With over 300 billion emails sent every day, email marketing provides businesses with the biggest available database as compared to any other marketing channel.
However, while the average open rate of emails is 21.33%, the average click rate is as low as 2.62%. Thus, holding the attention of people and keeping them engaged is a challenge.
Here’s where gamification in email comes in. With the development of interactive AMP emails, you can now add games or game-mechanics right to your emails. This way you not only add an element of fun, but used rightly, can also drive ROI and better customer relations through emails.
What is Gamification?
Gamification is an enhanced marketing technique that uses elements of games to attract new customers and retain the old ones. Consumers are motivated to perform actions which provide them with rewards. The technique is found to be highly engaging because of customer participation. Gamification has three core principles: engagement, award and competition.
What is Email Gamification?
Email gamification is a trending email marketing technique. In simplest terms, email gamification is the process of adding games, game mechanics and elements into emails.
Email gamification includes games such as quizzes, puzzles, quests, slot machines and spin the wheel among others. Following the core principles, it can be stated that:
- Gamified emails are engaging.
- They offer a reward as a result of customer participation.
- They allow customers to compete against a set standard or score or their friends.
According to a survey by Promodo, using gamification in email campaigns resulted in 400% increase in revenue growth as compared to previous year’s holiday season.
This shows us how effective email gamification really is. Here are a few other benefits of using email gamification in email marketing:
- Helps in retaining the existing customers.
- Helps in acquiring new customers.
- Motivates customers to take the desired action like making a purchase.
- Maintains a healthy and strong customer relationship.
How Can One Build a Gamified Email Template?
Well, there are two ways of building your own gamified email campaign. The first is to learn to code, if you don’t already know how to yet, and start writing lines after lines of codes.
The second way is to choose a platform that allows you to add game elements into your emails with a little or no coding required.
The more preferable option of the two is to use an ESP that helps you do this. You can use an ESP like Mailmodo, a no code platform, that allows you to add the game elements into your emails. They also have templates for all your needs.Their drag-and-drop template editor works like a charm.
You can pick a template from their offerings or start from scratch and then add the desired widgets and elements and even change the appearance of the template to make it look like it belongs to your business. Once you are done, you can even go ahead and test the emails to check if it renders perfectly.
Email Gamification Widgets & Examples
1. Spin the wheel
Spin the wheel or roulette is a crowd-favorite . Customers love the anticipation of getting a reward and assign more value to the rewards that are earned in games as compared to being given out by the businesses. This widget can be used for any audience and is very easy to interact with. The customer gets to spin the wheel delivered to him in the mail by simply clicking a button and wait for the wheel to stop to see and receive his reward.
2. Wordle
Wordle has been a craze amongst word games lovers. Introducing a wordle into your emails could take advantage of the loyalty of an entire community of wordle lovers. You can make it a daily thing too. This will give your customers just enough to have them coming back for more.
3. Quiz
Quizzes or trivia questions can challenge the knowledge of your audience. It is important that you keep the questions relevant to your business or brand. This will make your customers know more about your brand and be rewarded for it. It incentivises their learning and rewards their loyalty towards your brand. You can create fun and engaging quizzes by using online quiz makers.
4. Scratch cards
You can use scratchcards for promotions, rewards or offering coupon codes. The feeling of being able to scratch the scratchcard to reveal their reward comes close to the real world feeling. They may be an old one but they are still more exciting than the plain text discount emails.
5. Slot machine
Slot machines can be very addictive, both in the real world as well as in your gamified emails. Your customers can simply click on the lever to pull it down and be rewarded, provided they get lucky. They can be rewarded with an extra chance to pull the lever, a discount code or even a gift voucher to use on your website.
6. Scavenger hunt
You can even go ahead and add hunts and quests within your emails by leaving clues for your customers and letting them discover their rewards. It can be challenging but that is the fun part. It can be pretty obsessive for those customers who love an adventure.
Takeaways
Email gamification removes the boundaries that limit digital marketers. It allows them to bring an interactive, fun and engaging experience to the customers. Building and maintaining customer loyalty is also aided by it. You can use the above widgets to turn your emails into gamified emails.
If you have never used gamification, you have definitely not tapped into the full potential that your email marketing campaigns have. AMP emails, along with gamification, segmentation, personalization and automation can truly help businesses grow to new heights.
