Why Gamification is Important & Its Benefits

You have probably come across the term gamification on more occasions than one. Many businesses employ gamification techniques to increase sales or improve employee engagement. 

Indeed, the benefits of gamification are numerous, and they’ll be the main focus of this post. Scroll down to learn why gamification is essential and why you should also employ these strategies.

Gamification brief overview 

The term gamification refers to the practice of applying game-design elements and game principles in a non-game context. As a strategy, gamification motivates and influences people’s behavior, whether they are customers, clients, students, target audiences, or employees. 

As we know it today, gamification has been around since the early 2000s, but its history is longer than most people realize. For instance, in 1896, Sperry and Hutchinson Co. was founded in Alabama, and it didn’t take long for them to achieve nationwide success. The company was known for the Green Stamps the customers received after spending a certain amount of money. That way, they participated in a loyalty program where they could only pay for certain goods using stamps. It was S&H’s way of rewarding customers. Although the system was quite complicated, it is an excellent example of one of the earliest forms of gamification.

Boy Scouts of America’s introduction of the badge system in 1908 can also serve as one of the earliest examples of gamification. The badge system became one of the symbols of this organization. 

In 1981, American Airlines introduced the AAdvantage, a frequent flier program to encourage customer loyalty. 

With the evolution of video games, gamification strategies have become simpler and more creative. The term gamification was coined in 2002 by Nick Pelling, a game designer. Three years later, in 2005, Bunchball was founded. Still operating today, Bunchball is a devoted gamification developer dedicated to increasing user engagement by adding game elements to websites.

The first gamification summit was held in 2011 in San Francisco, California. The summit was vital because it united leaders and innovators in in-game mechanics and engagement. 

Above are just some examples showing that gamification techniques and strategies have been around longer than we thought. This speaks volumes about the importance of adding game elements to non-game contexts.

Top Benefits of Gamification

The top benefits of gamification are:

1. Better Engagement
2. Improved Information Retention
3. Improved Collaboration
4. Improved Conversion Rates
5. Creating a Real-World Connection
6. Increased Brand Loyalty

Importance and Benefits of Gamification

Gamification has become one of the best tools to influence people’s behavior. The benefits of these techniques are numerous. Below you can see what makes gamification so crucial across different industries. 

High market value

Gamification is here to stay, and its ever-growing market value is the best evidence. Reports show that in 2019, the value of the global gamification market was around $6.33 billion, and it is expected to reach $37 billion by 2027.

In 2021, the value of the global gamification market was estimated at $10.5 billion. The estimates show that the number will jump to $96.8 billion by 2030. In North America alone, the value of the gamification market in 2021 was $3.8 billion. 

The increasing worth of gamification shows that adding game design elements to other non-game-related contexts has become incredibly important thanks to its wide range of benefits. 

Gamification is effective

Before deciding whether to try some strategy, you want to know if it works. So, is gamification effective? The short answer would be: yes, it is. You see, current evidence supports the effectiveness of gamification. 

One paper showed gamification could be considered a vital tool for creating sustainable higher educational institutions through improving motivation and performance. Gamification can enhance the learning process in any field, even in the health sector.

In one study, scientists wanted to find out how effective gamification for learning really is. They compared three groups of students and discovered that those who used game-related elements for learning human anatomy did better. Students responded more to rankings, badges, teams, and points, and their learning outcomes improved significantly. 

While surveys and studies about gamification are numerous, what they have in common is the conclusion that gamification is an effective marketing tool, especially for companies that want to involve their customers and increase engagement. Additionally, gamification is essential for brands that face tough competition online.

Better engagement 

One of the most significant gamification benefits is increased participation. Several mechanisms are involved here. For example, gamification makes the user, potential or current customer, employee, student, or someone else feel more in control. Gamification strategies encourage exploration, thus allowing people to decide how to proceed. When people have options to participate and interact, they are more likely to enjoy the entire experience. 

Additionally, gamified content increases involvement by fixing the most common problem that lecturers, marketers, and many organizations face – boredom among students or audiences. People are less likely to engage with any form of content online if they find it boring. Modern lifestyle is hectic, so people don’t like wasting their time on boring or tedious content even if they like your company, subject, or something else. Adding game-related elements into the mix to spice it up, you generate excitement that is bound to keep people engaged. 

Yet another reason gamification improves engagement is that it enhances a person’s competitiveness. Humans are competitive; it’s in our nature. We like to compete with ourselves as well as with other people. Adding a dose of competitiveness, a classic game design element, can boost someone’s desire to engage in a specific activity or task. A person becomes committed due to a strong desire to win and do better than someone else.

Moreover, gamification increases engagement by allowing people to see their progress. There are tons of video games available to all, but they have in common that players can see where they are in a game or track their progress in other ways. They know precisely how far they’ve come and when they can expect to ascend to the next level. This important game design element is also a significant component of gamification techniques. People like to feel and see they’re making progress. That way, they’re more motivated to get involved, and their participation increases. 

