Gamification Marketing For Dummies

Introduction 1 About This Book 1 Foolish Assumptions 2 Icons Used in This Book 3 Beyond the Book 3 Where to Go from Here 4 Part 1: Introducing Gamification Marketing 5 Chapter 1: Gamifying Your Marketing Strategy 7 Seeing What Gamification Can Do in Marketing 8 Understanding gamification 8 Gamifying your marketing 9 Looking at some examples of gamification 9 Understanding How Gamification Differs from Other Online Marketing Tactics 10 Looking at the advantages of gamification 10 Taking your current user experience to the next level 13 Stepping Up Your Current Marketing 14 Chapter 2: Getting to Know Gamification Models 17 Exploring Your Options 17 Discovering game types 18 Creating the Perfect Gamification Campaign Settings 26 Choosing the right game for your audience 27 Determining duration and frequency 29 Avoiding the Big Mistakes 31 Depending on desktop 32 Going rogue 32 Complicating the gameplay 32 Creating too many rewards 32 Misusing game mechanics 33 Banking on virality 33 Creating a campaign that can’t be played at work 34 Assuming your audience will understand games 34 Part 2: Beginning Your Gamification Marketing Quest 35 Chapter 3: Identifying Your Target Audience 37 Defining Your Audience 38 Throwing out everything you think you know about your audience 38 Conducting research to find your audience 39 Taking a Closer Look at Your Current Customer Base 40 Establishing existing data points 41 Tailoring for B2B 42 Mining Your Social Media Accounts 43 Identifying key data points 43 Tracking unique metrics from each platform 45 Choosing meaningful social media data versus vanity metrics 48 Chapter 4: Increasing Engagement in Your Campaign 51 Establishing User Rewards and Achievements 52 Rewarding your players 52 Creating loyalty 55 Encouraging Sharing among Your Audience 58 Using a unique hashtag 58 Providing more than just a link to share 64 Chapter 5: Budgeting Your Development 69 Setting Your Budget 69 Estimating the costs 70 Aligning your budget with your goals 70 Anticipating risks 70 Gathering Your Team 72 Accounting for your gamification model 72 Outsourcing talent 72 Chapter 6: Getting to Know the Technology 83 Choosing a Foundation for Your Campaign 83 Building in HTML5 84 Recognizing the downsides of building an app 88 Keeping Up the Communications 90 Checking your email deliverability 90 Making sure your emails don’t end up in the spam folder 92 Continuing with your campaign 93 Complying with the General Data Protection Regulation 98 Considering Testing Issues 101 Looking at testing methods 101 Checking on browsers 103 Part 3: Executing Your Gamification Plan 105 Chapter 7: Making Your Game a Reality 107 Choosing the Perfect Gamification Model for You 108 Determining Your Target Market 112 Conducting your own audience research 112 Considering what the research is telling you 114 Embedding Goals into the Game 115 Creating SMART goals 115 Devising your gamification objectives 116 Building in Loyalty Rewards 118 Deciding on your options 118 Using rewards in your game 119 Chapter 8: Selecting the Right Components 121 Making Sense of the Game Development Process 122 Understanding the stages of the game development life cycle 122 Deciding which life cycle model is right for you 125 Assembling Your Team 129 Working out who does what 129 Balancing everyone’s role 131 Choosing freelancers, agencies, or in-house employees 132 Preparing the Technical Strategy 134 Understanding the available choices 135 Comparing the platforms 138 Chapter 9: Launching and Promoting Your Game 141 Scheduling the Right Time to Launch 141 Perfecting Your Landing Page 143 Leading Up to T Minus Zero 145 Building pre-launch interest 146 Devising a game-launch marketing strategy through social media 148 Launch Day: Aiming the Spotlight on Your Game 150 Reaching out to your current audience 150 Grabbing