Dynamic Marketing Communiqué

This e-commerce company grew its annual buyers by 130% in 2018! Find out how it did this! [Thursdays: FYO!]

November 12, 2021

Maintaining and improving customer engagement rates online is one of the challenges you and your brand must work hard to overcome.

This isn’t as simple as it sounds… according to Microsoft’s consumer insights data, a website user’s attention span is only around 8 seconds. 

For example: From the time some readers started reading this article until this point, they probably have already gotten distracted by their social media, pets, or simply their thoughts, among other things. 

Attention can be hard to retain.

… but not if you incentivize it.

If you know there’s a reward waiting for you if and when you finish reading this article, you’d be more compelled to read until the end. 

That phenomenon is basically what makes this marketing strategy work.

Curious about what that strategy is?

Gamification.

This is a marketing strategy that encourages user engagement by using game elements in non-game contexts and providing incentives that users can avail through a brand’s website or app. 

Gamification has a number of benefits when used as an online marketing strategy:

  • It provides you with vital customer data. What are the games your audience uses the most? What type of products do they spend their rewards on? Is there any particular season when your target audience tends to buy more? These kinds of data will help you analyze the key aspects that you should focus on in your business.
  • It encourages consumers to be loyal customers. Providing incentives or rewards helps compel consumers to interact more with your brand… and the more your target market enjoys engaging with your brand, the higher the chance they’ll convert into your brand’s customers. 
  • It increases the time online users spend on your app/website. Due to games they need to complete to gain incentives, online users will likely spend more time on your app/website. The best part of this? They enjoy doing it!
  • It helps you stay engaged with your customers. Gamification lets users enjoy their time using your app/website, thereby increasing user satisfaction and reducing bounce rates. These will help your brand’s website rank higher on search engine results! 

Here’s one company that successfully incorporated this strategy:

SHOPEE

This e-commerce company under Sea Limited (a tech conglomerate headquartered in Singapore) was launched in 2015 and currently operates in the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This platform is tailored to the countries where it operates to offer customers with easy, accessible, and fast online shopping experience.

To increase customers and retain current ones, Shopee launched a virtual currency called Shopee coins in 2018. These can be redeemed for manual discounts on an online shopper’s order. While these virtual coins could only be availed through the cashback vouchers at first, Shopee has added various ways for consumers to get Shopee coins.

This is where gamification came into the picture… 

After the launch of the virtual currency, Shopee added a number of games during the same year to add more fun to the marketing strategy. 

These include: 

  • Shopee Shake: Shake your mobile phone to make virtual coins fall, and whatever you collect is your  prize.
  • Shopee Claw: Move the claw towards the prize of your choice then pressing the “START” button to grab the reward.
  • Shopee Candy: Switch and match virtual candies to complete levels and redeem coins using diamonds.
  • Shopee Bubble: Aim for and pop 3 or more matching bubbles. Clearing levels or winning matches enables you to earn points or diamonds.

Playing and accomplishing these games would directly reward online users with Shopee coins, diamonds that they can use to redeem coins, or a turn in a fortune wheel they can spin virtually, which would then reward them with up to 1,000 Shopee coins. 

… and that’s not all.

For the cherry on top, these games also allow shoppers to win other rewards like iPads, Apple Airpods, or iPhones!

As a result of its innovative features and strategies, Shopee recorded incredible feats with the help of its gamification strategy:

  • Shopee’s gross merchandise value in 2017 was USD 1.6 billion, but at the end of 2018, it went up to USD 10.3 billion.
  • Shopee’s gross orders increased from 98.3 million in 2017 to 206.9 million in 2018.
  • Shopee’s annual active buyer percentage rate grew by 130% in 2018.
  • According to app analytics company App Annie, Shopee became the most downloaded app in the Shopping category in Southeast Asia and Taiwan in 2018.
  • In Indonesia (Shopee’s largest market), Shopee recorded 83.8 million orders in the fourth quarter of 2018! This epitomizes their position as a leader in the e-commerce sector.

These results show that gamification is one of the effective strategies to advertise your brand online and attract more customers to your website or app. 

… and the more customers you have, the higher the chance that they’ll talk about your brand to their peers online and offline. 

This will lead to more consumers knowing about your business! 

However, as a business owner or marketer, you must also assess whether or not the gamification strategy fits your brand’s core and identity.

Take a moment to review your brand’s vision. Will it still be the same after you incorporate some light-hearted fun? 

If your answer to this question is: 

  • “No,” then gamification might not be the appropriate strategy for you. 
  • “Yes,” then gamification it is! 

Use this strategy to motivate your audience to interact with your brand!

With proper execution, gamification will help you boost your brand’s engagement rates, acquire more customers, improve your business’ image, and maximize your brand’s visibility to your prospects.

Let the fun begin!

About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Thursdays: FYO! Find You Optimization”

Why should you stop thinking SEO and start thinking FYO?

We’re not saying that you should abandon Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Don’t get us wrong, of course, we know this is something very important, especially in today’s digital marketing age.

The internet landscape is vast, and a world of its own. You really need to distinguish yourself and make your brand/company/website known and easily searchable.

Better yet, get to the top of page one for Top Results on Google or any other search engine.

However, what is the purpose of SEO? It’s that customers Find You!

That’s what matters. So, while SEO is one factor of FYO… it really is only one, and we ought not to abandon all the myriad of ways digitally and offline for improving your FYO.

How can we look at this from a different and better perspective?

Let’s say you have it in the bag! You and your team are experts in SEO. Awesome. But did you ever wonder what else you could do to push it further and give your SEO skills a boost?

FYO! Find You Optimization!

You need your target audience to FIND YOU—your brand, product, service, or offer. This is SEO plus other tools that increase visibility online (and offline).

Every Thursday, we publish content on how you can get your target market to find you, beyond the typical “type and search.” There are other things you can do along with your SEO to give your online advertising process a boost.

Try considering other tactics beyond it—WOMO (Word Of Mouth Optimization), RO (Referral Optimization), and “All-Other-Means-Of-Getting-Your-Target-Market-To-Find-You” Optimization (AOMOGYTMTFY, if you’d like a long acronym). 

Part of a great marketing strategy is knowing how to adapt new methods and make use of different types of marketing and promotion that best fit your business goals and which give you the results you want.

Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful.

Stay tuned for next Thursday’s FYO!

Cheers,

Kyle Yu 
Head of Marketing 
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities 
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