Have you considered games, contests and sweepstakes to engage your customers, drive trial and traffic, increase purchase frequency, and incremental purchases or build brand loyalty but didn’t know where to begin? Alternatively, have you used these marketing strategies but didn’t get the results you expected?
The Promotion House is an expert in the art and science of gamification, the use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage consumers and inspire them to take the desired action. In fact, the agency owner led the development of the most successful game in consumer marketing history – McDonald’s Monopoly.
Many agencies dabble in games, contests, and sweepstakes. The Promotion House specializes in them because the agency knows that gamification is a compelling strategy to achieve marketing goals, and our team of experts have a track record of success in developing gamification-based programs for clients of all sizes and across multiple categories.
Now the big question – is gamification a made up word, just more marketing speak to make it sound bigger and better than it is? Yes and no. According to Andrzej Marczewski in “Gamification: A Simple Introduction,” the term was coined by British computer programmer and inventor Nick Pelling in 2002. It did not, however, gain popularity until 2010 when it came into use as a reward platform in software. However, the power of gamification as a marketing strategy is proven at leveraging the emotional motivators of excitement, competition and achievement through the use of rewards.
Not buying it? Would you believe Forbes? In “Gamification: How Competition is Reinventing Business, Marketing & Everyday Life” by Jennifer Van Grove, 70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies surveyed in 2013 indicated that they planned to use gamification for the purposes of marketing and customer retention. The strategy has also been used in customer loyalty programs to increase purchase intent and purchase frequency. The possibilities and platforms are seemingly endless.
The Promotion House has successfully developed games, sweepstakes and contests and executed them through various delivery vehicles, not limited to printed executions, though that is a time-tested platform for engaging consumers and inspiring action as demonstrated by the popularity of the lottery. We’ve developed games for websites, online advertising, social media, mobile, tablets. Anything is possible through imagination and innovation provided that you have an expert who can see it through to implementation, and those are our guiding principles when developing games.
Maybe you are a business-to-business marketer and don’t see a relevant application for your marketing objectives. We’ve used gamification for employee incentives for companies such as AT&T and have delivered a 25% increase in sales for a call center generating more than $1 million in incremental revenue over a 6-week period. Moreover, it is not simply a revenue generator for B-to-B companies. Employee incentives have been shown to deliver 27% higher profits, 48% greater productivity and significant gains in employee retention. 68% of employees report that they would have remained in their job if an incentives program were in place.
The Promotion House employee incentives programs use gamification to attract, engage and reward your employees. What makes it different from traditional rewards programs?
- Simple to understand, simple to execute
- Motivates employees with clear, achievable goals
- Offers more frequent opportunities to win to encourage participation
- Utilizes more rewards of high perceived value rather than a smaller pool of bigger rewards
- Winning is contagious so playing is contagious
- Thorough training
- Ongoing activation support
- 24/7 oversight
Gamification can also be employed to enhance education and training. Experts anticipate that it will be deployed in health care, financial services, transportation and even government. It has been shown to improve data collection, data quality, and timeliness and provides real-time measurement of results that allow you to make real-time adjustments, unlike most other marketing strategies.
Whether you are an employer or a consumer, gamification has gained widespread acceptance as an effective marketing and engagement tool. Today, your budgets have to work harder and smarter to deliver better results. The Promotion House has used games, sweepstakes and contests to do just that for our clients. We’d like to show you we can employ our expertise to address your marketing challenges and exceed your business objectives.