What is “Gamification?”
Gamification uses all the greatest aspects of a game in a non-game context to provide a more rewarding and engaging user experience. For instance, do you remember playing the “clean-up” game as a child? Or timing yourself to complete your homework faster than you did the night before. Basically, you add a bit of a challenge (even when you’re only competing with yourself) and let those dopamine chemicals release when you’re finally rewarded—yeah, there’s real brain science behind this phenomenal strategy. But, we’ll get to that later.
How Does Gamification Work?
Now, you may find yourself drained from the daily tasks that come with “adulting.” Cleaning your house—you know, without the praise from your mom afterward—or sorting through a large stack of bills (isn’t getting mail so exciting now that everything you receive has an invoice attached to it?)
…but the worst of them all is checking your email.
It’s 2017. Isn’t email dead?
Can’t blame you for thinking that way since most email marketers that use it can make their opt-in’s and campaigns look like something of the walking dead. The lost souls of ignored, spammed, and trashed emails scour the web, just trying to cross over to the “other side”—conversions.
Well, gamification may be the cure for your zombie email list!
The idea behind gamification is to isolate the ingredients that make games addictive, then apply those same ingredients to digital technologies and marketing strategies.
We want your offers to be just as addicting. That’s why Listagram has developed a user-friendly interface that’s highly customizable to recover your list building and email marketing strategy. You don’t even have to think about all the technical, scientific stuff.
Although, if you’re interested in the psychology of how it works, we’re here to break that down for you, too.
The Science Behind Addictive Gaming
You may not even realize it, but companies are playing you now (pun intended).
The simplest form of gamification is receiving that small reward of a stamp every time you purchase your favorite coffee. Admit it, you’ve gone out of your way to that specific café just to get one step closer to your free cup of coffee once you reach 10 stamps. Plus, it feels good to look down and know that you only have three more to go, right? Don’t feel bad, we’ve all done it.
As humans, we all have emotions and gamification just amplifies them by triggering those powerful feelings. Happiness, competitiveness, satisfaction, intrigue, disappointment…
It’s actually quite effective and a clever use of psychology to reinforce positive experiences, promote better engagement, sales, and loyalty for businesses.
It’s time for your business to get a piece of the pie! Here are the top 10 reasons why your audience is already so addicted to gamification and you didn’t even realize it.
1. The Brain is Obsessed with Control.
Have you thought you’ve seen something in the corner of your eye, but couldn’t quite make out what it was? Consciously you know you didn’t identify what was there, but your brain will still depict images that you’ve recognized in the past to give you a sense of comfort and control over the situation. The same kind of thought process applies with sales. Your brain wants to be in control at all times, guiding you to the decision to pass or buy in. As weird as it sounds, buyers hate to be sold. So as a business, it’s important to make sure that you’re simply leading them in the direction of an opt-in, not illuminating a big red arrow sign that says, “GIVE ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS NOW.”
Leading a potential customer towards your desired goal is all part of the user journey—and you’ve got to make it a positive one. Listagram gives people the option to play, putting them in the driver’s seat. As the business and your users tour guide to opting-in, you have the control over what you decide to offer on your wheel. Get creative. Maybe leave a space on your wheel that says something along the lines of, “Pick your very own xyz,” still allowing your user to feel in control of the situation even after they’ve opted-in.
2. The Brain Can Be Persuaded by Addiction.
Gamification triggers a dopamine rush.
We mentioned dopamine before, but we’ll break it down for you here. Dopamines are our “happy” chemicals. You may have heard of them when discussing food, love, lust, sex, gambling, etc. Pretty much anything that can be addicting. As human beings, it’s in our nature to pursue happiness—sometimes at all costs.
Gamification is that simple. Getting to the next level, receiving a reward, and even receiving positive reinforcement are the cornerstones to creating a new addictive digital marketing strategy.
You can’t help it! It’s the dopamine in your brain causing that ecstatic reaction. Your mind will keep telling you to do it again because it feels so good! And that’s when addiction kicks in…or what businesses would call loyalty and engagement! Imagine the feeling one of your subscribers will have when they hit big on your personalized Listagram wheel? They’ll definitely be coming back for more!
3. The Play on Scarcity is a Mind Game as Well.
Businesses play on scarcity and exclusivity because they know it works. Only for a limited time, get it now before it’s gone, only x amount left… Sure, you know they’re not completing going out of business the second they close out a particular offer, but they make users feel like they are! Plus, users are more likely to sign up to receive exclusive offers once they know that you have flash deals only available to subscribers.
