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Whether it’s the thrill of conquering a virtual realm or the satisfaction of unlocking new levels, the allure of games is universal and timeless.
This intrinsic love for games has birthed an ingenious digital marketing strategy — a secret weapon for increasing brand awareness and customer engagement.
Key Takeaways
Gamification is more than a trend; it’s a transformative approach that taps into the core of human psychology, offering personalised rewards and customised experiences.
From boosting user engagement and brand awareness to collecting data in a non-intrusive manner and increasing conversion rates, the incorporation of game elements into your marketing efforts can lead to impressive results.
Imagine infusing the excitement of a game into your marketing efforts, where every interaction becomes an engaging challenge and each purchase transforms into a rewarding achievement!
This article will explore the benefits of gamification in marketing, explain how to implement gamification in marketing, and will discuss different gamification marketing examples with step-by-step scenarios.
Ready, set, go!
What is Gamification in Marketing?
Utilising game design elements and mechanics, gamification in marketing effectively captivates and propels individuals towards specific actions by leveraging incentives like rewards, badges, points, and leaderboards. This prevalent marketing approach seamlessly embeds game dynamics into diverse arenas like websites, apps, and social media platforms.
Let us delve into the captivating realm of gamification, exploring its multifaceted benefits that extend beyond mere entertainment. Prepare to unlock the next level of customer engagement and brand loyalty through the strategic fusion of playfulness and marketing prowess.
1. Increases User Engagement
Engaging today’s tech-savvy and easily-distracted consumers is a perpetual challenge. Marketing gamification provides a unique solution by turning routine interactions into enjoyable experiences.
By integrating game elements such as challenges, rewards, and leaderboards, brands can captivate their audience’s attention and keep them actively participating. This heightened engagement translates into extended interaction periods with your brand, leading to deeper connections and enhanced recall.
2. Builds Brand Awareness
In a cluttered digital environment, breaking through the noise and making your brand memorable is crucial. Incorporation gamification in marketing allows you to create interactive experiences that stick in the minds of consumers.
Through memorable games and challenges, your brand’s identity becomes intertwined with positive emotions and enjoyable moments. As players share their experiences with friends and family, your brand’s reach expands, leading to increased brand awareness.
3. Zero-Party Data Collection in a Non-Intrusive Way
While data is probably one of the most valuable assets for a business, concerns over data privacy have prompted a shift towards more transparent and consensual data collection methods.
From Apple’s App Tracking Transparency updates to the introduction of GA4 and cookieless tracking by Google, brands have been taking more responsibility in data privacy and transparency.
Implementing gamification in marketing offers an unobtrusive way to gather valuable insights through zero-party data collection. Players willingly provide information as they engage with games, surveys, or interactive quizzes. This approach fosters trust and allows brands to personalise marketing efforts effectively, all while respecting user preferences and privacy.
4. Increases Conversion Rate
Converting leads into paying customers is the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign and gamification has shown to be a potent conversion booster.
By integrating compelling game mechanics into your sales funnel, you guide users seamlessly through the buyer’s journey. As players engage with your “games”, they become more emotionally invested, making them more likely to complete a desired action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or requesting a demo.
5. Makes Promotions More Interesting
Traditional promotional methods can often feel repetitive and uninspiring. Implementing gamification in marketing, on the other hand, injects an element of excitement into promotions by adding an element of surprise and challenge.
Whether it’s a Spin the Wheel game, a digital scavenger hunt, or a trivia contest related to your products or services, gamified promotions capture attention and encourage participation, leading to a more engaging and enjoyable promotional experience.
6. Educates Customers About Your Products and Services
Complex products or services can be challenging to explain effectively. Implementing gamification in your marketing presents a creative solution by transforming the learning process into an engaging adventure.
Interactive simulations, quizzes, and tutorials presented as games make it easier for customers to grasp complex concepts. This not only increases their understanding but also leaves a lasting impression, making them more likely to remember and consider your offerings even if they don’t convert right away.
How to Implement Gamification in Marketing
Gamification has emerged as a powerful strategy in marketing, offering a unique approach to customer interaction that can drive brand loyalty, increase conversions, and create memorable experiences.
Pay extra attention to these steps while implementing gamification in your marketing strategy to ensure the best results:
Determine your goals: Before diving into gamification, clearly outline your marketing objectives. Are you looking to boost customer engagement, increase brand awareness, drive sales, or build your email list? Defining your goals will help you tailor your gamification efforts to align with your overall business strategy.
Understand your audience: Effective gamification relies on a deep understanding of your target audience. What are their preferences, behaviours, and motivations? Gather insights through tools like Segmentify Analytics to identify the elements of gamification that will resonate most with your audience.
Choose game mechanics: Consider elements such as points, badges, leaderboards, challenges, virtual rewards, and progress tracking. The mechanics you choose should align with your objectives and appeal to your audience’s interests.
Integrate gamification into your existing marketing channels: Gamification shouldn’t exist in isolation—it should seamlessly integrate into your existing marketing channels. Whether it’s your website, social media platforms, mobile app, or email campaigns, ensure that the gamified elements enhance the overall user experience and support your brand messaging.
Set clear rules and progression paths: Clearly communicate the rules, objectives, and progression paths to participants. Provide them with a sense of purpose and direction as they navigate through the gamified elements. Transparency fosters trust and ensures a fair playing field.
Design for UX: Ensure that the gamified interface is intuitive, visually appealing, and easy to navigate. A seamless and enjoyable UX will encourage participants to stay engaged and continue interacting with your brand.
Monitor and analyse performance: Implementing gamification is not a one-time thing. Continuously monitor the performance of your gamified campaigns. Collect data on user interactions, engagement levels, conversion rates, and other relevant metrics. Analyse this data to identify areas of improvement and refine your gamification strategy over time.
Gamification Marketing Examples
Whether you’re looking to capture the interest of first-time visitors or re-engage abandoning users through exit intent strategies, gamification can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.
Let’s go over different gamification marketing scenarios and see how gamification marketing works in action:
Reduce Exit Rate with Gamification
Identify key exit points: Before you can implement exit intent gamification, identify the key exit points on your website, landing page, or app. These are moments when visitors are about to leave without taking the desired action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.
