By Deepti Illa, Director, Corporate Marketing, Bunchball
Deepti Illa, @deeptiilla
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Get to Know Your Customers Day falls on the third Thursday at the beginning of each quarter –that means it’s happening this week on July 17. For me, Get to Know Your Customers Day serves as a valuable, periodic reminder that satisfied, loyal customers are essential to profitability.
But ask any marketer and they’ll tell you: Keeping customers satisfied and loyal is becoming more and more of a challenge. Consumers are barraged with options, offers and media noise like never before, and it’s increasingly difficult to ensure your brand message can cut through all that noise.
Is there anything that can help shift the odds in your favor?
I suggest you start cultivating a new generation of loyalty, what we at Bunchball call Loyalty 3.0.
To drive Loyalty 3.0, you need three essential components: motivation, big data and gamification. By combining these three components, you’ll get to know your customers better, nurture key relationships, reward high-value interactions and ultimately, drive more revenue for your business.
Here are four recent examples to show you how it works:
My Coke Rewards. The Coca-Cola Company used gamification as a powerful tool to transform its traditional, transactional loyalty program into “My Coke Rewards,” a new loyalty initiative that’s inherently personal, social and engaging. The brand expanded its definition of rewards to include both extrinsic elements –such as exclusive and advance access, retailer coupons, movie tickets and music subscriptions –and intrinsic elements –such as badges and experiences.
As Taylor Miffleton, Coke's senior manager of digital marketing and My Coke Rewards, told COLLOQUY, Coke is using data collected from the program to ensure customers receive a more personalized site experience, one that helps the brand establish relationships with its customers –not just transact with them.
Zamzee. The non-profit social enterprise HopeLab created Zamzee, an engaging, interactive digital experience and monitor, to help kids fight obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Kids wear the Zamzee device or carry it in a pocket to monitor physical activity throughout the day. Then, they plug the device into a computer and upload data to an online personal profile where they can check progress toward personal and team goals. Gamification ensures an individualized experience and helps motivate long-term behavior change, since challenges and levels that unlock new badge and rewards change in-step with capabilities, incenting teens and tweens to exercise more.
An initial pilot study showed that Zamzee participants were about 30% more active than those who weren’t part of the program – that’s the equivalent of running an extra marathon each month! Further study revealed a 59% increase in participants' moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and a positive impact on biological risk factors associated with heart disease and diabetes.
EA Sports FIFA Fan Rewards. EA Sports used gamification to leverage the power of its highly-engaged fan base to drive both gameplay and sales referrals for its “FIFA” video game. In the process, the company personalized the customer journey and drove deeper engagement. After one year, EA Sports FIFA Fan Rewards reported a 270% increase in page views, a 170% increase in time spent on site and a 200% increase in content shared.
USA Network. Entertainment companies like USA Network have been pioneers in this space. USA Network knew its detective comedy/drama Psych had a young, loyal fan base that was active online. So the network amped-up engagement by using an interactive web series, complete with mini-games, challenges, exclusive video and an app that integrated with the live TV show. Fans were encouraged to interact with one another – and with the characters of the show – and all the while, the data stream was captured and analyzed to inform even higher levels of engagement. Viewership across all the content soared. Within one year, website traffic increased by 30 percent.
As these examples show, once you better understand your customers, you can begin to influence their online conversations and shape the behaviors you care about. You can use gamification to reward the behaviors that drive business value for you.