Gamified marketing campaigns
For a couple of years now, Red C have been creating highly engaging game-based marketing campaigns for clients such as Getting Personal, Thane UK, Police Mutual, Aldermore and AkzoNobel. They’ve been hugely successful when used tactically or as part of a wider business strategy.
Over this period, we’ve created a whole range of different games including instant win games, like a digital scratch card, as well as retro arcade games, like Pacman and Bubble Shooters, and we’ve even created interactive quizzes and polls.
So, what exactly is gamification?
Well, I think this definition of ‘gamification’ sums it up rather well.
In terms of digital marketing, gamification can be defined as a set of all dynamic and entertaining solutions and elements you integrate into your website, app or email campaigns to make user’s engage and interact positively with your brand.
Quote from eSputnik
What are the benefits and advantages of gamification in marketing?
Since working with our clients on creating gamified marketing campaigns, we’ve seen several benefits and advantages, above and beyond standard marketing campaigns.
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Increased customer engagement
As with any marketing campaign, you must ensure that the content of your gamified marketing campaigns is relevant and timely. We’ve worked closely with clients to ensure that the games that we’ve created are highly targeted and will appeal to our intended audience. For example, the retro Pacman game would be more suited for an audience of 40+ rather than an audience in their early 20s.
Users and participants are encouraged to take specific action with gamification, such as data capture or visiting the website to redeem a prize, so engagement rates are often higher and better than those achieved with standard promotional, or content led marketing campaigns.
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Helps grow brand awareness and loyalty
There is a strong case that customers or prospects, who have fun, engaging and rewarding experiences with your game are likely to keep your brand’s name in their minds for a long time. By having a positive experience with your brand, especially if it’s an early interaction, they are far more likely to become loyal customers than disengaged customers.
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Helps collect customer data
One of the biggest benefits of gamification is it’s a proven tactic for collecting customer data. In fact, for several campaigns that we’ve run with AkzoNobel this has been the primary objective.
When lead generation or data capture is a key priority, we ensure that all important participant information, such as name and contact details, is collected.
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Increases conversion rates
Via A/B testing, we’ve identified that consumers in some industries respond and convert better to winning a promotional offer than simply being served the offer via social media or another marketing channel.
For example, a consumer may ignore a clickable banner that advertises ‘25% off’. But if this same discount is presented to them in the form of an interactive game, they may be more interested in engaging with your brand for a chance to win.
Bringing gamification to life
In the not-too-distant past, gamification was often out of reach due to the significant time and resource required to create bespoke gamified marketing campaigns. However, I’m pleased to report that those days are very much over.
At Red C, we have a license with a gamification platform called Drimify, that allows us to create games, quizzes and polls using a set of standard templates. This means creating these games is now much simpler and quicker than it once was.
No coding or development is required to create any of the gamified marketing campaigns, so we can concentrate all our efforts on ensuring that the messaging, visuals, and promotional plan is as strong as it can be.
We’ve followed the same process for every gamified marketing campaign:
- We propose a gamification marketing campaign to a client aimed at achieving a business objective or overcoming a business challenge
- We write a brief for our creative team
- Our team of copywriters and art directors bring the concept to life through eye catching visuals and engaging copy
- Once the client is happy with the creative output, we then upload the visuals and copy into the pre-existing templates
- We’ll create the journey within Drimify i.e. What data do we want to capture i.e. name, address, email address? What’s the ultimate CTA i.e. visit the website, go in-store?
- Once the game has been tested, we’re ready to roll it out across all appropriate marketing channels, such as email marketing and social media channels.
What games can Red C produce?
In total there are 19 different game templates available via the Drimify platform. To date, we’ve used around half of them.
We can create games that fall into three broad categories, which are:-
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Question and answer-based games
We’re able to create interactive quizzes, personality tests, polls, and product recommendation quizzes, which is something we recently created for Getting Personal. We often use these gamified marketing campaigns to add value to a user’s brand experience rather than a promotional tool.
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Instant win games
These games require very little investment from the user and are all about the reward or promotional offer. The four available on Drimify all do the same thing, it’s just a different mechanism.
Digital scratch cards, slot machines, spin to win, and wheel of fortune games, which we’ve used across several clients including Thane and Dulux Trade.
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General games
Other games that can be created via the platform and re-skinned for your brand include retro arcade games such as PacMan, Bubble Shooters and Connect Four. We’ve also created word search games, crosswords, and memory card games.
How much do they cost to create?
On average, they cost between £2,000 and £5,000 depending on the complexity of the game.
If you want to know more about gamified marketing campaigns, please don’t hesitate to pick up the phone. We’d be delighted to chat gamification with you in greater detail.
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