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Loyalty-Driven Gamification: Fostering Customer Engagement and Retention

Floating credit cards of three different tiers with coins of money falling around

We’ve explained before how important customer loyalty is for any business, and a returning clientele’s support is even more important for smaller businesses. Those dedicated customers help a business thrive and grow as they recommend your products or services to their friends and family. This is why loyalty programs are a key strategy for customer retention, especially in e-commerce. However, any loyalty program needs to be well designed to effectively foster customer engagement. One of the strongest methods is gamification. We’ll explain what gamification is and how you can start to gamify your loyalty program below.

What does gamification mean?

Gamification or gamifying means applying game-design elements to non-game contexts. This can refer to systems like point scoring, rankings, leaderboards, badges, competition, and other game elements. Along with loyalty programs, gamification like this has been applied widely in multiple industries and settings. Workplaces have used gamification for increased productivity. Schools and educational software have used gamification to encourage learning. Many athletic apps even use gamification to motivate physical exercise. Furthermore, government organizations and researchers have considered gamification to improve voter turnout or reduce the occurrence of traffic violations.

Why is gamification effective?

The wide use of gamification alone should suggest its effectiveness. This is because game-design elements have been shown to create more retention and interaction with a system. Gamification plays on innate desires for being rewarded, often with visual and audio indicators that add some fanfare to mark the victory. Some other game systems, such as collective goals or leaderboards, also build on human social tendencies of cooperation and competition. Altogether gamification is extremely motivating and for businesses that means fostering healthy and active customer engagement and dedication.

Gamified Loyalty Programs for Small Businesses

Many loyalty programs already use some principles of gamification. The most widely used is point collection systems, where customers gain points for all or certain transactions. These points can then be used to redeem discounts or other bonuses. This can be immediately rewarding, but there are other ways to design a strong loyalty program and drive more engagement and retention through gamification.

Ways to Create a Strong Gamified Loyalty Program

  • Simple is Effective: Sometimes a complex game can be satisfying to learn, but the most popular games are those that are easy to pick up. It’s the same for gamifying a loyalty program. When it isn’t clear how a customer gains points, badges, titles, or other rewards, the loyalty program quickly becomes confusing, unrewarding, or even frustrating. Both potential earnings and rewards should be clear. For example, make it simple how each transaction will gain a certain number of points or contribute to earning a certain rank or title. This clear communication about what can be earned helps to further motivate customer engagement.
  • Titles, Ranks, and Other Recognition: Point systems are familiar territory for most loyalty programs. However, they can quickly lose appeal if they are the only system. An effective way to start rounding out a gamified loyalty program is other rewards and recognition, such as titles or badges featured on customer profiles that are earned for certain customer engagement. These could be tied to points. For example, earning a certain amount unlocks a VIP title that offers better discounts, things like free shipping and more point collecting opportunities. However, loyalty is created and can be gamified through other engagements, which leads us to our next point.
  • Moving Gamifying Beyond Gamifying Transactions: There’s more to customer engagement and loyalty than just repeating business. Gamification is a great way to leverage and encourage true loyalty. For example, titles or badges could be given for repeated business over years. You could also offer exclusive experiences or event attendance. You can reward those who follow your social channels, where you could also then offer opportunities to get more points or create community goals. Points, discounts, and titles can also be given for referrals or recommendations, motivating customers to help your business grow.
  • Audio and Visual Recognition: The key here is recognition. Along with clear systems, the recognition of titles, and the practical rewards of discounts, a key part of gamification is visual and audio systems that reflect progress and success. It might seem silly, but seeing a bar fill shows progress. Some fanfare with animations of spark and/or confetti and a celebratory tune for earning a title or new rank provide the audio and visual feedback that motivates further engagement.

Start Gamifying Your Loyalty

With how effective gamification is, you’ll likely want to start gamifying your business loyalty program or start building one. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be done from the start. Many loyalty program platforms help you create a loyalty program that suits your business and customers, such as smile.io. If you’re ready to start encouraging and fostering more customer engagement and retention, contact our web experts at Rosewood Marketing. They will help you determine the right system while our marketing team helps devise the game-design elements for your business.