Create an engaging game overlay: Develop a captivating game overlay that appears when users attempt to exit the page. This overlay could feature a simple yet addictive game that ties into your brand or product. An eCommerce site could use a Spin the Wheel pop-up offering discounts or free shipping codes.
Reward engagement: If you’re trying to reduce exit rates, rewards should incentivise users to stay longer on site. Continuing with the eCommerce example, the rewards should have time limits to encourage the users to continue with product exploration and make a purchase.
Direct the users to take action: Integrate a call-to-action (CTA) within the game overlay to direct users toward the desired conversion. If you want the user to use the discount they’ve just won, use an “Add to cart” button so that the product they were just looking at that triggered the exit intent pop-up because they were about to leave the page is added to their cart right away. In other words, match the end action to your goal in the beginning.
Abandoned Cart Recovery with Gamification
Identify cart abandonment segments: Not every abandoned cart is the same. Using platforms like Segmentify, identify different sets of Dynamic Segments for different cart abandonment scenarios. Do you want to target high-value carts, carts with cross-selling potentials, or abandoned carts containing specific products?
Use personalised emails: Set up personalised email marketing campaign flows for different cart abandonment segments that not only reminds them of the items left behind but also introduces a gamified element to get them back to the website or app.
Unlocking the rewards: Encourage users to complete their purchase by offering them discounts or exclusive offers upon successful completion of the game. Make sure the rewards are enticing enough to motivate that specific segment to return and finalise their transaction.
Reinforce urgency: Highlight the limited-time nature of the unlocked reward, emphasising that it’s valid only for a certain period. This sense of urgency encourages swift action, pushing the user to finalise their purchase sooner rather than later.
Loyalty Program Enhancement with Gamification
Assess current loyalty program: Evaluate your existing loyalty program and identify areas where gamification elements can be seamlessly integrated. This could include point-based systems, tiers, or rewards for specific actions like referrals, social sharing, and repeat purchases. If you don’t have a customer loyalty program at the moment, work on its design with gamification in mind.
Encourage regular use: Create interactive challenges or missions that members can complete to earn extra rewards or move up to higher tiers. These challenges could involve tasks like logging onto their account everyday for a predetermined period, completing a certain number of transactions, engaging with your brand on multiple platforms, leaving reviews, or participating in user-generated content campaigns.
Showcase progress: Allow members to track their progress and see how close they are to unlocking the next reward or tier. This visual representation of progress can motivate them to remain engaged and continue participating in your loyalty program.
First-Time Visitor Engagement with Gamification
Collect email addresses: Use straightforward gamification designs like Spin the Wheel or Scratch-off to encourage the first-time visitors to join your email list.
Send welcome emails: Send warm welcome emails to newcomers. Design the email to include interactive elements such as surveys, quizzes, or preference-based challenges. Encourage visitors to participate by providing valuable insights about their preferences, interests, and needs.
Progressive data collection: Utilise progressive customer profiling techniques to collect additional data with each interaction. As visitors engage with subsequent emails or landing pages, gradually build a more comprehensive profile that informs your personalization efforts.
Personalise incentives: Based on the data collected, personalise the incentives you offer in follow-up emails. Tailor content recommendations, discounts, or exclusive offers to align with each visitor’s expressed preferences, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Segment content delivery:Segment your email list based on the data gathered, creating targeted content streams that resonate with specific user interests. Deliver content, promotions, and product recommendations that genuinely appeal to each segment.
Conversion-oriented follow-up: Craft follow-up emails that strategically guide visitors toward conversion actions. Whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a trial, or exploring a specific product category, customise the messaging to align with their journey.
Zero-Party Data Collection with Gamification
Rather than just collecting email addresses, you can use gamification to collect other kinds of zero-party data without bothering and pestering your users.
How?
See for yourself 👇
Ask the users to swipe right: The most straightforward way to find out what your customers like is to just ask them. We’ve decided to spice things up with a Tinder-inspired game, in our example.
Create personalised collections: Create a collection with the items the user swiped right. But here’s where things get interesting; include personalised recommendations in the collection based on what the customer told you during the little Tinder-inspired game.
Craft another game: Now that you know what they’re interested in, hit ‘em with another game—spin the wheel. They’re already interested in a bunch of products because they have seen them, either because they specifically selected them or the algorithm made personalised selections based on what they chose in the first step.
Encourage further engagement: Create a good old fashion Spin the Wheel game using these products. Since they’re already interested in them, they will be more likely to use their discount codes! However, don’t trigger this second gamification campaign right after the other. Give 2-3 days before this second game is triggered.
Wrapping Up
Integrating gamification in marketing has transcended being a mere trend to become a transformative strategy rooted in human psychology. Gamification not only offers an engaging way to interact with customers but also serves as a powerful tool for achieving various marketing objectives.
To implement gamification successfully, you need a strategic approach involving clear goals, audience insights, thoughtful mechanics, seamless integration, and user-centric design. By continuously monitoring and adapting, businesses can tap into gamification’s potential to captivate, convert, and foster customer loyalty—a bridge between playfulness and strategic marketing prowess.
Ready to harness gamification’s power? Contact Segmentify now for expert guidance, turning every customer interaction into an enthralling journey that enhances brand loyalty and drives conversion rates.
Who here has their Black Friday 2023 shopping wishlist ready already? 🙋♀️🙋♂️🙋
Black Friday is an eagerly anticipated shopping event both by brands and consumers. Consumers are excited because of the Black Friday deals, while brands are because of the many business opportunities the shopping event promises.
Well, they might be onto something.
In 2022, Shopify reported an unprecedented success during the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend: Independent businesses across the globe achieved a remarkable sales record of $7.5 billion, a significant 19% increase in sales compared to Shopify’s Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend in 2021.
Now, consider this as well: 73% of digital marketers think email marketing is an excellent marketing channel, surpassing SEO (72%) and paid search (67%).
You don’t even have to imagine what sort of power you will wield by utilising email marketing in your Black Friday campaigns. So let’s go over the steps you must take to get the best results from this endeavour.
This article will briefly explore the benefits of email marketing for Black Friday before delving into how to develop a Black Friday email marketing campaign strategy.
Key Takeaways
Shopify sellers alone generated $7.5 billion during Black Friday weekend 2022.
Email marketing is the most preferred marketing channel by 73% of digital marketers.
