Loyalty programmes are driven by rewarding consumer behaviour to build up a relationship between a customer and retailer. But the traditional mechanics of collecting points to earn prizes isn’t going to cut it forever. Gamification is finding its way into all aspects of marketing and CRM is no exception.
My colleague Ruth Mortimer wrote recently about how brands are looking at gamification techniques to extend their brand content and ensure that a marketing concept need never come to a conclusion.
It followed an interesting presentation I watched at our exhibition Marketing Week Live! by Mark Sage, director of loyalty at Carlson Marketing talking about how gamification will be the next driver of loyalty programmes.
He described loyalty as a game that both consumers and retailers play, collecting and awarding points, but now the rules of the game have changed.
Now, it’s not so much the points we collect that are important, it’s the interaction between the consumer and the brand and increasingly the social visibility of these interactions is more important still.
The difficult question for retailers with established CRM programmes is how to add in gamification metrics to the existing programmes.
Because the only goal within a traditional loyalty card is the redemption of points, there is no motivation to interact on a deeper level, and it’s gradual process that can take a long time to achieve any substantial reward.
Read the full article here.