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AI and SEO: How Artificial Intelligence Impacts Search Rankings

Glowing AI Button on top of a slate brick background

AI is increasingly everywhere these days. Considering AI seems to be doing so many different things, the term AI has become a bit of a confusing catchall and buzzword. Nevertheless, you now find most apps and programs are now including and loudly featuring some kind of AI tool or functionality. You’ll also find AI write-ups from Google’s new search AI, Gemini, at the top of many searches. It shouldn’t be a surprise that AI is now having a significant role and impact on SEO. Since search rankings are critical for any small business to expand its discovery on these platforms, we explain some of the ways to consider how AI impacts SEO.

How AI Has Changed SEO

AI and learning algorithms have drastically changed how internet searches work over the past decade. You will want to consider these when creating web pages that are optimized for search engines.

Moving Beyond Keywords

Search engines like Google have been using learning algorithms (i.e. AI) to move beyond simple keyword searches. These algorithms help identify word associations and larger concepts to create semantic based searches. Semantic search considers phrases and the associations between specific words. More advanced semantic searches will also consider previous searches, location, and the user’s profile for a more complex meaning. These are the same kind of semantics we use to understand language and meaning. Google began using these semantic searches in 2015 with RankBrain. They grew in sophistication when they launched BERT, and last year they launched an even more advanced semantic model with the AI MUM.

Understanding Pages

Search engines like Google have also begun to use the same AI tools on the web pages they crawl. Rather than searching for certain words that indicate a topic, Google’s algorithms now try to more fully understand the information and/or content on pages. The information and meaning they gleam from the page is then used to rank the site according to the semantic meaning in a search. This is to try and provide more relevant results for searches rather than just targeting what most fits those individual keywords.

Together, this semantic shift means that small businesses need to move beyond considering individual keywords to target certain phrases and start considering more complex connections. For example, you could consider, what is the kind of information or resources people might be searching to want this page? Is there a certain question or need that the page or your website answers? What related phrases are people searching that you could connect to your business’ website?

AI’s Getting to Know Us

Another way search engines are using AI that has a direct impact on search engines is understanding users rather than individual pages and searches. Along with monitoring search semantics, Google’s AI tools monitor how and what users search to personalize their results. These AI profiles are designed to help predict and re-rank sites according to that user’s calculated interests. However, these AI profiles are also beneficial for smaller businesses as they allow them to consider target audiences and profiles for their SEO. With these in mind, businesses can start to tailor their webpage’s content and SEO to users in whose searches they would prefer to rank higher.

How Gemini is Changing Search

One of the most recent developments of AI in search engines is Google’s Gemini. MUM, and BERT before it, who were already trying to extract immediate answers or quick summaries from high-ranking search results. However, Gemini is a generative AI, which uses language model functionality to produce a written-up summary and answer. Rather than quoting from a single page, Gemini consults multiple high-ranking sites and tries to combine these for a single ultra response.

While Google does link to the source pages Gemini used, there are drawbacks for websites. Ultimately, this result is not designed to motivate users to visit the actual page. Google has given the answer and users are expected to be satisfied. However, Gemini is often wrong. Most generative AI tools still suffer for any specific topic and tend to provide inaccurate or false information. In turn, this means users may still be motivated to visit specific pages for more accurate information from a human.

The other important thing to consider is that Gemini results like these are still more tuned to general research searches like “where do salmon migrate.” Gemini cannot put together products or services. Instead, if searching for products or services with Gemini, it will direct users to local businesses. Users will still be visiting and browsing the specific pages of small businesses.

Keeping an Eye on AI and SEO

As we mentioned, Google and other search engines have already been using more advanced algorithms for nearly a decade. However, we also can’t deny that the recent surge of generative and other AI tools has led to a rapid shift in SEO with significant impacts on search rankings. Small businesses will need to keep monitoring this active landscape to ensure their websites continue to rank high. Of course, that’s also the benefit of a dedicated marketing team, like Rosewood Marketing. We continue to actively monitor how AI and SEO are actively changing. If you’re interested in revising your SEO strategy or ensuring a new website will rank high in this new AI frontier, be sure to contact us.