By cultivating an engaged subscriber base and crafting compelling emails, you can experience a highly profitable Black Friday.
Benefits of Black Friday Email Marketing Campaigns
As can be expected, during the eagerly awaited (both by brands and consumers) Black Friday period, email marketing takes on an even more critical role in captivating and converting customers.
Email marketing allows companies to reach a wide audience, build anticipation, and drive sales during this busy shopping season with enticing deals, discounts, and promotions.
Here’s what you can expect to get from Black Friday email marketing:
How to Develop Effective Black Friday Email Marketing Campaigns in 8 Steps
1. Build a Targeted, High-Quality Email List
A targeted, high-quality email list is a prerequisite for every successful Black Friday email marketing campaign.
You can use the most sophisticated design, write the most compelling copies, and provide the most special special offers. Still, all would be for nothing if you don’t correctly segment and target your Black Friday email campaign list. Without a clear vision of your target audience, your Black Friday email marketing campaigns would be just another email sent to the trash can.
To build an engaging email list for a great Black Friday email marketing campaign, pay attention to:
Quality: Don’t buy email lists. Sending emails without consent from users will affect your sender’s reputation negatively. Bots, spam accounts, and abandoned email addresses don’t convert anyway.
Relevance: Only target people genuinely interested in your products or services when building your Black Friday email marketing list. If you don’t, you’ll have to deal with high unsubscription and low conversion rates.
Quantity: Once you’ve got the email list quality and relevance figured out, build your email list and expand to wider audiences.
2. Craft Compelling Black Friday Email Marketing Copies
Now that you’ve built your email list let’s talk about your Black Friday email marketing campaign’s content. We’ll go over each element one by one:
Subject line: Your email copy might be excellent, but no one will even see it unless your email subject line convinces them to open the email in the first place. Learn how to write converting email subject lines.
Preheader text: Sometimes called “preview text”, a preheader text is a brief description of an email’s content. Adding a preheader text to your Black Friday email marketing campaigns will get your audience’s attention and lead to higher open rates.
Email copy: Use active language and write in the second person; the email is directed at the reader, not you. Your Black Friday promotion should be about what benefits you’re offering, so don’t talk about features. Keep your copy brief and use it to create excitement for the upcoming Black Friday deals.
Multimedia: Enhance the appeal of your Black Friday emails with images and videos. Increase urgency and create excitement with countdowns.
Social proof: Not every Black Friday email marketing campaign has to have these. However, generally speaking, people are more easily persuaded by others’ opinions. If you deem customer testimonials necessary for your email campaign, make sure they’re easy to identify and skimmable. Alternatively, you can use badges for popular products, best sellers, hottest deals, etc.
Call-to-action: Have actionable and easy-to-spot (People skim their emails) CTAs in your Black Friday email marketing campaigns.
3. Design Mobile-Optimised Emails
You need a mobile-first approach to your Black Friday email marketing; here’s why:
Mobile accounts for 26-78% of email opens, depending on your target audience, industry, and email type.
Almost 72% of users will delete and not read an email if it’s not mobile-optimised. This will lead to lower conversions and ROI and harm your brand reputation.
Here are a few things to consider to make your Black Friday email marketing campaigns mobile-optimised:
Subject lines and preheader texts: Keep them short to increase readability and open rates.
Design layout: Use a single-column layout. This will make it easier for you to create the emails, and such emails will be easier to read.
Load time: Most of us check our emails on the go— while waiting for our coffee to be prepared at the local coffee shop, for example. No one has patience for slow-to-load emails, so compress large-sized multimedia. But don’t forgo the quality while doing so!
Alt text: Ensure the accessibility of your Black Friday email campaigns by adding related alt texts to images.
4. Implement Email Automation and Personalisation
Email marketing automation transforms the manual process of sending marketing emails into an automated workflow that generates recipients based on specific criteria. Subsequently, it triggers the delivery of emails to those recipients in a predetermined sequence.
Once you have your high-quality Black Friday email marketing lists and email copies in place, email marketing automation provides you with the flexibility, efficiency and ability to personalise at scale.
Triggered emails based on user actions, such as abandoned carts or wishlists, add a touch of immediacy, ensuring timely communication and increasing the chances of conversions. Solutions like Dynamic Segmentation make life incredibly easy for marketers in such scenarios.
Unlike traditional segmentation approaches grouping people based on past behaviours, Dynamic Segmentation creates segments in real-time. With Dynamic Segmentation marketing, it becomes possible to personalise marketing messages for each individual in real-time, offering a more tailored and responsive approach.
All you need to do as a marketer is to:
Define the rules for your target dynamic segments.
Prepare Black Friday email marketing content for different scenarios and campaigns.
Set up the triggers for your Black Friday email marketing campaigns.
Your dynamic segments will change in real-time based on the user’s immediate actions. Therefore, they will receive the correct personalised Black Friday email campaign, increasing the probability of conversion.
5. Plan the Timing and Frequency of Emails Carefully
How many emails is too many? At what time should you send your Black Friday email campaigns to ensure maximum conversion?
Email campaigns sent on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday get the highest engagement.
Email marketing campaigns sent between 9 am-12 pm on Tuesdays generate the most engagement, followed by Mondays and Wednesdays within the same time frame.
Marketing emails sent Friday through Sunday see the lowest open and click-through rates.
Balancing email frequency to avoid overwhelming subscribers is a delicate act. It’s best to keep in mind that email frequency best practices depend on the industry and customer life cycle.
But remember this, too: We’re talking about Black Friday email marketing campaigns.
Customers across all industries eagerly wait for those Black Friday campaigns. (I, for instance, am planning to get a new Kindle this Black Friday and will be on the lookout for the related emails.)
A Shopify study reveals consumers actively search for great deals from their preferred brands. According to the study, which gathered responses from over 24,000 consumers worldwide, 76% of them are focused on finding higher-quality products that offer durability. Additionally, a significant majority (84%) intend to compare prices to secure the best discounts before making their purchases during the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend.
It’s safe to assume that Black Friday email campaigns will have higher frequency than regular campaigns due to consumer expectations and demand. But always consider these three key points for your Black Friday email schedule:
Goals: Know what you aim to achieve with each Black Friday email campaign. This will help you set the schedule for each campaign.