media attention 154 Giving influencers and bloggers a sneak peek 157 Using your existing social media channels (or not) 160 Getting your game onto other sites 163 Part 4: Monitoring Real-Time Events and Data after You Go Live 165 Chapter 10: Capturing All the Data 167 Establishing a Portal to Your Data 168 Developing your portal 168 Securing access 169 Building your reports 172 Knowing Which Data You Should Be Capturing 173 Progress tracker 173 Interaction 174 Duration 174 Percentage of new sessions 174 Goal completions 174 Views versus sessions 175 Bounces 175 Location 176 Returning versus new 176 Referrals 177 Following the User Journey 177 Watching all their moves 178 Learning what the users don’t tell you 179 Gaining Valuable User Feedback 181 Providing a dedicated feedback form 181 Installing live chat support 182 Rating your campaign’s performance 182 Creating an online forum 182 Displaying positive customer feedback 183 Using polls 183 Monitoring social channels 183 Chapter 11: Analyzing and Applying Data 185 Understanding the Why and How of Data Analysis 186 Extracting Your Campaign Data 187 Sourcing your data 187 Locating your data 191 Applying Intelligent Big Data 191 Deconstructing big data 192 Benefiting from big data and data analysis 193 Getting Help from Predictive Analysis 194 Installing a predictive analytics tool 195 Using predictive analysis 195 Maintaining Control of Your Data 196 Keeping your audience’s trust 197 Protecting your data 198 Securing your database 198 Chapter 12: Avoiding Data Overload 201 Watching Out for Maximum Capacity 201 Identifying the effects of crashing 202 Preparing for increased traffic 203 Dealing with Data Failure 206 Identifying the cause 206 Fixing the problem 207 Preventing problems from happening again and minimizing the damage 207 Applying the Best Development Practices 210 Optimizing the gamification code 210 Focusing on the purpose of the data 212 Part 5: Preparing for Your Next Gamification Quest 213 Chapter 13: Failing Up: Learning from Your First Quest 215 Taking a Hard Look at the Results 216 Using data to your advantage 216 Using analytics the right way 219 Researching for the Future 221 Shaping the Future 225 Cleaning your data 225 Using artificial intelligence 226 Chapter 14: Relaunching Your Gamification Marketing Campaign 227 Understanding Why You May Want to Relaunch Your Campaign 228 Tweaking Your Gamification Campaign 230 Checking your exit points 230 Assessing whether the gamification option you chose was right for you 231 Redefining your target audience 234 Building a seasonal version of your campaign 235 Knowing When to Shut It All Down 239 Part 6: The Part of Tens 241 Chapter 15: Ten Best Gamification Marketing Examples 243 Starbucks: Starbucks Rewards 243 Chipotle: A Love Story Game 244 Nike: Nike+ FuelBand 245 M&M’s: Eye-Spy Pretzel 246 Target: Wish List 247 Citroën: Game of Scroll 247 Coca-Cola: Shake It 248 Netflix: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch 248 Nissan: CarWings 249 Magnum: Pleasure Hunt 250 Chapter 16: Ten Common Gamification Marketing Mistakes 251 Offering an Unengaging User Experience 252 Leaving Your Audience Screaming, “Help!” 252 Having a Flawed Game Structure 253 Leaving the User Waiting 253 Scoring Pointless Goals 254 Not Establishing Clear Big Data Goals 254 Looking Great on the Desktop, But Not So Much on Mobile 255 Not Checking Up on Absentees 257 Missing Out on Social Interaction 257 Launching without Marketing 258 Chapter 17: Ten Benefits to Gamifying Your Marketing 261 Building Brand Awareness 262 Increasing Reach 262 Instantly Appealing to a Younger Audience 263 Driving Engagement 264 Injecting Fun into Your Brand 264 Influencing Customer Behavior 265 Accruing Big (Customer) Data 265 Personalizing Brand Experiences 266 Building Customer Loyalty 266 Gathering Great Customer Feedback and Research 267 Index 269