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In this article we explain how Gamification ensures that you get more traffic to your store, how you encourage people to make a first purchase and how you can make them come back more often.

Generating shopping traffic with games

We start at the beginning, getting people to your store. It's actually very simple. People need to know you exist and what you have to offer. So you have to stand out among the target group. For this you can use local, targeted (social) advertisements to reach the target group. A regular ad often has a low click rate (CTR). If you link a game to the advertisement, the CTR will go up! With a lot of traffic to your game as a result.

Games act like magnets. Everyone finds time to play a game quickly. Especially if there is a nice prize to be won. On average, a participant is active with a game for about three minutes. Incredibly valuable time, in which you get the space to tell your brand story.

Traffic to the game ultimately drives traffic to the store. In the example below we explain this with an example.

Imagine, you open a new branch of your supermarket in Hilversum, then you want people from the area to come and take a look (and buy). An opening is a party and you want to celebrate that. You want that many people to go to the opening.

What can you do then? With a game, such as a wheel of fortune, quiz or grabbing machine, your target group has a chance to win the main prize: a minute of free shopping. The rest of the participants receive a small incentive (such as a discount) so that everyone wins.

Source: Grab machine game for Dutch retailer Blokker

The result of the grand prize will be announced during the opening. Everyone who plays the game and leaves data immediately receives a nice discount coupon to spend in the store during the opening week. For example, traffic is generated via the game, to the store, before the opening and the weeks afterwards.

Becoming a customer: first purchase incentive

With this discount coupon or incentive many people will visit the store. A coupon helps to make the first purchase.

Source: After game e-mail with barcode for discount at Blokker

You can encourage people who have not yet made a purchase with the discount coupon by sending a newsletter. The newsletter contains the 'top sellers', so that it is clear to the customer what your added value is as a store. Here too you can add 'unique' discounts to ensure that the participants of the game will make the first purchase.

For this reason, we always recommend adding a newsletter opt-in to the game. Our experience is that at least 50% of all participants do this. This immediately lays the foundation for a database for newsletter and digital brochure subscriptions. This is the basis for creating regular customers.

Recurring shopping traffic through personalization

Once you have that valuable list of customers, you can start sending newsletters and digital folders. But we are all inundated with newsletters and advertisements on a daily basis. How do you ensure that these are relevant and are therefore read? You can do this by personalizing your content, such as products and offers. After all, you don't want to send an offer for a pack of diapers to a single man.

Gamification is the tool for collecting this data. When you ask someone for the desired information in a game context and there is also a cool price in return, people are very willing to share data.

An average conversion of 60% is no exception for marketing games. In this case, think of: “Have a chance to win a week of free groceries, take the big shopping quiz!”. People who participate fill in the quiz and thereby all provide valuable information that can be used later in a personal newsletter, advertisement or digital brochure.

In short, if you want to get more sales from new customers and existing customers, consider using marketing games. It stands out much more between all standard posts and you are guaranteed to give your (potential) customers a good feeling!