The Game Mechanics of Customer Loyalty

By definition, loyalty is expressed when a consumer chooses your product/service when other options are mostly equal. It’s a form of incremental affection whose balance can be easily disturbed. A new way of thinking about loyalty is in the framework of gamification. After all, if loyalty is about driving incremental user action in a crowded environment, gamification is able to do that and deliver viral user growth, improved satisfaction, and revenue. Here are five ways to develop loyalty, based on some of the principles of gamification.

See on mashable.com

Related articles

• Gamification Seems to Double All the Stuff You Want (simplestrategies.me)
• Gamification: Adding Stickiness to Your Campaigns (saniner.wordpress.com)
• How Retail Businesses Can Use Gamification to Engage with Customers (Video) (entrepreneur.com)
• Will It Always Be Fun and Gamification? (entrepreneur.com)
• 7 Examples: Put Gamification To Work (informationweek.com)
• Gamification: Three Ways To Use Gaming For Recruiting, Training, and Health & Wellness (bjconquest.com)
• Is 2012 the Year for Gamification? (socialmediatoday.com)

VIDEO: How’s Your Relationship?

On this Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be appropriate to re-post this classic video produced by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions in 2009.  The message is actually more relevant today!  We must use all of our on-air, on-line, and on-site assets to engage our audience (as well as to increase market share). Marketing is no longer one-way communication, it’s a dialogue.  Consumers have changed.  The way we reach them must change, too.

Follow Up: Christmas Format Success 2010

Image via Wikipedia

A couple months ago, I posted my advocacy for “The Christmas Format” on stations with appropriate format and competitive situations (including a few suggestions and points of consideration).  Arbitron(c) ratings nationally reflect the reason why … and numbers don’t lie:

Conan Checks-in on Foursquare

Fresh on the heels of my post earlier today urging radio, artist management, and labels to come up with ideas to integrate location based marketing into your social media strategy comes news from TBS and Team Coco promoting his return to late night on November 8.  Jennifer Van Grove filed the story for Mashable.

Team Coco, in partnership with AT&T, has launched the The Conan Blimp into the skies above Philadelphia. The orange eye sore will travel all over the east coast for the entire month of October; Conan fans who spot it can check in to the blimp to unlock a special Conan badge on Foursquare.  The Conan Blimp also has its own website complete with a live cam and an always-updating map. True Conan fans that don’t want to miss their chance at the badge can also follow Team Coco on Foursquare and Twitter for updates on the blimp’s whereabouts. 

The campaign is as transparent as they come — those blimp checkins will get distributed to all corners of the social web and spread the message that Conan is back. Still, it’s a massive undertaking that is both strange and fascinating. The month-long east coast blimp trip is sure to be one giant spectacle, and it seems fairly safe to assume that it will attract a fair amount of stares — and possibly even Foursquare checkins.  The blimp-badge partnership is also an interesting indicator of how location, checkins and entertainment marketing can go hand-in-hand. Foursquare tells us that the startup’s participation in the campaign was orchestrated by Jonathan Crowley, sibling to Co-founder Dennis Crowley and the man at the company handling media partnerships of late.

Do you think it’s as brilliant an idea as I do?  Share your comments below.  And, come up with a way for our brands to get on the field.

Related Articles

• Radio – Location Based Marketing (scottsands.com)
• Conan O’Brien Gets His Own Foursquare Badge (and a Blimp) (mashable.com)
• Conan moving his TBS campaign to a blimp (adweek.blogs.com)
• Check in with your favourite NHL hockey team with Foursquare (techvibes.com)
• Conan O’Brien Washes His Desk And Has A Blimp (VIDEO) (tvsquad.com)
• 3 Things to Expect from Conan’s New TBS Show (omg.yahoo.com)

Location-based Radio Promotion

Image via CrunchBase

Location-based marketing is the newest social media buzzword for GPS-based check-in networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, & Yelp.  Foursquare is still in its infancy – even with just over one million registered users – enough to receive most of the hype, which will only get louder now that Facebook has jumped into the game with Facebook Places.  These services aren’t for everyone, and the security problems they create are getting just as much attention as their popularity.  But, I assure you location based marketing is not going away; in fact, it will become a standard part of retail’s marketing mix very quickly.  Consumers are turning to their mobile devices more and more everyday to make purchase decisions, making location based marketing incentives a natural for retail.  Case in point:  Scotty’s Brewhouse in my hometown owns three of the top ten check-in venues thanks to their rewards plan for loyal customers who participate.

What can WE do to integrate location based marketing into our social media strategies?  How does radio use Foursquare when we don’t really have a “location” for checking in?  For that matter, what about television and bands?  There must be something we can do!  Click through for my ideas you can start using today!

Building Followers Through Contesting

You might see a few of your music loving friends posting this update soon:  “Tweet to meet @Maroon5 and @OneRepublic in Houston and win a trip to their show! #HandsAllOver #Secrets.”  One winner, chosen randomly from all of these identical Tweets, wins a flight to Houston with a friend, hotel, tickets for the 10/22 concert, $200 cash, and backstage passes.

The contest is promoted by Maroon 5 & One Republic (of course), Interscope Records (label for both bands), and Live Nation (concert promoter for national tour).  By using proprietary Twitter client “TweetToMeet,” fans are directed to a co-branded contest entry page that makes it very simple to enter – just click the huge red “Tweet” button on the contest page.  Contests that choose winners from a pool of status updates posted to Twitter, Facebook, etc are nothing new … but, the integration of this TweetToMeet app is brilliant!  It accomplishes two things simultaneously: