In today's competitive landscape, you'll need easy-to-adopt, easy-to-use products to boost market share. SaaS gamification can help you strike the right balance.
SaaS gamification involves creating enjoyable experiences that keep users coming back for more.
For example, you can incorporate achievement badges or progress tracking in your application. By providing users with a sense of accomplishment, they actively participate and get value from your product.
In this post, we'll delve into the world of gamification in SaaS, exploring why it matters for your business. We'll also share practical insights from industry leaders.
Table of Contents
What is gamification?
Gamification turns a task (like logging into a software or making a new purchase) into a game. This makes the activity more enjoyable for the user and increases the likelihood that the task will be completed. Businesses use gamification to create attractive loyalty programs and encourage long-term customer engagement.
This approach takes a boring or mundane task and makes it reward-driven. People love the feeling of accomplishment.
Gamification rewards them with mini incentives while they progress towards an overall goal. This keeps the user continuously engaged and makes it more likely that they'll finish the task at hand.
The system is particularly effective when encouraging participants to complete a long-term task.
While gamification is effective, it takes time to adopt and implement. Your team may be skeptical about investing in these programs without the assurance of success.
Let's review why you should invest in gamification.
Why is gamification important?
Gamification is becoming increasingly popular, as it's proven to motivate customers and employees.
For example, 89% of employees said they were happier and more productive when exposed to gamification. On the opposite end, 61% of employees who experienced non-gamified workflows said they felt bored.
Using gamification for customer engagement resulted in a 54% increase in trial usage and a 15% increase in buy clicks.
That's because customers are more likely to engage with your business when the experience is delightful. They'll remember those positive interactions and crave more.
And, this behavior can make or break your customer loyalty program. According to Bond Brand Loyalty, 64% of loyalty program members spend more money to maximize points earnings.
By implementing gamification, you'll hook active users and create an effective customer loyalty program.
Gamification can and should vary from business to business. After all, you want your programs to stand out and be memorable to the user.
To help your team get inspired, let's review some gamification programs we've seen at other SaaS businesses.
Examples of SaaS Gamification
1. HubSpot
HubSpot's software has plenty of gamification features that optimize the user experience. From motivational pop-up messages to automated checklists, HubSpot's products are all infused with gamified elements.
My favorite is the "optimize" feature available in the blog, website, and landing page tools. As depicted below, this tool lets you know if your content is optimized for SEO.
It provides a handy checklist that automatically turns green once a task is completed.
2. Grammarly
If you don't write every day like us bloggers, you may not have used Grammarly before. However, Grammarly is an excellent tool for tracking your spelling and grammar habits online.
If you're using Google Chrome, Grammarly can be installed as an extension.
Once uploaded, the tool will analyze your emails and other apps including Google Docs. Grammarly will then flag errors and provide suggestions you can implement with a click.
Grammarly also has its own content editor, where you can analyze and score your writing with the tool's AI.
It grades you on grammatical errors, clarity, and overall writing quality. The score updates automatically, so you can aim for the highest score possible.
3. Twitch
Twitch is a popular streaming service where you can watch professionals and amateurs play games or chat with their audience.
To keep its users engaged, Twitch provides various gamification features to both free and premium accounts.
For example, users can be given "Drops" just by watching a stream. These rewards, like badges and accolades, raise the user's status within the online community.
Premium users can receive in-game rewards like new characters, vehicles, and credits. And, if you're hosting a stream, you can create customized badges to award to your most loyal followers.
The image below shows what some of these badges look like.
This gamification approach is brilliant. Twitch creates customer delight without offering a coupon or a discount in return. Instead, it focuses on what users care most about, creating incentives matching those values.
4. Duolingo
As every example on this list shows, gamification is a great way to teach users how to use your app while making it fun.
Duolingo is a fantastic example of this. In their language learning app, they take a task most people shun as adults (language learning) and make it fun.
Their app uses every tool at their disposal to keep users engaged. They also provide a streak, so users know how many days in a row they've practiced.
Like a typical match-three game, each lesson has a threshold for passing. Too many wrong answers and users forfeit one of their hearts which function like extra lives.
Lose three hearts, and you must wait a certain period before trying again. This puts users in a mindset of wanting to answer correctly to proceed along the language roadmap.
