The easiest way to get anyone’s attention is to give them something they feel good about. Add fun to that equation and you’ve a winning formula to make instant connections.
No strategy in marketing is as effective as “make your customer happy.” Your customers, like anyone else, have busy, difficult, or boring days. Give them a little fun in your messaging, and they’ll remember your brand best.
Since everyone loves games, we’ll talk about how you can make customers happy with in-email gamification. By sending games that folks can play right inside their inboxes, you give them a good time and a positive association with very little effort.
Here are the top six games that Inbox Commerce lets you use in your marketing campaigns.
Gamification in email
Spin the wheel
This is a classic. Bring the wheel of fortune to your customers’ inboxes in its digital avatar.
Let customers open your email and spin the wheel with a single click. To really amp up engagement and leverage customer curiosity, bring some prizes, offers, and gifts into the mix. Whichever quadrant the wheel comes to a stop at indicates the reward the customer has won. As users watch the wheel spin and gently slow down, it builds anticipation and keeps them stuck to the screen.
Inbox Commerce lets you use the interactive gaming experience as an opportunity to convey your marketing message effectively. Configure the game rewards to audience demographic, the nature of the campaign, and business priorities. If you can create and offer giveaways that people in your niche want, your engagement and conversion rates are sure to shoot all the way up.
Wordle
Wordle hits just the right spot of brain-teasing and triumph. Scratching your head until you find that magic word is something people love so much that Wordle took the internet by storm in 2021. Wordle creator and Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle sold the game to the New York Times for a seven-figure sum.
Bring the joy of Wordle to users’ inboxes and watch them stay engaged like never before. They can open their email and guess the ‘word of the day’ over six tries without clicking away to any web page or app.
You can even enable the game results to be shareable on social media so folks can brag a little to their circle.
Quizzes
An oldie but a goodie! A quiz of 5-6 questions to challenge your customers a little and, maybe, jolt them out of a midday low.
Give users an extra reason to dive into the quiz by offering a small prize. It can even be a free coffee – just something to thank them for playing. You can also let them compare their position against other players on a leaderboard to trigger a little competitive spirit. It will keep them coming back to win more quizzes and climb the ranks.
You can make multiple-choice questions so people can just click on an answer. Make the questions interesting and relevant to your marketing objective. For example, if you are in the Holiday/Travel business, the questions can revolve around testing the user’s knowledge of popular tourist destinations. Think of trivia and factoids while framing the questions.
Inbox Commerce places the entire process of quizzing, rewarding, and ranking within a single email so there’s no redirect to any website or app.
Scratch cards
In-email scratch cards are a great way to promote a sale or event. Insert them within an Inbox Commerce-enabled email. Customers can ‘scratch’ the digital card by clicking on it, or swishing their finger on it in case of touchscreen devices.
Once the reward reveals itself, request the customer to sign up. Bring the entire sign-up process right within the email and make it quick and easy. Chances are, most will oblige immediately – no redirects to web pages and forms equals lesser bounce rates.
Pick a Door
Who doesn’t like braving fate once in a while?
Give your customers the thrill of the unknown by inviting them to pick one among three digital doors that appear within the user’s email.
Tease a bit about the reward that lies behind the closed door to get users to play the game. If they pick the right door, perhaps they can get 20% off their next purchase? Whatever the prize, it has to be compelling enough to convince folks to spend time making a decision.
Alternatively, you could place a reward behind all doors so that everyone comes away feeling good.
Treasure Hunt
If you’re really looking to give your users something to chew on, bust out the big guns with a treasure hunt. This game would involve solving a few simple clues to unlock a fantastic prize! You can even make the game longer and give users a couple of levels to advance before grabbing their reward.
If you’re doing the latter, make sure you’re sending the email on a weekend. Folks don’t have time for multiple levels on their workday lunch breaks.
Gamification in WhatsApp
In the context of WhatsApp, the concept of gamification offers a valuable strategy to encourage active user participation in group chats, task completion, and goal achievement. Below are some potential applications of gamification within WhatsApp:
Badges and Leaderboards
Users may earn badges by accomplishing specific tasks, such as figuring out a puzzle or contributing a certain quantity of helpful replies in group chats. Leaderboards could be employed to monitor user progress and recognize top performers.
Points and Rewards
Users can accumulate points as a form of recognition for task completion or goal attainment. They can redeem the accumulated points for various incentives, including discounts on products or services.
Challenges
Brands can present users with challenges that involve completing specific tasks within defined timeframes. For instance, a challenge could entail a user being the first to respond to a quiz in a group chat with all correct answers.
By integrating gamification elements into WhatsApp, businesses have the potential to effectively engage users and inspire them to take proactive steps. Incorporating game-like features can lead to a more enjoyable and gratifying user experience, benefiting businesses and users alike.
Gamification in Inbox Commerce helps create customer happiness
Whatever game you choose, your intent as a marketer is to delight the people on your email list. To do so, you don’t only need a great game. You also need the right channel to get it to your customers with the minimum possible hassle.
Inbox Commerce brings new dimensions of ease and convenience to customers. Bring the world to people’s inboxes, rather than expecting them to visit websites whenever they see something in their email they want to buy.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. How well does this new-fangled technology work? Has it seen real-world success?
The answer is a resounding yes. Take a look at some of our clients’ success stories achieved with Inbox Commerce gamification: Money Tap, Astro-vision, StarQuik.
Let’s have a conversation about making Inbox Commerce, especially gamification, work towards boosting your marketing ROI and profits.
Connect with us to understand how you can benefit from our expertise and experience. We send over 20 billion emails a month on behalf of 6500+ businesses across 40 countries.