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Social Media Customer Service: Tips for Handling Feedback and Complaints

A woman holding a tablet and smiling as she oversees customer service on social media, handling feedback and complaints

One of the primary strengths of social media is that the platforms provide a direct channel for communicating and interacting with your audience, customers, and clients. This allows them to reach you in return. That communication will sometimes be positive, while other times customers may voice an issue or complaint. We’ll explain the importance of conducting customer service through social media and how you can handle that feedback and complaints.

The Importance of Customer Service on Social Media

Besides in-person and over the phone, most businesses offer customer service through their email and self-service portals. These are essential for any business that operates digitally. However, with the rising dominance of social media platforms, a growing portion of users have begun to seek customer service through social media channels. In a recent study, 1 in 4 users said they prefer to get customer service through social media, which was up from 1 in 5 just a year prior. The same study also found nearly a fifth had sent a customer service request in the past 3 months. This means it is essential for businesses to offer customer service through their social media.

Answering Questions

The primary customer service task boils down to answering questions. These can be about specificities of a service or product, the cost of shipping, the status of an order, etc. Such questions will often come as direct messages or comments on a specific post. In either instance, a business should answer the question promptly and accurately. If the question is too specific or requires confidential information, be sure to politely direct the communication to an alternative channel, such as email.

Gathering Feedback

Customer service isn’t just about answering questions. One of the things people love about social media is that it provides them with a voice. In fact, because social media makes this so easy, many prefer to provide their feedback on these platforms. This is no different for a business, where customers or clients might provide feedback on their products or services. You can also use social media to gather and survey feedback from your customers/clients. This feedback can take a few forms on social media. It can be comments, direct messages, polls or user-generated content about your business. Sometimes this feedback will be positive, praising your business. Other times it might be requests or suggestions. Be sure to respond and engage with this content, thanking them for the kind words or acknowledging the suggestions. This feedback can be highly informative, and your public responsiveness further helps to build your brand’s sincerity.

Handling Complaints in Social Media

Unfortunately, sometimes the feedback will be negative or even be a complaint. Occasionally these comments will just be abusive. With these follow the old internet adage, “Don’t feed the trolls.” Hide these comments, block their messages, and move on. Other times, these may be more sincere concerns or issues. Treat these earnestly and as an opportunity to demonstrate your care for your products/services and those who receive them. It should go without saying that you should not respond dismissively or, worse, with hostility.

If you begin to notice numerous comments or messages with complaints for the same issue, you should acknowledge you have a more serious concern. In these instances, direct the users to a collective communication channel such as a customer service email. You can also turn off comments on this post to prevent the issue from getting out of hand and create a post or story that directs anyone with the issue(s) to contact your more official channels. Coming up with a set number to make this call at is considered a good idea.

Taking It “Offline”

This brings us back to an important thing to remember about social media customer service. Overall, social media is a powerful and convenient communication tool, but it is highly public and subject to the control of the other platforms. It’s perfect for addressing simple and basic customer service occasions. However, if the service required is more specific or complicated, or the issue or complaint more severe, your social media team should direct that person to more official channels offered by your business. We’ve already mentioned email, but in certain instances you can also offer a phone call. If there is a serious complaint or issue, you can also consider allowing your social media team to direct the person directly to the business manager or owner through email, the phone, or even in person. This provides a direct access that they might appreciate.

Understanding that Customer Service on Social Media is Social

You should now have a better sense of how social media is useful for customer service. However, it isn’t a complete solution. Instead, it will often serve better to address simpler questions, gather feedback, or open a line of communication to another more specific and official channel. It’s still more social than it is official business. For this reason, you can consider using a chatbot to help address any simple questions or direct users to the official communication channels. Just remember that people always prefer dealing with a person for customer service. If you’re looking to incorporate your social media more into your customer service strategies or need help overseeing your social media channels, be sure to contact Rosewood’s social media marketing team.

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