5. Xperiencify
Xperiencify is a revolutionary online course platform that uses gamification and 7 psychological triggers that, when used correctly, increase course completion rates 10-30 times that of other platforms.
With triggers such as urgency and FOMO, Xperiencify uses gamification elements such as points, leaderboards, countdowns, easter eggs, and more that increase completion rates, engagement, and repeat customers.
They also have robust community features such as watch parties, popup chatrooms, discussions, social proof, and encouragement.
6. Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is a community-building platform that synthesizes instant messaging, courses, events, and more between community members.
Whether you're setting up a membership of your own or joining one, Mighty Networks makes the process easy. The platform includes a clear checklist that guides users toward engaging with their community.
By making it easy for users to understand how to connect, everyone using Mighty Networks becomes a possible advocate for the service.
7. Whoop
Healthy competition can also gamify the user experience. Boston-based Whoop combined a cutting-edge wearable fitness tracker with a membership app.
8. Calm
With the frenetic pace of life today, finding time to take a breather can be hard.
Calm is a meditation and sleep app that helps build mindfulness habits, even if all you have is one minute.
At the end of each meditation, the app shows you recent activity, including how many days or weeks you've used the app. You'll also earn badges or rewards for doing so. These are then shareable right from the stats page on your profile page.
This is a strong combination of social reinforcement, consistency, and rewards. Users are encouraged to work their way towards finding zen no matter where they are.
9. Starbucks
Coffee drinkers don't need much encouragement to partake in their favorite beverage. Seattle-based coffee franchise Starbucks does so anyway. Their app has a rewards program that gamifies coffee drinking.
Users gain stars for making purchases, which can then be used to pay for drink upgrades, add-ons, or the entire drink itself.
This is a strong combination of social reinforcement, consistency, and rewards. Users are encouraged to work their way towards finding zen no matter where they are.
10. Salesforce
For more complex SaaS applications, a steep learning curve can be a huge obstacle to user adoption.
By structuring the learning experience and rewarding users along the way, you can reduce the time it takes for them to get value out of the service.
Salesforce does this through its Trailhead, which guides users through what they need to understand.
Users can get certified in a variety of skills ranging from various objects or modules within Salesforce, industry use cases, and more.
Once they've passed their certification, users can show off the badges that they've earned either on their profile, LinkedIn, or wherever else they want to tout their achievements.
11. LinkedIn
LinkedIn has gamified the learning experience for their professional users.
Through their LinkedIn Learning platform, users have their pick of career-related skills they can learn. Once they've passed a quiz or certification, LinkedIn encourages users to promote their achievements.
Whether upskilling or breaking into a new role, these badges are a small reward to keep users engaged.
12. Asana
There's nothing as satisfying as crossing an item off your to-do list. Checking a box in a window on your screen sometimes doesn't have the same effect. That's why Asana makes the reward for completing tasks just a little bit flashier.
Whenever you complete a task in Asana, users are rewarded with a unicorn or narwhal flying across the screen. It might not seem like much, but a little extra flair can make product usage from a chore into a habit.
That's because researchers on habit formation have long known that giving even a small reward makes it more likely that habit will stick.
Translating that to SaaS gamification, users will be more likely to want to use your product if it becomes a habit.
13. Ambition
Ambition is a sales enablement/coaching software that helps ramp up reps quicker. Gamification is just one of the many tools for pushing reps to make that extra dial or start that new outreach sequence.
In addition to badges and other awards, Ambition also uses friendly competition to encourage teams.
Through their head-to-head or team-based contests, individuals can compete against each other. Winners can SPIFFs or simply bragging rights.
14. Slack
Slack is a collaboration platform that features instant messaging, video, and audio calls. Slack uses modals and pop-ups throughout the onboarding process to guide users through those initial first steps.
These modal windows operate as both onboarding instructions as well as positive reinforcement. This, in turn, helps reinforce the habit of using Slack by offering praise for a job well done by the new user.
Getting Started
SaaS gamification has proven time and again to be an effective part of product growth strategy. It relies on psychological principles of reward to make users feel they're getting better tasks when they use your app.
Effective gamification can reduce user drop-off, decrease onboarding time, and make them more likely to renew. So start gamifiying your product today.
