If you want to harness the full power of gamification, you need to know the best gamification techniques. 

But what is gamification, and how can it help your business succeed? In this article, we will look at 15 powerful techniques you can use to provide a more immersive user experience and drive revenue. 

Games are not just entertaining; they also excite and inform us. And that’s why, for example, the video game industry has overtaken the filming industry by a large margin. Play is a natural human craving. Kids spend most of their time playing, and that’s one of the main reasons they learn so fast — they stimulate their brains while discovering the world. 

Gamification Explained

Gamification is the process of applying game mechanics to non-game situations and environments. 

You can create a game or gamify a process that might usually be seen as boring or repetitive for various reasons. Gamification can make your message stick, encourage specific behavior, or increase engagement. 

With gamification by your side, you can also add an extra layer of fun and excitement to learning (for example, turning lessons into enjoyable missions).

So don’t miss out on providing a more engaging experience to your employees, learners, or customers. Find out about the best gamification techniques and how to use them to maximize results on all fronts in our list of 15 Best Gamification Techniques To Implement In Your Business Today. 

Now, let’s get to the sweet stuff!

1. Throw A Launch Party 

If you’re in the e-Learning industry, mark the beginning of your journey with a bang to excite your team for what’s to come. 

Send out a curiosity-provoking newsletter with stories about previous learning initiatives and testimonials that emphasize your course’s immense value. 

Schedule an email campaign and spread it out over several weeks. Include multiple communication channels. 

Freebies are also a fantastic way to draw in people — welcome them with cool gifts, bonus points, or vouchers. 

2. Progression Monitoring

Keep track of people’s progress by using gamification checkpoints. You can mark completed tasks with a star or checkmark. 

Employees or learners will experience immediate gratification and receive a quick mental push to keep on delivering solid performances. 

3. Give people the freedom to customize

As human beings, we have a natural urge to express ourselves. When providing an environment for people to unleash their creativity to create something (regardless of their field of work), they will invest their time and energy while having fun making your product or service as best as possible. 

4. Promote Friendly Competition 

Celebrating those who perform best can sometimes make others feel undervalued, and keeping a score can demotivate low-scoring participants. 

But what if you rewarded everyone for beating their personal best scores? 

Avoid letting everyone know who the weakest performers are. Instead, give recognition to more than one person for the same achievement. 

5. Provide Visually Pleasing Experiences

Visually pleasing elements have the power to get people’s attention and make them feel much more engaged with their learning or work, and when it comes to eye candy, bright colors and graphics provide the most visually-pleasing experiences.

6. Provoke Curiosity

Curiosity is one of the most effective ways to keep people engaged and wanting more. You can provoke people’s curiosity by, for example, creating a sequence-based challenge (e.g., 1-10) or using a ‘cliffhanger,’ so they would want to keep going to see how the story ends. 

7. Encourage Collaboration

Teamwork produces much better ideas and results than one-man armies. 

Allow people to suggest one issue per week that the group can work to solve together. Everyone can vote on which issues need resolving first. Spend a few minutes going through each topic; if someone’s suggestion fixes a problem, recognize them and make them feel appreciated. 

8. Introduce Exciting Challenges

Simple little challenges can do wonders to get users up and moving, and due to their simplicity, people cannot help but join the fun. One good example of such a challenge in action comes from Facebook. The challenge calls on people to invite their friends to get the first 100 likes on their page. There’s a tiny gamification element, yet it works like a charm!

9. The Sneaky Power Of Microlearning

Microlearning is (as the name suggests) a small bit of content created for a specific learning objective. It usually takes 2 – 7 minutes to complete and doesn’t necessarily have to be done in a classroom or office. 

Think of powerful formats like interactive or animated videos and infographics. 

10. Foster An Environment For ‘Flow’

If a task is too simple, a learner or employee can quickly get bored and lose motivation to perform at their best. On the other hand, if the job is too difficult, they can quickly get frustrated. 

The gaming experience you create needs to be balanced. A task should excite users by challenging them, but it should also be within the reach of their abilities. If your game has that special sweet spot, it will open the door to what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly calls a’ flow’ state. 

11. Create Leaderboards

Leaderboards act as a visualizer for progress and winning. They can also be used to ignite friendly competition among users and can boost motivation with significant effect. 

You can tie scores to any data point to reinforce the desired behavior. 

If you wish to create more engagement and better performance, reward users for consistency, accuracy, and good overall results. 

Leaderboards are a highly efficient way to get people working as a team to reach goals. 

However, individual leaderboards are also effective in driving motivation, accuracy, and skill-building. 

12. Frequent Feedback

Talk about your people’s performance. Tell them what they’re doing right and what they could work on perfecting to keep them motivated to become the best version of themselves. 

