Mobile Gamification: A Game-Changer for Customer Engagement

The question isn’t, “Should I use gamification to enhance mobile customer experiences?”  

The real question to ask is, “How can I use mobile gamification effectively?”  

I’m here to help you with that. As a Campaign Specialist for SAP Engagement Cloud, I support enterprise customers who have unique marketing campaign requirements. I’m also a Graphic Designer and coding specialist, and I have a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing in Entertainment (basically, writing for visual media). You could say gamification is something I’m passionate about… and you’d be right.  

So let’s talk about how to level up your next marketing campaign. Along the way, you’ll get practical tips and real examples from brands using gamification to help power their CX.  

In marketing, you’re often tasked with trying to convey complex concepts through easily digestible means to promote a product, service, or idea. You’re also fighting to be heard in the sea of other marketers trying to get eyes and attention on their brands.

Consumers are drowning in choice. It’s not enough to simply have channels where you push your campaigns to customers.

Many marketers have turned to gamification strategies to help them humanize brand experiences in playful and unique ways.

What it is

Gamification is the incorporation of game design mechanics into your marketing in ways that enhance customer experience, drive engagement, and improve loyalty.  

What it isn’t

Gamification is not solely the game design mechanic or the interactive component. Hear me out: out of all the loyalty points you collect from brands, do you actually care about all of them? Which ones do you care about, and why? 

But wait, there’s more…

Gamification at its finest is the creation of game-like experiences that humanize the end user while simultaneously instilling a specific and strategic feeling about your brand.  

The customer journey as a game

When you consider the complete context of marketing, the entire customer journey has the potential to be gamified from end to end when CX is crafted thoughtfully and intelligently. From the awareness stage to your Welcome series to churn prevention strategies, every interaction is like a stop along a Customer Journey board game. Inevitably, you will build upon customer experiences over time and at every touchpoint, the same way a game of Dungeons and Dragons develops with each successive campaign.

To power your mobile gamification strategy, you need data, but data means much more than simply knowing a name and an email address.   

☐ Unified customer data

• How to apply it: Build unified customer profiles that reflect the complete customer journey and give you a better understanding of who your customers are and how to engage them.

☐ Unified backend data, such as sales, product, transactional, finance, etc.

• How to apply it: Ensure you have a complete view of transactions, product availability, feedback, etc. to deliver the most relevant interactions. You can even gamify your transactional touchpoints! (More on that later.)

☐ AI-powered segmentation

• How to apply it: AI is your assistant that applies data from each customer experience to help ensure your customer’s next experience is more relevant, more personalized, and more powerful. Your customer clicked blue in a quiz? AI adds the customer to the blue segment for future touches. 

Having access to all of these different systems in real time allows you to have a more robust campaign that’s personalized based on a complete picture of the data. You can use this data to create a vastly more personalized experience 

Yes. Of course. To an extent. 

Here’s the thing: our phones are always with us. We are inundated with information at all times. So creating an experience unique to your brand is the key to standing out. Mobile gamification matters, regardless of whether you have a dedicated app or just a well-crafted mobile site. Think of gamification as humanizing the online experience. 

Your potential customers are using their phones to compare your offering against competitors. They’re reading and writing critical reviews. They’re receiving ads when they browse their favorite social media app. They’re getting notifications about their order status with you—hopefully it isn’t a delay!  

Every touchpoint is an opportunity to show that your brand cares about the customer as an individual.  

3 do’s for mobile gamification

• Create a relevant experience. This to-do requires knowing what your audience cares about, and understanding your audience means making sense of your data.  

• Tell your brand story. Use mobile gamification in a way that fits your brand and the experience you want to curate for your customers. Align the experience with your brand identity. If it’s out of character, it will cause dissonance with the rest of your customer journey.  

• Make it easy to track and use points. When creating cumulative rewards over time, ensure the omnichannel journey is frictionless. Customers should be able to check and redeem points on any channel, whether on mobile or in-store.  

3 don’ts for mobile gamification

• Don’t assume mobile gamification requires an app. WhatsApp, Mobile Wallet, email, SMS, social media, etc., every channel is valid for gamification. You could even say they’re fair game. 

• Don’t sacrifice the experience for the dollar. If a strategy will get you a quick purchase, but it costs you long-term loyalty, you lose more than you gain in the long run. 

• Don’t simply copy-paste gamification strategies. When you see a gamification tactic that you love, use it as inspiration and ask yourself what makes sense for your brand and your customers.  

Gamification inspiration is all around you, sometimes even in places you may not have expected. I gathered a few examples of mobile gamification from around the web that can be easily modified to suit the needs of just about any brand.  

Hershey’s: Sweet web experiences

In this example from The Hershey Company, gamification is not just done well, but also well-tailored to the brand as a candy maker.  

If you visit this Hershey’s Halloween web page, you’ll encounter a prompt to scroll down the street and find all five houses. It’s a quick and easy chance to go trick-or-treating on the web, and it’s fully functional on both desktop and mobile. By scrolling down, you’ll find thematic products and quick links to Halloween-themed blog posts. To collect candy, simply knock (click) on the houses, and collecting all give pieces of candy results in a small, downloadable reward. 

Although this interaction doesn’t end in a purchase, Hershey’s doesn’t need to worry, because the brand fully established a mutually beneficial experience, while also not building anything overly complex or difficult.  

Get more inspiration from Brad Santanna, Head of Omnichannel Sales & Marketing at The Hershey Company, who joined our Loyalty Masterclass panel: Disrupt or Be Disrupted: How to Scale Loyalty for the Next Gen of CPG. 

CHRIST: Rewarding loyalty with Mobile Wallet 

CHRIST is a Germany-based retail jeweler founded in 1863. Despite the brand’s respectable age, its engagement strategies are modern and tailored for the digital-savvy younger generations.  

The brand partnered with our SAP Engagement Cloud team to add Mobile Wallet to its channel mix in just two weeks. The channel enables the CHRIST marketing team to quickly engage card holders, informing them about sales, coupon expirations, or limited-time discounts.  

With the loyalty voucher card, CHRIST can not only identify in-store shoppers, but also offer rewards based on their loyalty status. The card also connects to the customer’s CHRIST CLUB account, making it easy to log in, shop, or find a nearby physical store.  

For even more details, check out the complete CHRIST success story. 

Discord is a voice, video, and text platform designed especially for gamers. The brand has developed a space where users don’t need to buy anything to have a good experience, but users can make optional purchases to have access to extra benefits.    

Discord’s gifting model enables users to easily send each other gifts of cosmetic enhancements or even subscription time (to a subscriber service called Nitro). The price points are low enough to support impulse purchases, and the wide variety of cosmetic enhancements makes it fun to select gifts for friends. This strategy results in direct sales, enables social interaction between users, and gives both gifter and giftee more reasons to be loyal to the platform.  

This Valentine’s Day mobile pop-up made it easy for Discord users to give and receive at the same time. 

Every chance you get to bring somebody back is another chance to build the relationship and level up your CX game.  

The number one thing I hope you’ll take away is that any single instance of gamification with your brand is ultimately part of the long game. The long game is the entire customer journey with your brand, which should always align to your brand’s vision, tone of voice, and purpose.  

I could wish you good luck, but that’s for games of chance, so instead I’ll wish you good strategy!