Customer’s journey: This takes us back to step 1 in building your Black Friday email marketing campaign. You can’t target users in all three stages of a buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, decision) with the same message and at the same frequency. You need to consider what customers in each step need; you need a proper email marketing segmentation strategy.
Engagement metrics: There isn’t an exact science to email marketing frequency, so closely monitor your engagement metrics and compare them to past data to find that sweet sweet spot.
6. A/B Test and Optimise
In email marketing, A/B testing involves the practice of distributing two different versions of your campaign to separate groups of subscribers. The primary objective is to determine which variation yields the most favourable response, ultimately helping optimise the campaign’s overall performance.
So, which elements should you test?
Subject lines: Given its influence on open rates, subject line testing should be at the top of your list. A/B test your subject lines for length, tone of voice, and word order. You can also test what happens if you use numbers or all capitals (e.g. BLACK FRIDAY) in the subject line.
Preheader text: What was said about A/B testing email subject lines applies to your preheader texts as well.
From name: You can try and see if your subscribers engage more with “From [BRAND]” or “From [PERSON] from [BRAND]”.
CTAs: Which colour and font combination works best for CTAs? What position should it be at?
Sending time: We’ve just discussed in the step above that optimum email frequency and sending time differ significantly for each business. A/B test to find yours.
Document and thoroughly analyse the A/B test results to optimise your Black Friday email campaigns.
7. Ensure Compliance with the Email Marketing Laws
Various laws govern email marketing depending on the location of both the marketer and the recipients. However, the essential ones that every marketer should be familiar with are:
Although adhering to every law and regulation related to email marketing might appear overwhelming and challenging, entirely disregarding them is not a wise strategy either.
Prioritising compliance is essential for sustainable growth and a positive brand image. Follow these best practices to ensure compatibility with the laws and regulations:
Have a clean email list.
Get and record user consent.
Have easy opt-out options for subscribers.
Process opt-out requests quickly.
Don’t use deceiving email subject lines.
Provide your business’ physical address and link to privacy and cookie policies.
8. Continuously Monitor and Measure the Campaign Performance
After all these steps, you’re still not done with your Black Friday email marketing campaigns. Once your campaigns are out there in the wild, the fun part begins—monitoring and optimising.
Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), such as open rates and conversions, is imperative to assess whether your campaigns meet the expected performance benchmarks.
Email open rate: Low open rates may signal that your subject lines or preheader texts are not engaging enough. You might need to make some changes.
Click-through rates: Low CTR may signal problems with your CTAs. Their message may not be clear enough, or they may be difficult to identify.
Email bounce rate: Pay attention to your soft and hard bounces, as they might point to potential email deliverability issues.
Unsubscribe rate: A high unsubscribe rate suggests your Black Friday email campaign does not resonate with your target audience. Go back to step 1 to understand the root of this problem.
Wrapping Up
Take time to understand why email marketing should be a significant part of your growth strategy while you still have all this time to get ready for Black Friday. By cultivating an engaged subscriber base and crafting compelling emails, your business can experience a highly profitable Black Friday.
Follow these steps to craft successful Black Friday email marketing campaigns:
Build a targeted, high-quality email list.
Craft compelling email marketing content for different segments.
Optimise for mobile.
Implement email automation and personalisation.
Plan email frequency and sending times carefully.
A/B test different email components for the best results.
Ensure compliance with necessary laws and regulations.
Continuously monitor and record campaign performance.
Want to absolutely smash Black Friday email marketing? Contact Segmentify, and together, we’ll develop the most suitable strategy for your growth.
FAQs About Black Friday Marketing
When is Black Friday 2023?
In 2023, Black Friday falls on Friday, November 24th.
How long does Black Friday 2023 last?
Technically, Black Friday is only the day after Thanksgiving and ends as soon as Cyber Monday starts on November 25th.
Retailers, however, love to combine the two days and extend them as far as possible. Many retailers extend their Black Friday Cyber Monday sales through early December, turning everything into one big holiday shopping period.
Is Black Friday a thing in the whole world?
The term “Black Friday” refers to the day after Thanksgiving in the USA. Historically, this shopping event was only observed in the USA, but it has, over time, gained popularity worldwide. Today, people from around the world participate in Black Friday shopping activities.
Why do we like SuperMario? Why did we spend all those hours trying to save Princess Peach? What made us come back to it? Was it because Mario’s world was so much more desirable than our own reality? Sure, escapism might be the reason why some people love video games; however, the real answer is a bit more complex than escapism. We love playing games because they fulfil our natural needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
The built-in reward systems combined with compelling storytelling are what makes games so engrossing. They intrigue us. And in recent years, marketers have realised the power of using gaming-related elements in creating brand awareness and engagement.
This article will explain what gamification is and the psychology behind how gamified experience designs motivate users to specific actions. We will then look at the three best gamified marketing examples with Spotify Wrapped, MAISON KARL LAGERFELD, and NikeFuel. Finally, we’ll finish with three gamified designs eCommerce websites can use, including journey builders, spin the wheels, and customer loyalty programs.
What is Gamification?
Gamification is about implementing gaming-related concepts, such as rewards, into a non-game concept. Gamification has become a beloved tool in marketing activities as well. It’s based on using rewards and achievements to induce the customer to take the desired actions.
In other words, gamification is about engaging customers in the brand and its products by offering them a gamified experience. The goal of a gamified marketing design is to entertain, educate, and engage.
Gamification marketing is your own personal cheat code to victory!
Psychology Behind Gamification: The Octalysis Framework
As mentioned in the previous section, a gamified experience focuses on implementing rewards and achievements to keep users engaged. Levelling up in a video game is one of the best feelings in the world, right? You level up, get a reward or badge or a new item, and it’s like someone patting you on the back saying, “Good job, kid.”
Yu-kai Chou, gamification guru, calls gamification a “human-focused design”. He argues that a gamified design focuses on the human experience instead of pure efficiency and function. And that’s precisely why it works.
In 2012, Chou published a framework explaining how gamification works, which he named “The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design”. Yu-kai Chou explains that video games are engaging because their design appeals to our core drives and uses them to motivate us to move forward.
