Gamification of Lifestyle Apps

Gamification is not new. In fact, the idea of rewards owes its massive success to games and their complex rewarding mechanisms. Be it the newer Mobile games like Brawl Stars and their most successful Clash of Clans to the old days of RPG games, the concept of completing missions or tasks to get some rewards or items unlocked for the rest of the game got every child of the past generation excited.

The idea to engage people in completing the task of a game used to achieve a huge game stickiness and players you to get hooked to the game and its universe for hours. It added opportunities to sell the corresponding merchandise and increase sales for the game studios.

Now imagine the same engagement of that game on a lifestyle app. As a reward, users / players can be awarded bonus points or redeemable gift coupons from the partner vendors. This can be further implemented in layers of complexity with multiple games liked to different category of rewards. For example a certain game will lead you to your chosen rewards in auto sales category and helps you for free car checks and engine checks.

Such scenarios increase the insight for the banks to know which games are doing well and which aren’t. The ones that are doing well have a driver that the end rewards is what get people to that game. If you put a hugely engaging game to a reward category that is not very lucrative then that game will do little to get people to play it and end result doesn’t match the demand.

With these insights, the apps can be designed in a more strategic way to get the most of a marketing campaign or from a particular product placement. This not only benefits the bank but also helps the product company to boost the sales. Again a win-win.

The evolution of this ecosystem will happen soon as the potential is huge, but, what would that timeline be, we are all watching it with excitement. Get ready to be engaged with your bank's app soon that will replace the need of having separate apps for food concierge and movie tickets apps. All benefits & coupons will be hosted in one stop shop of your banking app, and that's the future you'll see very soon.