Exclusivity creates intrigue, jealousy, and curiosity for what’s to come in the future. People will work hard to achieve that level of exclusivity and status above other people (another dopamine rush!). Listagram allows your subscribers to find value they can’t find anywhere else: the ultimate exclusive feeling. When they see that one big offer that they really, really want, play in hopes that they’ll be that 1in a million winner—both for status and for the offer itself!
4. Positive Reinforcement is a Driving Factor in Decision Making.
Achievement is one of the most powerful psychological driving factors for the way the brain allows people to make decisions. Everything humans do is to be successful—even the smallest feats. If someone’s on your website or using your app, they’re trying to achieve something. They may be buying something to help them reach a goal or learning a new skill. Either way, if you can make your user feel good about themselves (like they’ve accomplished something) while using your product or service, they’re going to come back. Something as simple as saying, “Congratulations!” or “Great job!” will leave your user smiling on the other side of the screen.
Listagram allows you to break your product or service into intervals of achievement. Your offers are parts of your product or service to be offered. By achieving one thing with every spin, your subscriber may feel like they’re getting closer and closer to their end goal.
5. Humans Want to Escape.
One day, look up from your own phone and see what everyone else is doing: escaping reality with their own phones. It’s not just a human thing to long for a quick break from reality, it’s also a digital age thing.
Escapism is a key component of gaming. It’s easier than ever before to become sucked into your favorite game for hours at a time. Gamification plays on that feeling of escapism and what better place for your user to get lost than in your engaging and valuable email? With Listagram, you might just give your user that quick escape that they actually look forward to every
other day!
Now that you know exactly how gamification is the hidden defibrillator to dead email lists, you must also understand why your email list is suffering to solve the problem.
Recognizing a Dead Email List and Reviving it is Key!
If your words are holding to be soulless, unopened, and sorted as spam in your user’s eyes, the first step is to conduct a thorough postmortem analysis of your walking dead emails. What happened to your list? Was it a freak accident or a degenerative problem?
These are some of the most common causes of email list death:
Your list is starving.
It’s time to look and the mirror and ask if you’ve been being stingy to your subscribers. Starvation happens when you don’t offer your subscribers anything they want or anything they can use.
If there’s no incentive for someone to be on your list, they’ll unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam. You have to earn your way into inboxes through unmatched value!
You annoyed your subscribers.
Quite the opposite of the first reason, if you’re doing too much your list may drown you out. One of the most common causes of blocking, spamming, and simply ignoring each and every one of your headlines is too much frequency. If you’re sending emails too often, they’re probably offering less value and becoming bothersome.
Your users are bored.
Although you’ve heard that being bored doesn’t kill you, it’ll definitely do a number on your email list. This word can’t be said enough: VALUE, VALUE, VALUE! If you’re sending out the same newsletter each week, what do you have to offer your users besides something they’ve already heard a million times? Even if you have the same structure to your newsletter, but adding a simple game can add value to peak your user’s interest again.
Your users are apathetic.
The bottom line is that if your users turn from your list, it’s because they stopped caring about your content in one form or fashion. If you’re starving, boring, or annoying people, you’re probably causing them to become apathetic about your content. It’s time to turn that negative list about your email campaign into a positive one!
You Know Gamification Works, But How Can You Use it?
Do you need to get more subscribers, but your opt-in doesn’t grab anyone’s attention?
Do you have a subscriber list already that’s not very active?
Are you building your subscriber list and want to create newfound value users can’t find anywhere else?
Listagram is for you! Actually, Listagram is for anyone who wants to be successful in list building and email marketing.
Our Ultimate goal is to:
Enhance engagement of both active and inactive subscribers.
Increate your initial open rate.
Help create a lighthearted, fun reputation for your company.
Encourage more email conversions for better ROI results.
Help you get to know more about your users.
Impress your users with your personalized design and functionality in emails.
Put you in control of the customer experience.
Allow you to create your custom roadmap for conversions.
Amplify positive user experiences.
Establish stable customer loyalty.
Whether you have an e-commerce site or another platform like an online magazine or blog, you need an engaged email listing.
Virtually every e-commerce site needs to collect email addresses for retargeting and relationship building purposes. Believe it or not, Listagram averages 10-20% conversion rates on high traffic e-commerce sites. Yeah, 10-20%! A much bigger increase than most list building tools can vouch for. If you sell a service rather than a product, email subscribers are just as important so that they can keep up with you! Online magazines, blogs, and membership sites will have the ability to let users know what’s new and how they can get a hold of you with a strong subscriber list!
It’s Time to Plan Your Email Listing Revival…
Breathing life into a dead list is all about offering value your users can’t find anywhere else. Your subscribers need to associate your emails with fun, engaging, and beneficial content. Listagram offers the perfect service that’ll kickstart that rewarding, lively relationship with your users.