The Octalysis Framework analyses the psychological reasoning behind human motivation and then discusses how these reasonings can be used in building gamified experiences for the users. Let’s take a brief look at the Octalysis Framework:
The Octalysis Framework for Gamification, developed by Yu-kai Chou
1. Epic Meaning and Calling
This is the core drive where the person believes they’re doing something greater than themselves or they are “the chosen one”. These users spend a lot of their spare time creating something for the community (open source projects, forums, etc.). They also believe that they have a gift that others don’t.
2. Development and Accomplishment
This is the core drive about achieving goals and overcoming obstacles. Development and Accomplishment core drive is all about challenges. A goal or trophy is only as satisfying as the challenge you overcome. Goodreads uses this core drive, alongside social influence, to motivate readers to read more each year with its reading challenge.
3. Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback
People have a desire to share their creativity and receive feedback in turn. According to Yu-kai Chou, Legos are beloved because the user is constantly trying new combinations to create new things.
A successful example of using this core design came from Starbucks: In 2016, the coffee chain released plain red versions of their iconic Christmas cups in their US and Canada stores. Starbucks invited their customers to create their own designs and share them on social media with #RedCupArt. The company later chose and shared their favourites on their official accounts.
4. Ownership and Possession
Because you own something, you want to improve, protect, and get more of it.
Remember Scrooge McDuck? Ownership and possession is the core drive that made him want to accumulate even more wealth. This is also why people are more tied to the products that they’ve customised themselves. They feel an emotional connection to them.
5. Social Influence and Relatedness
We all desire to feel connected. Additionally, we also constantly compare ourselves to others. Social media is the perfect example for showcasing the working principles for this core drive: While what’s shared on social media increases the feelings of connectedness, it can also cause serious mental harm due to inducing feelings like jealousy and envy. Nevertheless, both the positive and negative sides of this core drive are powerful tools.
6. Scarcity and Impatience
We want what we cannot have. This core drive motivates us either due to lack of something or the difficulty it takes to obtain it.
Ever seen your mom play Candy Crush? Then you know how impatient but also eager someone gets just to have something. In the case of Candy Crush, this is about waiting for the hearts to fill up so you can continue to level up.
Or do you remember when the Clubhouse app was launched? Because you needed an invitation from someone to open an account and the fact that one person could only send invitations to two people, everyone wanted to join the app as soon as they heard of it.
7. Unpredictability and Curiosity
Think of Dan Brown’s novels. Almost every chapter ends on some kind of a cliffhanger. It’s not that you get incredibly critical information each time this happens, but every chapter end is written and designed in a way to make you curious enough to go on to the next chapter. This is because we are all curious by nature. We want to know what happens next.
The unpredictability and curiosity core drive is about the very human desire to know and explore more. Interestingly, this core drive is also highly related to gambling addictions.
8. Loss and Avoidance
This core drive is about motivation through the fear of losing something or any other negative consequences. We could say that this and “Ownership and Possession” are two sides of the same coin. For example, Duolingo uses push notifications to remind you that you will lose your streak if you don’t practice your target language that day. These notifications became a series of popular memes about how the Duolingo owl will hunt you down if you do not practice daily. The company embraced this slightly unhinged persona fully and uses it as a part of their marketing campaign at every chance they get.
3 Best Real-life eCommerce Gamification Examples
There’s definitely more than one way to create a gamified shopping experience for your customers, and over the years, some brands have gotten real creative with their gamified marketing designs. So let’s take a look at some of the best real-life gamified marketing examples:
Spotify Wrapped stands as a notable gamification marketing initiative orchestrated by Spotify. With its yearly unveiling starting in 2016, each early December marks the return of this campaign, enabling Spotify users to access a comprehensive aggregation of their engagement data on the platform throughout the preceding year (spanning from January 1 to October 31). Users are encouraged to broadcast this compilation on their social media accounts.
In 2020, it was reported that Spotify’s mobile app download increased by 21% in the first week of December, thanks to Spotify Wrapped.
The gamification aspect of Spotify Wrapped comes from multiple sources:
When you reach the Spotify Wrapped part of the year, it feels like you’ve completed a milestone. Congratulations, you’ve survived the year one song at a time!
It allows you to compare yourself to others – Either by what genres you’ve listened to the most or how many minutes you’ve spent streaming music in general or your top artist specifically. (I’d like to take a second to point out that in 2020, I was in the top 0.01% of Taylor Swift‘s listeners, thank you very much.)
Spotify encourages its users to share their Spotify Wrapped data with their friends and followers on their social media accounts, primarily through their mobile app. They do this by using a combination of personalised data, vibrant colours, bold graphics, and some humour (e.g., “You’re a good listener. Feel free to show this to your ex.” from the Spotify Wrapped 2020 campaign.).
Spotify uses gamification all year round. Their daily mixes, weekly discovery lists, or on repeat playlists are all a part of a cleverly designed gamified experience. However, Spotify Wrapped is definitely the most beloved and anticipated one.
So who else is excited for their Spotify Wrapped this year?
2. MAISON KARL LAGERFELD
Karl Lagerfeld, the fashion house built by the German fashion designer with the same name, took designing a gamified marketing campaign at its literal meaning with an actual game inspired by Pac-Man.
The MAISON KARL LAGERFELD game was part of the marketing campaign done for Lagerfeld’s Spring 2020 Pixel collection. People visiting the Karl Lagerfeld online store would play as Lagerfeld’s almost equally famous cat, Choupette, and try to navigate their way around the iconic Karl Lagerfeld Maison at 21 Rue St-Guillaume in Paris. The goal was to avoid dogs while collecting KARL Koins.
The game had its real-life incentives as well. The users with the top scores were included in a weekly prize draw, where the prize was a shopping spree at a Karl Lagerfeld store in the UK and Europe!
According to SMACK, the digital marketing agency that Karl Lagerfeld worked with for this campaign, the online store of the fashion house got over 21,000 visits in the first week of the campaign and obtained 18,000 emails.
3. NikeFuel
Finding the motivation to exercise regularly is hard. How many times have you been on a run and said to yourself, “I’m going to be doing this every week.”? I think we can all guess how that turned out.
As an athletics company, Nike knows that the lack of motivation is the biggest obstacle to regular exercise. Nike’s fitness app Nike+ in combination with the company’s Fuelband accessories were designed to motivate the users through gamification. While the NikeFuel app was taken off the market in 2018, to this day, it still remains one of the superior examples of gamification marketing. Here’s why:
NikeFuel motivated its users in two main ways:
The app sent little messages of encouragement to its users to motivate them to continue exercising.
