Why and how to make your email marketing fun

Gamification is the practice of making tasks that aren't usually fun fun. In marketing, brands use it to increase engagement and loyalty of their community.

Indeed, gamification offers a memorable experience to users and encourages them to get more involved with the brand. Email is a channel that lends itself very well to this practice.

What does it consist of and how is it set up? That's what we'll explain in this article.

How does gamification fit perfectly with emailing?

Emailing remains one of the practices that offers the best return on investment in terms of digital marketing. Nevertheless, between the ever-hardening RGPD rules, the ever-increasing acquisition prices and consumers who feel more and more spammed, the noose is gradually tightening.

It is becoming more and more difficult to communicate through this channel without being snubbed by over-solicited consumers. To avoid this, you need to offer content that stands out from the crowd.

Gamification of your emails will help you do this. With entertaining content and a reward system, you will see better open rates and responsiveness on your emails.

Gamification elements in your emails help keep users' attention and encourage them to click on the links in the email. In addition, depending on the rules of the game, users may be encouraged to share it with others, thus increasing your brand awareness.

Gamification of your emails will help you maintain high open rates and responsiveness.

The consumer perceives these games and the rewards that come with them as privileges and feels valued by your brand. Therefore, they will be more responsive to your next solicitations.

In what form should you gamify your emails?

There are several gamification techniques in email marketing with different objectives. Nevertheless, some are easier than others to implement.

The contest

This technique is not specific to emailing, but its effectiveness deserves to be mentioned here. You can offer a prize or a voucher to be won in exchange for a specific action.

For example, an e-commerce brand can offer a 150 € voucher on its entire store provided that the user shares on the networks, the image received in attachment. This image is branded with the name of the brand with the text: "I am participating in the contest to win a €150 voucher at [name of the brand]! To participate too, share this image on your profile".

The quiz or test

This technique consists in sending a quiz to all the brand's customers in order to test their knowledge on the different products. If the user obtains a satisfactory score, he can benefit from a promotional code for his next purchase.

To give you an example, we can imagine a sports brand that tests the knowledge of its users. They receive a quiz on the best maintenance practices for its sports equipment. The one who gets more than 7/10 receives a promotional code to spend on the brand's online store.

The reward program

This is a very powerful practice to build loyalty among its users. The principle is simple. As they pass milestones, send them a personalized image for each milestone reached. This can result in the accumulation of points, great performances on your platform, etc.

For even more impact, you can invite them to share this image on networks in exchange for a promotional offer.

To learn how to send personalized images from a technical point of view, we refer you to the tutorial "How to gamify your users' experience with images via email?". We explain how to use Dynamic Image for personalized visuals with the recipient's name.

How do you get your gamification campaign right?

Before you launch your campaign, you need to make sure it has a clear purpose. This could be to promote a product, increase sales over a period of time or build customer loyalty. This will allow you to better measure the results of your campaign later on.

Furthermore, make sure to personalize your emails as much as possible in order to engage your users. Abyssale allows you to push the personalization to your visuals with Dynamic Image.Finally, test, analyze and iterate. It's possible that your first gamification campaign doesn't yield the expected results. In this case, analyze your users' reactions (open rate, click rate, reactivity, etc.), draw conclusions and improve.

Finally, gamification through emailing allows you to differentiate yourself and increase user engagement with your brand. Nevertheless, it requires to respect certain practices, especially in terms of personalization. Abyssale allows you to push personalization to make your users feel privileged.