Once upon a time, a beautiful office glowed in red and white decor. Within the office sat a group of teams scribbling something on a white paper.
A letter to Santa. Yes, everyone was writing a wish for Santa. The HR wished for 100% participation in the Secret Santa game.
The Salesperson wished for more customers and looked at the Marketer who sat in one of the corners with eyes closed, amid a conversation with Santa in mind.
Well, capturing potential buyers’ attention during Christmas, especially when overloaded with Christmas promotions, isn’t probably a wish that can come true quickly.
Such a wish is so challenging that even Santa prefers to rather fulfil an unrealistic wish.
Jokes apart, the point is that the Christmas holiday is when shoppers engage the most, which means Marketers must develop new ways to engage users.
Take emails, for example. As per Salesforce, almost 68% of holiday shoppers pay more attention to emails from companies during the Christmas holidays.
But what matters is what you are going to send in the email. A discounted Christmas sale offer just like everyone else or something that would motivate shoppers to engage with your business?
To help answer this, Gamize wore the Santa hat this Christmas and got on a sleigh to ride past traditional Christmas marketing campaigns and bring gamified strategies for our Marketers and Product Managers.
Check out five gamification ideas to increase engagement for the Christmas marketing campaign 2023.
1. Christmas Countdown Streak
Holiday sales come with a plethora of options from different brands. So, how do you ensure users return to your website or app? You do it with a 5-day countdown streak gamification.
For instance, on 21st December, you encourage users to collect 50 Loyalty Points, maybe named Christmas Candies. The next day, they can collect 100 Points and return every day to win more.
On Christmas Eve, they can win 500 Loyalty Points and use them on 25th December to win significant discounts on their favourite products or avail of a premium offering.
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) football club did something similar by launching an Advent Calendar with daily prizes and got 47% of opt-ins to its newsletter.
(Disclaimer: This image is for informational purposes only. Opinions or points expressed represent PSG’s views
and don’t necessarily represent the official position or policies of Gamize by OGL.)
2. Christmas Champ Quiz
Be it the Jingle Bells song or The Grinch movie, Christmas is associated with music and movies and comes with its history. Hence, it’s a great way to challenge users to test their Christmas knowledge.
For this, quiz gamification can come in handy wherein you can ask users to guess a Christmas carol movie character or simply answer five questions on Christmas origin.
BMW launched a scroll and reveal quiz on Christmas customs where people had to read ten custom statements and check if they were right or wrong, which is a fun yet simple way of engaging users.
(Disclaimer: This image is for informational purposes only. Opinions or points expressed represent BMW’s views
and don’t necessarily represent the official position or policies of Gamize by OGL.)
3. Christmas Badges
Tapping into the collector side of users, you can challenge them to collect Christmas badges reflecting Christmas essence, such as Christmas trees, Santa hats, Socks, Bells, Reindeer, Candy, Gingerbread, etc.
Users can complete tasks such as placing an order, leaving a review, watching a video, etc, to collect a badge. Upon collecting five badges from each category, users can win a grand prize like a cashback or voucher.
One can only imagine the traction your platform would get as users keep visiting to collect those badges.
We’re sure that most of us know that Starbucks’ Loyalty Program offers Stars on every purchase, but did you know that during the holiday season, they also give out Stickers?
That’s right. Starbucks leverages badge or sticker gamification to promote its Christmas collection.
(Disclaimer: This image is for informational purposes only. Opinions or points expressed represent Starbucks’s views
and don’t necessarily represent the official position or policies of Gamize by OGL.)
Buyers get to collect stickers for every drink they purchase and unlock the Starbucks Christmas collection, which comprises a sipper, wallet, and more if users collect 18 stickers.
4. Christmas Scratch Card
Who doesn’t like surprise rewards? Scratch cards are one of the best ways to offer Christmas gifts; you only have to hide a reward in a scratch card.
The best part is that you can make your users curious about which reward they will find by setting different probabilities for different rewards.
Tallink, a passenger and cargo shipping company, used a snowflake-themed scratch card game during Christmas to engage their Club One loyalty program members.
Loyal customers could scratch the card to win Christmas gifts like a Gold membership upgrade, ebook, etc. The shipping company saw improvement in the campaign’s CTR and engagement.
(Disclaimer: This image is for informational purposes only. Opinions or points expressed represent Tallink’s views
and don’t necessarily represent the official position or policies of Gamize by OGL.)
5. Christmas Spin to Win
Spin, match and win! Slot machines are excellent for using a digital form of gaming. The thrill of watching a spinning reel, hoping to get a matching combination, is so good that people want to spin again and again.
Charlotte Olympia, a British luxury shoe and accessories brand, understood this and launched a ‘Spin to Win’ slot-machine game to promote its Christmas collection and drive traffic.
(Disclaimer: This image is for informational purposes only. Opinions or points expressed represent Charlotte Olympia’s views
and don’t necessarily represent the official position or policies of Gamize by OGL.)
Users could sign up and play to win a prize upon getting three matching styles: shoes, a handbag, sunglasses, etc.
6. Christmas-Theme Games
Brands that use game elements in their marketing tactics experience a significant 48% increase in customer engagement (Mambo.io).
Games undoubtedly engage customers, but brands must use contextual games with business value to enjoy maximum engagement.
For example, Adsterra, an advertising network, created a Holiday Roll game challenge to increase traffic on its platform in 2022.
The game was simple; users had to sign up and play to roll a snowball without smashing it into a Christmas tree. The top three winners on the leaderboard would win prizes of $500, $250 and $100.
(Disclaimer: This image is for informational purposes only. Opinions or points expressed represent Adsterra’s views
and don’t necessarily represent the official position or policies of Gamize by OGL.)
Jingle User Engagement Bells with Gamize
Streaks, quizzes, badges, scratch cards, slot machines, and games are excellent gamification implementation examples.
But with Christmas waiting at our doorstep, should you have to feel the pressure of building such campaigns from scratch?
Not really. A SaaS gamification software like Gamize can help you launch all of the above gamification activities and more, along with customisation and monitoring options.
For instance, ‘Holiday Cheer’ is one of our many ready-to-launch gamification templates that you can use to offer rewards like coins, vouchers and much more.
Want to learn more? Talk to our gamification experts today.