The app’s game-like design allowed users to share their fitness achievements on social media, which helped create a sense of community while also satisfying the validation needs of people.
Additionally, there was another aspect to Nike’s gamified design: Nike collected and stored the data about their customers through NikeFuel and then used this data in targeted marketing campaigns.
3 Best eCommerce Gamification Examples You Should Try
Gamification can be a useful tool in smoothing out the buyer’s journey while humouring the customers. Take a look at a few of our favourite eCommerce gamification examples you can use:
1. Journey Builder
Why not offer your customers personalised product recommendations based on their answers to some simple questions? And why not make this in a fun and engaging way?
Journey Builder by Segmentify
You could do this by asking them simple and straightforward questions about their gender, age group, and budgets. But you can also ask more detailed questions, such as their style (classic or sporty?), favourite colours, patterns of choice, etc.
2. Spin the Wheel
Spin the Wheel pop-up design by Segmentify
Many eCommerce websites use spin the wheels, also called wheels of fortune, to give away discounts or other types of rewards and deals. You can lure potential customers in by offering them the chance to earn unexpected discounts, free shipping, etc. For example, by putting a “No luck today” slice to the wheel, you can tell visitors that they should come back tomorrow.
This type of gamified shopping experience also allows you to build your email marketing list by collecting email addresses from first-time visitors. Then, you can later use those emails to get that first purchase!
3. Customer Loyalty Programs
With loyalty programs, customers earn points for certain actions and events, such as placing an order, leaving a review, sending out that referral link to friends, birthdays etc. This type of gamification employs mainly the Ownership & Possession and Development & Accomplishment core drives. Your customers will want to get more loyalty points/rewards than they have, and they will also see these loyalty points as milestones to achieve.
Wrapping Up
How will you differentiate your eCommerce store, your brand, or your products and services? This is the million-pound question. Trends and tastes change at an unprecedented pace. In such a world, it’s getting more and more challenging to connect with customers.
Offering gamified experiences is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors while engaging with your customers at an emotional level. As with everything in life, designing an engaging experience is about planning. So get ready, set your rules and rewards, and go!
Here’s a million-pound question:
Which strategy, you reckon, is better: Cross-selling or upselling?
While both strategies involve increasing revenue by encouraging customers to spend more than they initially planned, they differ in their approach and goals.
In this article, we’ll explore the differences between cross-selling and upselling and provide insights on which strategy may work best for your business. So, let’s dive in!
Key Takeaways
Cross-selling and upselling are two necessary strategies to optimise sales, build stronger customer relationships, and increase CLV.
Relevancy and personalisation are substantial to making on-point cross-selling and upselling recommendations.
Choosing the right strategy depends on your industry, customer base, business goals, product range, and CRM data.
What is Cross-Selling?
Cross-selling is a strategic approach aimed at enticing customers to purchase additional or complementary products or services along with their primary interests, intended purchases, or previous acquisitions.
Think of those times when you wanted to order a burger and were asked if you wanted fries or a drink with it, and you said yes. Well, you got cross-sold!
Advantages of Cross-Selling
By offering related items that enhance the value or functionality of their initial choice, businesses can create more personalised and relevant user experiences, ultimately increasing both revenue and customer lifetime value.
But let’s dive deeper into how cross-selling benefits your business:
Boosts revenue: Cross-selling helps businesses make more money by getting customers to buy extra stuff they might like along with what they initially wanted.
Keeps customers coming back: Offering related products or services will make customers feel understood, increasing customer loyalty and encouraging repeat purchases over time.
Makes shopping personal: It’s like the perfect shopping buddy! Cross-selling allows you to give out recommendations based on the user’s interests, making the whole experience feel tailor-made.
Happy customers: You know that feeling when you find the perfect shoes to match your dress? That’s what cross-selling does — it leaves customers satisfied and happy with their choices.
Bigger shopping carts: You’d be surprised how easy it is to end up buying more with all those “You may also like” recommendations. Cross-selling encourages customers to add additional items to their carts, leading to bigger transactions and higher Average Order Value (AOV).
Irish Home Improvement Store Heavins Optimises Cross-Selling and Achieves 25% Increase in AOV. Discover how.
Cost-efficient marketing: It’s easier and cheaper to cross-sell to existing customers than to acquire new ones since the existing customers have already engaged with the brand.
Strong customer relationships: A successful cross-sell builds trust and reinforces the connection between the customer and the brand, fostering a long-term relationship.
Stand out from the crowd: Businesses that do cross-selling right stand out from the competition by showing that they care and understand what their target audience wants.
Upselling opportunities: Cross-selling can open doors to tempting upgrades. It can create upselling opportunities and entice customers to buy higher-tier products or services based on their initial purchase.
Valuable data insights: You’d be surprised to see the interesting pairs of items people purchase together. Some are such pairs that no human can imagine them being bought together. However, with a tool such as Segmentify Analytics, you can analyse cross-selling patterns, gain valuable insights into user behaviour, and optimise your marketing strategies for the best outcomes.
Examples of Cross-Selling in Different Industries
The cross-selling options are wide as long as you have insight into the products and services and the customer’s needs to make the right offers. Let’s illustrate our point with some solid examples for specific industries —all aimed at enhancing customer satisfaction and increasing business revenue.
Airline Industry
Offering seat upgrades or access to airport lounges during the flight booking process.
Providing travel insurance options when customers book flights.
Source: British Airways
Automotive Industry
Recommending car care products like wax, polish, or interior cleaners when customers purchase a vehicle.
Offering package deals for purchasing additional accessories like floor mats, seat covers, and air fresheners.
Banking Industry
Recommending credit card options with specific benefits based on customers’ spending habits.
Offering investment opportunities or financial planning services to customers with savings accounts.
Recommending credit cards to individuals opening up a savings account.
Beauty Industry
Recommending a matching lipstick to go with the chosen shade of foundation.
Bundling skincare products like cleanser, toner, and moisturiser as a complete skincare routine.
Recommending the proper brush, foundation base, and setting powder for longer-lasting makeup for the foundation category.
Source: L’Occitane
Coffee Industry
Suggesting baked goods or snacks to complement customers’ coffee orders.
