A successful loyalty program is one that not only provides multiple ways for customers to get rewarded, but one that also collects data, analyzes it and evolves the loyalty program to create a more engaging and personalized experience. Adding a gamification feature within your loyalty program is highly recommended as a best practice by our experts as it can help customers maintain their motivation and love for the brand as well as keep the programs fresh. Brands that adopt gamification see a 47% rise in engagement, a 22% rise in brand loyalty, and a 15% rise in brand awareness.
Badges
Slowly but surely badges are becoming an integral part of gamification. Best practice recommendations state that badges can be used as an instant gratification feature as well as unlocked as a surprise and delight offering. Badges are an effective way to represent the levels earned by a customer in a challenge. Customers are eligible to earn multiple badges at once. Badges can be used by customers as a form of redemption to unlock benefits as well as showcase their engagement with the brand.
Badges can be divided into groups and subgroups like business badges or gaming badges, etc. They can also be assigned for non-purchase based activities like site login frequency, devices connected, filling out surveys etc. Brands can leverage these earned badges of a customer and feature them on their website acknowledging their achievements. Earned badges of a customer empower them to earn points at a higher rate (1.2x times) versus a regular purchaser thus fast tracking their loyalty journey. Badges can also have an expiry date which drives customers to cash in on the perks of the badge.
Benefits:
- Customers can use badges to compete with other users of the brand
- Badges validate the authenticity as well as legitimacy of customer engagement with the brand
- Earning badges can unlock exclusive perks and privileges that can benefit customers and hence increase engagement.
Leaderboard
It is always considered a best practice to keep the Loyalty programs easy-to-use and fun to engage with. By nature, most customers are competitive and would like to be rewarded handsomely and feature on the brand’s best customer list. Leaderboards provide a great way for customers to view their performance compared to others. Multiple leaderboards can be hosted on the brand’s site to feature performance of customers based on purchase behavior or earned or redeemed points.
From a marketer perspective, they can create a segment in the loyalty system based on the business rules and then look to feature this segment within the leaderboard. Annex Cloud provides API capabilities to retrieve this information to display on a brand’s website or backend system. Leaderboards are also a great way to perform analysis on customer behavior and set up personalized tailormade campaigns.
Benefits:
- Customers can look at their real-time performance compared to all other active users of the brand.
- Analysis of customer data allows better understanding of customer needs and behavior.
Action Series
Actions are set up within the Annex Cloud loyalty solution to incentivize customers for points. Action series provide additional value by allowing marketers to create stronger engagement through bonus points for completing multiple actions one after another through their gamification loyalty programs. An action series group can be created within the loyalty system consisting of multiple actions. Rules for every action within the group can be customized to fit the business needs of the marketers, hence offering additional promotions to customers as part of the surprise and delight feature.
Benefits:
- Encourages customers to engage with the brand and earn extra benefits.
- Marketers can combine multiple actions to create an action series group to incentivize customers.
Advanced Campaign Management
A campaign is a promotion, set up within the gamification loyalty program based on different rules of the business requirement. Annex Cloud Campaign feature allows marketers to schedule promotions. These promotions can be short-lived (E.g. bonus point for purchases on Mother’s Day weekend) or long-lasting (E.g. double points for all users purchasing in Los Angeles store locations). There can be multiple campaigns running simultaneously at any point of time. The Advanced campaign management feature enhances the power of the campaign setup by permitting marketers to create milestones within a campaign.
A campaign can consist of one or more milestones. Successfully completing every milestone can provide benefits to the customer, thus motivating them to engage with the brand. Once all milestones within the campaign are completed, the customer can earn a bonus in the form of points or reward coupons. This creates a win-win situation for both the marketer and customers as it increases engagement with the brand and provides instant gratification to the customer for being loyal to the brand.
Benefits:
- Marketers can personalize reward and benefits to customers based on advanced campaign management features.
- Customers look to completing milestones and get additionally rewarded on top of standard actions.
