Brands are in fierce competition to garner new customers, and ultimately, drive engagement throughout their massive communities.
With the onslaught of short attention spanned millennials becoming a majority buying force in the market, brands are looking for new ways to pierce the marketing veil and capture their attention. There is more noise and competition in the marketplace than there has ever been and getting users to engage with brands is becoming more of an art form or science than a simple strategy. Is there a silver bullet to accomplish this? We believe so. It’s called sustained engagement.
Here are four ways mobile platforms help brands and influencers leverage in-app engagement to help promote content, recognize, reward, and foster customer loyalty sustaining consistent user engagement.
1) Recognizing Users
When a user knows they will be recognized for the actions they take within a community, they will pay attention. A Recognition wall is an excellent way to accomplish this.
“When you reward your tribe for driving the behavior that best elevates your brand, you can turn followers into co-creators.” Dean Grey – Futurist and Founder of Skylab Apps.
In addition to a beautifully designed recognition wall, the ability to chat and send private messages is becoming an industry standard with almost any mobile social platform on the market. The simple act of seeing something you like and being able to communicate with that person directly is MASSIVE! It creates an impactful reason for a user to stay on the platform and continue to play in the digital sandbox.
When a user or the community recognizes you as something you did on a wall feed, it creates instant gratification. This concept is now referred to as crowdsourcing recognition. This removes a burden from the influencer or a brand to be solely responsible for keeping their community engaged and interested. Finding new ways to facilitate these interactions among users in a platform is called the Science of Engagement.
2) Rewarding Users for Taking Actions
Taking recognition a step further is rewarding users for going the extra mile. When you have the ability to create your own trackable actions within a platform, then you separate yourself from all the 3rd party social media platforms on the market. Things like comments and likes on wall card are the new normal today. Companies are looking to create their own actions on their own platforms that fit their culture. Motivating users to take actions with the promise of a reward is one of the most effective ways to foster sustained engagement. This kind of overt gamification is seen on the most high-tech and expensive platforms. Here is a couple of examples of what they look like:
Badges – Companies like Badgeville (who has raised over $40 Million in funding 20 months post-launch in 2012) is a company that specializes in badges alone! Yes, you read that right, just badges.
Promo codes – Promotional codes are an incredible way to set up some huge advertising opportunities or affiliate partnerships with other brands while delivering huge added value to users and specific affinity groups in your community. The correction of the right brand partners can create deep loyalty amount your tribe and sustain engagement exponentially on your platform.
Contests & Challenges – This ties it all together. Run a contest where a user collects the most badges, and they get a free promo code, etc.
These tactics are multiplied when on a native mobile app because you can tie in existing technology in the user’s smartphone to heighten the experience. Adding something like photo verification to a gamified challenge, or using the phone GPS to assign a promo code to a retail store nearby will give a deeper level of interaction with the user on the platform. Furthermore, it will move your user to take actions which can be tracked and rewarded.
Back in 2014, Gartner Research estimated that more than 70 percent of “Global 2000” organizations would have a gamified app by 2015. M2 Research drank the same Kool-Aid, reporting that the gamification market would reach $2.8 billion in the U.S. by 2016 and it has surpassed that mark exponentially.
“Skylab’s gamification allows major brands to laser target consumers, eliminate marketing clutter while building new incremental revenue streams. Most all of consumers feel they are unlocking rewards vs being advertised to.” Mike Pine – GM Integrated Partnerships at FanDuel on the Skylab Apps Plaform
3) Training and Education
Users today often desire to take a journey with a brand or influence. Integrating an LMS (learning management system) with rich content into your platform can excel sustained user engagement exponentially.
What is an LMS & What it is what it do? – An LMS is a platform specifically designed for eLearning. It can integrate tests, quizzes, video, presentations or podcasts all in one place to teach something. It is multi-media centric and gives useful and organized data to the LMS owner.
The Power of eLearning – From learning how to build a bird feeder to watching a corporate compliance video and taking a test online, eLearning integrates successful gamification tactics to turn a boring course into something fun and exciting that you look forward to ultimately increasing user and or employee engagement.
Channels – On a mobile platform, channels work as a personalized blog but are amplified with curated content peculiar to the user based on the user’s tags, and interests. Channels are a great way to push new products, ideas, topics, etc. directly to the user through in-app notifications. Best of all, the user is happy to get these notifications or channel updates because he or she requested them!
4) Gamification of the entire process
If you want to be the best, you’re not alone. In sports, academia, vying for that front-row parking space or catching them all on Pokémon GO, we all want to be the best because the competition is in our nature. When you combine a person’s need to feel important with an opportunity to win something for taking actions, you have a perfect storm of sustained user engagement.
There is one company that was leading the way when it comes to tying all of these elements together on one simple, white labeled social media and engagement platform. That company is Skylab Apps. If you are an influencer or brand that is looking for a way to increases “sustained user engagement” you need to see the incredible platform Skylab Apps how created.
There are many companies out there that are attempting to build an all-in-one solution to capture all users on one platform, but something is still missing in the space. Although there are some great platforms out there that have gotten a couple of things spot on, the real billion-dollar unicorn is the company that can get the whole thing right from start to finish, and Skylab Apps is at the top of that list.
“Skylab has revolutionized the rapidly growing cheerleading industry by providing cheerleaders, coaches, and gym owners with the best opportunity to train, learn, and develop their skillset as they strive to become world class athletes. By utilizing the Skylab platform, we are now able to use gamification to connect a global industry, and the result is extraordinary.” Alex McCarthy – CEO and Founder of CheerLife App