Offering loyalty programs with discounts on future purchases for frequent customers.
Bundling different coffee selections together as a discovery set.
Suggesting coffee machine cleaning products for customers purchasing a coffee machine
Consumer Electronics Industry
Providing recommendations for compatible accessories, such as phone cases or screen protectors, when customers buy electronic devices.
Offering extended warranty plans or insurance coverage for the purchased electronic item.
Event Booking Industry
Suggesting additional tickets or VIP packages for related events during the booking process.
Offering merchandise bundles with event tickets, such as T-shirts or souvenirs.
Fashion Industry
Displaying matching accessories like belts, scarves, or jewellery with selected clothing items.
Offering discounts when customers buy multiple items from the same clothing line or collection.
Grocery Industry
Suggesting complementary products like chips and dips to go along with a customer’s choice of party snacks.
Offering discounts on purchasing a certain quantity of a specific product, encouraging customers to stock up.
Gym Industry
Offering personal training sessions or fitness classes as add-ons to gym membership purchases.
Recommending workout accessories like resistance bands or water bottles when customers sign up for fitness programs.
Home Decor & Garden Industry
Suggesting matching curtains, pillows, or rugs to complement furniture purchases.
Offering gardening tools or planters when customers buy plants or seeds.
Hotel & Tourism Industry
Offering room upgrades or special amenities for guests who book longer stays or premium room types.
Providing discounted spa services or dining vouchers when guests book accommodation packages.
Offering plane tickets for the chosen hotel’s location, perhaps with a little discount.
Insurance Industry
Offering bundle packages that include multiple types of insurance coverage, like home and auto insurance.
Recommending higher coverage limits or additional policy add-ons to provide comprehensive protection.
Luxury Industry
Offering exclusive add-ons or limited-edition items as a special bonus with high-end purchases.
Providing personalised services, such as monogramming or engraving, to enhance luxury item purchases.
Source: Cartier
Pet Shop Industry
Suggesting pet grooming products or toys when customers purchase pet food.
Offering discounts on pet treats with the purchase of pet accessories or grooming services.
Restaurant Industry
Recommending appetisers, sides, or desserts to complement customers’ main course selections.
Offering loyalty programs with rewards or discounts on future visits.
Sports Equipment Industry
Recommending appropriate sports gear, such as helmets, pads, or sports bags, when customers purchase sports equipment like bicycles or skateboards.
Offering sports nutrition supplements or drinks for customers buying fitness equipment.
What is Upselling?
Upselling is selling an upgraded or a higher version of the initial product the customer intends to buy. It aims to increase the profit and AOV by offering a more expensive product.
Advantages of Upselling
Upselling is much more than boosting your AOV by simply making the customer buy the higher-priced version of the product or service. Here are all the ways upselling can benefit your business:
Increases revenue: Upselling encourages customers to purchase higher-priced or upgraded versions of products or services, resulting in higher transaction values and increased sales revenue. Cha-Ching! 💰
Improves profit margins: Upselling often involves offering higher-margin products or add-ons, which can positively impact a business’ overall profitability.
Happy customers, happy life: When you score a deal, an upgrade in the case of upselling, that’s totally worth it. You can’t help but feel like one happy camper. Upselling leaves customers feeling valued and satisfied with their purchase.
Loyalty and repeat business: When businesses nail the upsell, they create a loyal fanbase. Customers love the attention and may become regulars, coming back for more of that fantastic service.
Outshine the competitor: When a business offers irresistible upsell options, it stands out from the crowd. You can tell they’re the real experts, exactly understanding what their customers crave.
Cross-selling opportunities: Upselling can lead to exciting cross-selling opportunities. The buyer might discover awesome add-ons that complement their main purchase. Double the fun!
Change in value perception: An upsell may be perceived as a way to get better value for money, leading customers to choose the higher-priced option. It’s hard to resist such sweet deals.
Efficient inventory management: Businesses can manage inventory more efficiently and maintain a balanced stock of various items by promoting higher-end products.
Showcase product range: Upselling lets businesses showcase all the products and services they have to offer, ensuring customers are aware of all available options.
Examples of Upselling in Different Industries
Let’s paint a vivid picture of upselling with solid examples tailored to various industries, all geared towards delighting customers and sending your business revenue soaring.
Airline Industry
Offering seat upgrades to premium classes with more comfort and amenities.
Suggesting travel insurance or additional baggage allowance during the booking process.
Recommending upgrades to business or first-class cabins for a more luxurious travel experience.
Source: British Airways
Automotive Industry
Upselling customers to higher trim levels with advanced features and luxury upgrades.
Recommending optional add-ons such as extended warranty plans or premium sound systems.
Source: Mini Cooper
Banking Industry
Suggesting upgraded account packages with additional benefits like higher interest rates or waived fees.
Offering credit card upgrades to cards with better rewards and perks.
Beauty Industry
Offering premium skincare products with advanced formulas and added benefits.
Recommending makeup sets or bundles for a complete and coordinated look.
Recommending signature scents or niche perfumes that evoke a sense of luxury and individuality.
Coffee Industry
Offering upsized coffee or speciality drinks with extra shots or flavours.
Recommending limited edition coffee options to loyal customers.
Suggesting coffee machines with coffee grinders built into customers looking at the coffee machines.
Consumer Electronics Industry
Recommending higher-end electronic devices with better specifications or more features.
Recommending accessories like cases, screen protectors, or additional gadgets for a seamless experience.
Source: Amazon
Event Booking Industry
Offering VIP or premium packages with exclusive perks and access to special areas.
Suggesting merchandise bundles that include event souvenirs or memorabilia.
Recommending additional activities or excursions that enhance the event experience, such as guided tours or workshops.
Fashion Industry
Promoting limited-edition or designer capsule collections that create a sense of exclusivity and uniqueness.
Recommending clothing items made from luxurious fabrics like silk, cashmere, or high-quality organic cotton.
Grocery Industry
Offering upsized or family-sized portions of certain products for a better value.
Suggesting premium or gourmet food items as an upgrade.
Gym Industry
Upselling to higher-tier membership plans with additional gym amenities or personal training sessions.
Recommending fitness accessories or supplements to enhance workout routines.
Home Decor & Garden Industry
Suggesting higher-quality furniture or decor items.
