Interactive Loyalty Program Promotions

A first step in gamifying loyalty programs is to create a more interactive experience for the customer.   More specifically, we mean points promotions that allow greater interaction between the program and customers as well as between customers and other customers.  Allow us to explain.

In previous entries, we’ve discussed the motivational effect of feedback on behaviour.  Why, you ask, is feedback in the context of a points promotion so powerful?  For one, people respond to feedback – whether good or bad.  Imagine that you failed to beat your friend’s score on a favourite video game.  You see she’s ahead of you on the leaderboard and has 10,000 more points.  How does this feedback make you feel?  And what do you do in response?  If you’re like most people, you probably feel like playing again to beat your friend and achieve a higher score.  So you play again.

In this way, feedback is powerful but is so often not harnessed by marketers.  Why not?  Many brands and retailers don’t have the ability to track your purchases or your interactions with their channels.  However, loyalty programs do track your purchases and already let you know how many points you’re earning.

However, most loyalty programs rely on you as the customer to look-up your points balance on their website or, worse, to check your monthly statement when it comes in the mail.  Instead, if programs provided an easy way for you to see how many points you’re accumulating throughout a promotion – on their website, mobile site or application –  the experience would become interactive and you could adapt your purchasing behaviour to maximize your rewards.

And if loyalty programs allowed customers to see how their rewards were stacking-up compared to others during a promotion, it would unleash incredibly powerful social mechanics and take engagement levels that much higher.  Here, we’re refering to social comparison, competition, sharing, and collaboration.

The ability to see how you’re doing compared with others – for example, through face piles, leaderboards, or progress bars  – is powerful.  However at Friendefi, we advocate that social mechanics are only maximized when the other customers you’re comparing yourself to are either people you know (i.e. friends) or peers that you identify with (i.e. other elite status customers, colleagues, members of the same interest groups).  This is when engagement levels have the potential to really take-off as customers not only see their progress in real-time but are also seeing that of others they already compare themselves to.  And even if the promotion isn’t competitive (i.e. has one winner), the addition of social mechanics can still drive greater engagement because your customers are no longer responding to a promotional offer in a ‘silo’.   They’re doing so with other people they know, which increases relevancy and sharing and, well, is just more fun.

Much Ado About Gamification – Part 3

Fitocracy is a great example of gamification applied to an everyday challenge that many people face – finding the motivation to get in better shape.  The site describes itself as “the fitness social network to level up in real life.”  In fact, Fitocracy – through both its website and related mobile app – is entirely designed around helping people find the motivation to progressively improve their fitness.  Does it work?  Launched less than two years ago, Fitocracy already has several hundred thousand users.

The site allows users to track their progress with points, levels, and badges.  Exercises have different points values based on their level of difficulty, which provides an important feedback and tracking mechanism for users.  Not accruing enough points?  Well, you need to do more difficult exercises or to work-out more often.

And as users earn points, they can ‘level-up’.  The social network’s mascot, FRED, keeps an ongoing tally of the points users earn, lets them know when they’ve reached another level and awards badges.  Not only does the recognition feel good (who doesn’t like being told they’re “awesome”?), it importantly forms the basis of Fitocracy’s progression loop – a technique often used in video games – whereby the ultimate goal is broken down into smaller, more bite-sized goals.  And as the term suggests, each level is progressively more difficult.  This stands to reason; after all, someone who’s not in shape can’t expect to complete a really difficult work-out.  But it’s fundamental to Fitocracy’s recipe for maximizing early and ongoing engagement: users begin at a level they’re comfortable with and can progress through increasing levels of difficulty and get motivating recognition along the way.

Moreover, it’s satisfying to reach a new level.  This is another advantage of a progression loop structure; the regular completion of levels feels good and provides ongoing motivation.

Equally important in our view, is Fitocracy’s social network, which is anchored with their “Feed”.  Like many other social networks, it allows users to share and compare with others within the community.  This provides a great way for people to connect and to share work-out tips and to encourage one another towards their fitness goals, which can be a powerful motivation enhancement.  It also allows user groups to propose challenges and individuals to engage in duels, effectively turning working-out into a competition.

By offering a range of interactive, social features from sharing, comparing, cooperating, to competing, Fitocracy is recognizing that different people have different behaviours and preferences.  For example, some people will be highly motivated by the sense of community they feel by sharing and relating to others within their user group.  Whereas, the die-hard competitive-type is more likely to get pumped at the prospect of beating others in fitness duels.