How to gamify your next marketing survey

Let’s face it: marketing surveys can be boring. And, unfortunately, there aren’t many ways to make them more appealing or engaging. However, our users reported a 57% increase in participation and more than doubled completion rate in the survey, taking advantage of gamification. For these reasons, an AR gamification experience is one of the best ways to make your next marketing survey more captivating, playful and effective.

The rise of the concept of gamification can be traced back to 2002, when it was launched by Nick Pelling.
But what does gamification mean? It means harnessing and applying the game thinking and game mechanics to non-game contexts.

The main reasons that motivate players are:

• Epic Calling: spending a lot of time creating content for the community.
• Development and achievement: wanting to make progress, improve skills, and overcome challenges.
• Empowerment: being involved in a process where you have to come up with solutions and try different things.
• Ownership: feeling like you own something and wanting to make it better.
• Social influence: social factors such as mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, competition, and envy.
• Scarcity: wanting something because you can’t have it.
• Unpredictability: wanting to know what will happen next.
• Avoidance: trying to avoid something negative, like losing your work or admitting that everything you’ve done so far has been for nothing.

This approach has been used successfully by many companies as a way to increase user engagement with their brands. According to research by Gartner, 85% of users find gamified content entertaining and engaging.

#1. Offer rewards or incentives for participation.

This is a no-brainer. The only reason your users might want to join a gamified marketing survey without rewards would be to make it a real game that entertains and amuses. The reality is that in 99% of cases, brands fail to create real, entertaining games. We need to reward, always, the time invested by users in our activities.

In Latin we say “Do ut des.” Literally “I give [something] to you, and you [something else] to me.” Reciprocity in these contexts is crucial. Let us not forget.

This can be anything from a discount or coupon code for their next purchase to a freebie like an e-book or t-shirt. You can also offer point systems where users earn points based on how often they complete surveys and redeem them for rewards. We often use this technique to increase our customer retention. Creating scores, rankings, reiterating these activities over time is a winning strategy if well planned.

#2. Tap into the competitive spirit of your audience.

Rankings can be a powerful tool in gamification because they provide a concrete, measurable goal to work towards: players can try to climb the rankings and improve their position.
They create healthy competition: rankings encourage players to challenge each other and try to get the best result. Additionally, they offer a sense of accomplishment: players can feel proud when they achieve a good ranking or beat other players. Another upside is that they can be customized: rankings can be based on different criteria such as the number of points earned, time spent playing, etc., to give players different options for competition.

In addition, rankings can be used to encourage players to continue playing and actively participate in the game community.

#3. Let those who attend know how others voted.

It may seem like a trivial concept, but people often join surveys only to get feedback on how other participants feel about the topic. “Let’s see how many think like me.”

Sharing the results of a survey with those who participated can be a valuable tool for increasing engagement and encouraging further participation. When participants see how others voted, it provides context for their own views and can be interesting and informative. Sharing the results can also foster discussion and increase transparency, helping to build trust in the survey process. Overall, letting participants know how others voted can create a sense of community and encourage further participation in future surveys.

#4. Make it interactive. Use emerging tech.

There are many emerging technologies that can make a survey more interactive. Artificial intelligence (AI) can create personalized experiences based on user responses. Chatbots can create interactive surveys that feel like a conversation. Voice assistants can allow users to complete surveys using voice commands.

Last, but not least, Augmented Reality.

When an Augmented Reality marketing survey is well-designed, people tend to share the experience 4x times more with their community, compared with a standard multiple-choice survey.

But let’s get to the point of the matter.
After a stay in a hotel, after a dinner at a restaurant, after returning from a holiday, after an exhibition, a show or a sporting event. We could go on for a long time.

For example, after a stay in a hotel, the structure could have a Quiz delivered via email asking the guest how the stay was with closed questions. All without the customer having to make an “effort” by answering open questions, and indeed making the experience fun thanks to the interactivity of a Quiz Face-filter.

Benefits of using Augmented Reality for marketing surveys

In addition to engaging users through immersive experiences and getting them interested in what you have to say, Augmented Reality also gives brands opportunities for interactive content. Creating these surveys with Augmented Reality makes it highly more likely that users will complete it.
In most cases, they are experiencing their first AR marketing survey. Innovation for its own sake is never useful. Combine it with marketing strategies that have been performing for over a hundred years.

Aryel is a powerful Augmented Reality web-based platform that allows you to create AR experiences in a snap thanks to a ton of ready-to-use assets and templates.

Aryel is easy to learn, there is no friction, and no app installation is required for both creators and final users.

But that’s not all: one of the best features for marketers is about data collections and metric analysis: in fact, Aryel allows marketers to get insights and analytics from off- and online marketing campaigns and makes it easy to analyze them in a dedicated dashboard.

Start to gamify your Marketing with Augmented Reality!