more on gamification on different resources, but they would all still be the same about the evolution of it.
About the Author:
Do you need incentive marketing services for your business? Katherine Smith is an expert on various marketing topics and promotional methods, and writes articles to help you narrow down your options and choose the best marketer for the job. Aside from being a writer, she is also an incentive marketing professional. http://katherinegsmith.wordpress.com