Constructive performance conversations help people see what is being achieved (boosts their confidence) and where they could improve (motivates them to do better).  

13. Reward People For Their Accomplishments

The following gamification techniques work especially well within the iGaming industry, but also have the power to motivate and engage employees and learners. 

• Badges — Badges give people a sense of pride in their achievements. Introduce simple custom badges and offer a few rare ones to make people excited about going the extra mile. 

• Points — A good points system can unlock people’s desire to take part in the action. Reward them with small prizes along their journey as they evolve into better learners and employees, or more loyal customers.

Also, give people points for logging on to your website or learning system without skipping days. 

• Levels — Levels show participants how far they’ve progressed in their journey. Usually, people advance to the next level once they’ve gathered a certain number of points. As soon as they reach a specific goal, incentivize them by giving them rewards and recognizing their accomplishments. 

• Progress bars — Bars that show real-time progress can boost motivation and push players to complete their tasks faster. For example, indicate the number of assignments completed in a row and how many more tasks lay ahead. 

• Unlockables — By letting people unlock items like additional content, unique elements, or enhanced abilities, you introduce an engaging way to motivate them to keep playing the game.  

To avoid confusion or people missing out on the action, make sure to let them know that there are secret unlockables upfront so that they can immerse themselves in the extra level of excitement. This will help ignite their curiosity and add another layer of addictiveness to the game. 

14. Introduce Roleplay

Roleplaying is one of the most exciting aspects of video gaming. By allowing people to step into the shoes of different professionals such as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, etc., you can unleash their hidden potential as they put their imagination to the test. In the process, they also learn new skills and increase their empathy levels. 

For example, through roleplaying, you could train a group of future nurses on handling stressful situations in the hospital. Two people could be playing the role of a panicked mother and her son who needs urgent medical care, and the other could be the nurse. In this situation, the nurse would be able to test her reaction skills and her ability to remain calm under pressure.

15. Create A Gripping Story 

A powerful narrative will keep learners, employees, and customers engaged and wanting to return for more. People need stories to feel like one with the world and make sense of it. That is why inserting a strong story into a gamified experience can have a solid and addictive effect on the user. Come up with stories that connect with players and let them know how completing specific tasks will move the story forward. Keep the experience interactive to drive engagement. 

The Future of Gamification 

The key benefits of gamification lie in the realm of engagement and motivation. This could mean anything from giving people the push to visit the gym regularly to investing more focus and energy in studying or at the workplace.

One of the most exciting things about gamification is that it can be applied to virtually every industry due to the motivation and engagement factors.

So, where is the gamification train headed? Regardless of how much the concept might develop in the future, gamification has proved its value and is here to stay. Furthermore, with the advent of new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), exciting new realms will come into existence, and this will have a massive impact on how businesses of all sectors engage customers and employees. 

Even though gamification has already been introduced in many areas with great success, it is still in its infancy. As video games keep on taking over the mediums that we now cannot do without (computers, mobile phones, etc.), gamification will keep on growing while creating never-seen-before conditions for business success.  

Final Words

If designed right, exciting gaming elements applied to relevant situations can help employees, students, and customers experience a rise in motivation and engagement. With the help of gamification, people can find the motivation to immerse themselves in their field of choice while building skills and improving their memory retention abilities.  

So if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution to increase employee, learner, or customer satisfaction and productivity, gamification is an option you should strongly consider… and Smartico is here to help you shoot for the stars!

As a leading Gamification & CRM Automation solution, Smartico offers:

• Various intuitive challenges and gaming techniques
• High-value incentives that encourage long-term loyalty and retention, elevate player value, strengthen engagement, and boost user acquisition.
• Multi-Currency/Language/Deep Brand Support.
• Missions – Engage players with fun real-time solo or multiplayer tasks.
• Points – Encourage players to keep coming back through point-based incentives and unlockables.
• Badges – Stand out from the rest with sleek badges and earn free spins for each earned badge.
• Levels – Players gain experience and special perks after completing each level or tournament.
• Incentives – Motivate players to return for more with unique rewards and bonuses. 
• Marketplace – Players can actualize their points by cashing them in for free game spins or other awards such as online shopping vouchers. 
• Mini-Games – Players can reset their senses through short, award-earning games.
• Tournaments – Set your own qualification rules and offer your customers a powerful endorphin rush with Smartico’s unique tournament system.
• Leaderboards – Set daily, weekly, and monthly prizes and watch your user engagement skyrocket.
• Bonus Engine Integration – Cash bonuses, free spin bonuses, and more.

And that’s just a tiny sample of what’s on offer. Smartico can help your company grow exponentially by supplying the solutions needed to bring the motivation and engagement in your business to a whole new level. To start your journey to unparalleled success, book your free in-depth demo today at: https://smartico.ai/request-a-demo