The beauty of this benefit of gamification is that it works for every purpose. Depending on your needs, you can apply it in marketing, education such as e-learning courses, sales, or elsewhere. 

Improved information retention 

In retail and other industries, gamification improves information retention by making monotonous and tedious processes much more enjoyable. Let’s take employee training as an example. People usually prefer to avoid training because they consider them boring. Adding some form of game mechanics to training becomes more fun. People are eager to participate, and information received during training becomes more memorable. 

It’s also helpful to mention that gamified content helps users retain information by emphasizing problem-solving. As people sharpen their problem-solving skills, they retain more information, i.e., they learn through practice. These techniques allow for more efficient feedback and provide the opportunity to sharpen current or develop new skills with minimal risk. 

Better information retention can also improve user experience, which is yet another reason why gamification is essential. You see, gamification increases user engagement by making some tasks seem like a game. As a result, people recall more information, which improves their motivation, participation, and overall experience. This applies to apps and sales and works for different industries.

Improved collaboration

Collaboration is crucial for increased productivity and better functioning in the workplace, classroom, and other environments. Improving collaboration is easier said than done, but gamification can significantly help. Students in a classroom or people in a particular department have different personalities. The goal is to ensure these different personalities can still work together and collaborate effectively, which is challenging. 

Since social influence is a strong motivator in a gamified environment, these techniques can make it easier for people to work together more effectively. High performers usually like sharing their knowledge with others hoping to motivate them. Sharing knowledge and expertise doesn’t have to be boring. 

Making it like a contest can spice things up and enable people to perform better by playing a game. Participants can celebrate one another’s victories or any kind of progress. By showing support to each other, people become closer and work together on solving different tasks. For that reason, gamification is an excellent tool to increase collaboration.

Whether you want students at eLearning courses to collaborate or your goal is to make your sales team more efficient, gamification can help.

Gamification helps build and maintain team culture. Consistent competition and a leaderboard open several communication channels for the entire team. All this adds to a better, healthier, and more positive atmosphere that benefits everyone involved. 

Improved conversion rates

The core benefit of gamification is increased participation. With better involvement also come improved conversion rates in the world of digital marketing. Why? The reason is simple, to target audience gamified content rarely feels like marketing. That’s why they’re more likely to respond to your call-to-action message.

Let’s put it this way. When people go online and keep scrolling, they see tons of promotional posts and are exposed to a wide range of marketing tactics. As this happens on a daily basis, people lose interest. 

In digital marketing, gamification allows you to promote products or services fun and engagingly. As a result, you are more likely to gain the target audience’s interest, generate more leads, and convert them to customers. 

Creating a real-world connection

The best thing about gamification is that it works for different industries and environments, including education, such as e-learning courses. But why is gamification important in education, you wonder. It’s essential because gamified content in e-learning courses can create a real-world connection and help students improve problem-solving and decision-making skills. 

The challenges and rewards of gamified learning produce a risk-free environment wherein students have the opportunity to learn how to apply the skills and knowledge they gain. Education isn’t just about remembering stuff for a grade; it’s about developing the skills required to improve quality of life and function more efficiently in the real world. 

With gamification, students can practice applying their skills successfully and connect the lectures with real-world problems. For that reason, gamification can significantly improve the learning experience and allow students to adopt new knowledge with positive reinforcement in a fun and engaging way. 

Increased brand loyalty

Converting leads into customers is always a good thing, but for the best results, their loyalty is necessary. Increasing brand loyalty is what marketing tactics strive to do. Gamification is an effective technique to make it happen. 

Gamified content increases motivation and keeps customers engaged, which leads to increased brand loyalty. It also establishes your company as a business that cares for and appreciates customers’ loyalty. 

There are many ways to use gamification to increase brand loyalty. For example, loyalty programs are always a good idea. They usually rely on collecting points or making a specific number of purchases to get rewards, discounts, or other perks. Badges and leaderboards are also useful here. 

When customers know their loyalty is appreciated, they keep buying from your company or engaging in activities you arrange. 

Other valuable benefits of gamification

In addition to the benefits mentioned above of gamification, which apply to different industries, other advantages of this practice include the following:

• Functional across different platforms
• Allows for easy collection of consumer data
• Affordable 
• Provides instant reinforcement and feedback
• Improves adoption and usage of CRM (customer relationship management)
• Improved focus on KPIs (key performance indicators)
• Supports cognitive development 
• Makes the learning process a personal experience 
• It’s fun

Spinify can help with the Benefits of Gamification

Gamification helps improve participation, motivation and provides many other benefits, regardless of the industry or size of the company. The beauty of gamification is that it makes seemingly tedious tasks and processes more fun for everyone. Spinify, the leader in sales gamification, is the best source of information about these techniques and strategies. Book a demo today!