How to Boost Customer Engagement with Gamification and Salesforce Loyalty Management

Since the time memorial games have been marked as the highest level of fun activity an individual or several individuals can participate in. With the advent of popular video games in the 1970s, the scenario was even more prevalent as board and pen games had now been elevated in terms of experience and visuals, making the gaming experience 10 times more pleasurable.

Undoubtedly, games have an ulterior impact on everyone, even on the frequent shoppers of your brand. As per a study by Advertising Week, around 60% of customers have a higher chance of buying more from a brand if they enjoy playing or indulging in any gamified interactions with them!

What if a similar gamified version could be infused into a customer loyalty program?

A Loyalty program? Yes, when it comes to strengthening the relationships between a brand and customer, loyalty programs play a significant role, and their impact can’t be neglected. These programs can be laid out in various manners and patterns and have an ultimate effect on the customer loyalty and retention rate of a brand.

Let us understand what gamified loyalty programs are.

Gamified Loyalty Programs are significant and entertaining loyalty programs that work on the mechanism of gamifying the pattern and insides of the program. This kind of loyalty program is very much enjoyed and appreciated by customers, as games have always been proven to heighten competitiveness and spike dopamine levels.

Let’s find out how gamified loyalty programs can be advantageous for your brand.

How is Gamification in Loyalty Programs Beneficial?

These are some of the ways by which loyalty program gamification can be beneficial;

• Keeps Customers engaged and entertained:

The first and the former is that gamified customer loyalty programs keep the customers hooked and engaged for a long time. More customer engagement means more changes and a higher sales volume for your brand.

• Boosts the Customer Retention Rate:

Repeat customers are like boons for your brand recognition and popularity, along with sales. Gamified loyalty programs ensure that your customers are firmly able to distinguish between you and your competitors, which can eventually lead to a boost in your customer retention rate.

• Enhances Customer-Brand Interactions:

Gamified loyalty programs also ensure that the channel of communication between the customer and the brand remains intact.

Let’s shed some light on the most popular types of gamified loyalty programs.

Most Popular Types of Gamified Loyalty Programs:

Here’s a glimpse of some of the most popular and leading types of gamified loyalty programs big retail giants and brands are using to boost their customer loyalty and engagement;

• Contest, Quizzes and Challenges:

The first and most popular type of loyalty program gamification is an infusion of exciting questions, quizzes, and challenges that spike the customers’ attraction quotient.

For the popular challenge introduced by Dominos, the name Domino’s Pizza Chef, customers had to design their pizza better than the chef. This was done to intrigue customers about the brand and its product.

• Scratching/ Spinning to Win and Steaks:

Who doesn’t like to get instant gratification and rewards right after the purchases? Scratching/Spinning to win gamification in loyalty programs gives precisely that. This also includes the formation streaks with the customers for more validation.

These kinds of loyalty programs are adopted by the language learning application Duolingo and the popular supermarket chain Seven-Eleven to keep their customers engrossed, occupied and gratified.

• Badges, Levels and Leaderboards:

Last but not least, including different and exciting levels in the gamification process all, along with giving valuable points, stickers, badges, and badge and badge recognition, can do wonders for loyalty programs.
Starbucks has point-based levels and point-based rewards to attract more and more customers.

Pro tip: If you want to make your gamified loyalty program a massive success, focus on optically pleasing and high on fun quotient games, as no one wants to participate in dull, boring and generic games. Plus, make sure that the rewards offered resonate well with your brand’s image.

Having seen the benefits and types of gamified loyalty programs, let’s figure out how one can create engaging gamified loyalty programs without any hassle.

Salesforce Loyalty Management: Gamification and Beyond

Achieving seamless gamification in customer loyalty programs can be a tedious task for many brand managers and marketers. Most of the time, they fail to understand their customers’ perspectives and lose track of their customers’ progress in the gamification process.

Here’s when Salesforce Loyalty Management saves the day. It comes as a one-stop solution for curating, creating, and running a gratifying customer loyalty program. These are some of the ways through which Salesforce Loyalty Management can help in delivering fantastic gaming experiences through customer loyalty programs;

• Centralized Management for better customer insights:

What one can surely expect from the Salesforce ecosystem is utmost transparency with respect to customer insights, and this is precisely what Salesforce Loyalty Management also has to offer. It gives a complete look at the customer and allows centralized Management of the information about them.

• Tracking progress:

Most brands that use gamified loyalty programs often complain that they find it challenging to keep a record of their customers’ progress in the game processes, but they do not anymore. With Salesforce Loyalty Management, they can get rid of this problem forever. It ensures that the user is able to track the progress of their customers in a timely manner.

• Flexible and customized program designing:

With Salesforce Loyalty Management, customizing and flexibly designing the gamified loyalty program becomes as easy as ever before. With multiple design templates, designers can incorporate excellent and visually appealing games into their brand’s loyalty program.

• Swift integration with other clouds:

Salesforce Loyalty Management can swiftly and efficiently integrate with other Clouds in the Salesforce ecosystem, ensuring perfect collaboration for a better customer experience.

• Advanced features:

Salesforce Loyalty Management also offers some unique and advanced features that can be a game changer for loyalty program gamification, such as automated triggers and segmentation.

To conclude:

To sum up, gamification in loyalty programs is here to stay as they benefit not only the customer in terms of lucrative incentives, offers, and discounts but also the brand by differentiating them and their loyalty program from their competitors.

Plus, the gamification process of the customer loyalty programs can be quickly done with the help of Salesforce Loyalty Management, as explained above. So tap on the paddle and hold your brand’s joystick to ace customer loyalty and engagement through gamified loyalty programs!