In today’s competitive event landscape, organizations and planners are constantly seeking innovative ways to stand out and engage attendees.
Gamification is an increasingly popular tactic to add and enhance engagement – whether for an in-person conference, a virtual sales meeting, or a hybrid event combining the best of both.
By using game design principles and mechanics to offer interactive event experiences, attendees feel more excited and engaged in your event, and in turn, gamified approaches create a more memorable experience that will encourage learning and returning.
Keep reading how to add gamification to your event experience and strategies for including it with your mobile event app.
How to Develop a Gamification Strategy
Gamification is powerful because it uses the natural reward circuit of our brains to direct and maintain our attention on a specific task.
Using game-like elements, such as offering rewards, holding competitions, keeping leaderboards, and hosting actual games, is a great way to get attendees to pay attention, and boost learning and retention.
How do you start developing your gamification strategy? Follow this framework:
- Review your event objectives and goals
Your event objectives could be to create more attendee networking and connections, reinforce learning and retention, or reward participation.
Gamification can help you achieve all these goals and more! Discuss your plans with internal stakeholders to determine what level of gamification makes sense for your organization’s desired outcomes.
- Assess your target audience preferences
Audiences have different preferences and adoption of gamification strategies. Some attendees may like to participate in competitive challenges with results posted on leaderboards for prizes, while others may prefer responding to poll challenges submitted anonymously.
To make your approach relevant to your audience, prioritize gamification elements that fit your goals and objectives and the preferred participation method for your audience.
- Choose a gamification technique
Choosing a gamification technique includes determining the game mechanics and elements. Again, this depends on your objective, audience, and type of event.
For example, quiz contests or polls may be highly effective if the event has a training or education focus. If the priority is helping attendees network, offering points for connections made may be more rewarding.
- Decide what attendees get out of the approach
Ask what’s in it for event attendees when determining your gamification strategy.
The gamification approach should offer something meaningful to the audience – whether it’s a sense of achievement, recognition, a coveted prize, or something else.
- Determine how to measure the impact
Measuring your gamification strategy’s success, return on investment (ROI), and return on objectives (ROO) is critical.
Before implementing a gamification strategy, determine how you’ll measure, record, and report performance. For example, will you share metrics such as the following with stakeholders?
- Total number of active participants
- Percentage of the event audience partaking in activities
- Average number of questions or polls answered (either in total or correct)
- Changes in knowledge as measured by pre-and post-event polls
- Increases in retention as gathered by before and after quiz assessments
Top Types of Event Gamification
- Engagement leaderboard
There are plenty of easy ways to add gamification and reward participation for typical event activities, such as answering questions during sessions, signing up for vendors’ mailing lists, participating in networking activities, etc.
Assign points to each selected action and set up a way for participants to win points for completing the corresponding activity. Display a running leaderboard tally throughout the event to spark a healthy dose of competition and drive attendees to keep participating to earn more points.
Learn more about creating leaderboards within the ConnexMe platform.
- Trivia
There’s a reason why knowledge-based game shows continue to remain popular. People love to test their knowledge.
Gamify your event with a trivia contest – whether it’s specific product knowledge, company history, or general pop culture – and invite attendees to showcase their smarts. For example, you can have speakers start each session with a trivia question and ask attendees to submit answers through the event app.
Or, send out trivia questions about information covered in sessions to keep attendees on their toes. Establishing a leaderboard with a running tally of each attendee’s score for correct answers throughout the event helps to make sessions more interactive and engaging.
- Giveaway Contests
Contests are another easy way to include a gamified experience in your event.
A contest requires attendees to complete a specific task – such as submitting a session review, answering a presenter’s question, or visiting an exhibitor or sponsor. Often, attendees are rewarded for participation with points or digital badges, with those scoring the highest points winning select prizes.
When implementing a giveaway contest, be very clear in deciding and communicating the participation criteria, such as needing to complete a set number of activities. And don’t forget to post the contest rules, the prizes, and the number of winners to be selected.
- Scavenger hunts
In a scavenger hunt, attendees receive a list of tasks to complete at some point during the event.
For example, they may need to find five pictures throughout the exhibit area or discover hidden clues in sessions.
Like a giveaway contest, participants can be rewarded with a special prize if they complete all or a certain percentage of the tasks on the list. Alternatively, they can receive bonus points added to their leaderboard tally.
- Photo contests
A photo contest is similar to a scavenger hunt but centered solely on photos. You might challenge guests to take a picture with two attendees from different countries or take a digital selfie with a presenter or fellow attendees and post it to social media with a designated hashtag.
No matter what event gamification strategies are used, don’t forget that the strategy only works if it is easy for attendees to participate!
Gamifying your next meeting or event through your mobile app is a great way to uplevel your event experience and encourage attendees to connect with you or each other. When considering user adoption, consider a mobile event app like ConnexMe that serves as a central engagement and interactivity hub.
Discover how ConnexMe helps transform the event experience and improve participant engagement.