Recommending premium gardening tools or outdoor accessories for a beautiful garden.
Hotel & Tourism Industry
Offering room upgrades with better views or additional amenities.
Suggesting add-on experiences or excursions during the hotel booking process.
Recommending premium dining experiences or luxury spa services for a truly indulgent stay.
Recommending romantic setups, champagne, or flowers for guests celebrating special occasions.
Insurance Industry
Upselling customers to higher coverage limits or comprehensive insurance plans.
Recommending additional policy add-ons to cover specific needs or situations.
Luxury Industry
Offering customers exclusive limited-edition products or collections.
Suggesting personalised or customised options for a truly luxurious experience.
Offering exclusive memberships or loyalty programs that provide access to special events or early product releases.
Pet Shop Industry
Upselling to premium pet food or treats with natural or organic ingredients.
Recommending high-quality pet accessories or grooming services.
Restaurant Industry
Offering upsized meals with larger portions or additional courses.
Suggesting premium menu items or chef’s specials for a delightful dining experience.
Sports Equipment Industry
Upselling customers to high-performance sports gear or equipment from top brands.
Recommending specialised accessories or sportswear for better comfort and performance.
Cross-Selling vs. Upselling: Key Differences
You can combine cross-selling and upselling strategies for maximum effect. However, to do that, you first need to understand the differences between the two strategies.
Nature: Cross-selling refers to recommending additional complementary items to the customer’s initial purchase. In contrast, upselling refers to persuading customers to choose upgraded versions of the initial product or service they were considering.
Customer experience: The purpose of cross-selling is to allow the customer to explore new products, while upselling is to provide them with better or more premium options to meet their needs.
Purpose: Cross-selling aims to increase AOV with multiple items in the cart, while upselling focuses on increasing the transaction value within a single purchase.
When to Use Cross-Selling and Upselling
Knowing when to bust out cross-selling and upselling is key to getting the most bang for your buck and keeping customers happy. It’s all about maximising their effectiveness and delivering that extra value they’ll love. So, let’s discuss some of these awesome strategies!
6 Cross-Selling Techniques You Can Try
There are a couple of ways to cross-sell your products effectively. Here are some of them:
1. Product Recommendations Based on Purchase History
As a part of customer research, a customer’s past purchases grant you the great insight required to segment your customer base. It not only helps make accurate and related product recommendations, but also provides information for building customer profiles for future recommendations and strategies.
2. Offering Additional Services
Cross-selling additional services is another way to increase AOV. Services like furniture installation, extended warranty or insurance, software products, etc., help you compose a complete shopping experience and result in satisfied customers who would like to come back and see what else you have got to offer.
3. In-Cart Recommendations
Customers may add the product to the basket and directly proceed to the cart page to finalise their purchase. But there is still time to show them what else you have! You can take another shot and showcase complementary products by utilising order bumps and bundles.
4. Post-Checkout Offerings
When a customer finalises their purchase without an additional item, you can still have a chance to draw them back to you! You can make post-checkout offers on the “Thank You” page, get to them via email to make other related offerings, send push notifications or use pop-ups to both remind them of the product and create urgency.
5. Offering Discounts
Discounts and campaigns also have a high possibility of bringing back a customer or convincing them to add additional items to their basket right on the product page. Those deals are great for boosting your customer retention rates, too.
6. Product Bundling
Product bundles are great for showing a couple of products to customers at once. As long as the products are not far-fetched, and the pricing is reasonable, in a way that will not scare away or confuse the prospect, they are wondrous tools that will bring you many benefits on your way to growth.
You can use it to make your offers as a package to make it easier for the customer, as all it takes is one click to add a couple of products to the basket at once, or you can just suggest a couple of related and frequently bought together products and let the customer choose the best option for them.
Personalise products, supercharge your upselling skills and create an unbreakable bond with customers. 📚 Download Dynamic Bundles Playbook📚
Bundling should not be restricted to a single form. Bundles can be devised distinctively for any industry. You can build different types of recommendation campaigns like product bundling, frequently bought together, shop the look, buy the room, similar products, order follow-up and many more through the Segmentify dashboard with only a few clicks and monitor their performance with ease.
6 Upselling Techniques You Can Try
1. Added-to-Cart
When a customer adds a product to the cart, display an Added to Cart pop-up and place more recommendations in case they missed out on the ones on the product page.
2. In-Cart Recommendations
Do not give up! Trust your AI-based algorithms and carry on recommending. Your customer may be one of those people who like to jump to conclusions, but do what you can to improve their shopping experience.
4. Post-Checkout Offerings
A one-click upselling offer on the “Thank You” page can be an opportunity for the customer to reconsider their purchase or note them for their next purchase. Emails can be another place to make your offers, too. Send them coupons and make special offers to let your customers know that you still care about them and are still a part of their shopping journey.
5. Offering Discounts
Discounted products with upgraded features are likely to make your customer change their mind and lead them to get a better version of the product they are viewing for a reasonable extra price.
6. Product Bundling
There are no limits to product bundles. You can benefit from them in any way you want to. For your eCommerce upselling strategy, use them to show products from the same category with better features.
Tips for Successful Cross-Selling and Upselling Campaigns
Despite their differences, the main points you must pay attention to are not so different whether we’re talking about cross-selling or upselling. Take a look at our tips for successful cross-selling and upselling strategies:
3 Tips for a Successful Cross-Selling Campaign
Relevancy: Whatever the product is, you must be diligent about the additional products you want to cross-sell. They need to complement and add value to the initial product. The more relevant the product, the more likely the customer will buy it since they already are looking for a product in a specific and related category and are eager to up their order’s value.
Pricing: Besides relevancy, the prices of recommended products are also worthy of consideration. They should be low enough for the customer to add them to their basket without a second guess but high enough to contribute a remarkable amount to the AOV.
Personalisation: It is great when the cross-selling offers are integrated with the product well. Reasonable pricing is superb! But they will not be as effective without identifying the best offer for the customer. Personalisation is the key to analysing each customer and their interests. It helps you make the most relevant recommendations that might get your customers’ attention and make your cross-selling strategy work.
3 Tips for a Successful Upselling Campaign
Relevancy: Relevancy is substantial in upselling as well. Yet it is a different kind of relevancy we are talking about. Since you are trying to sell an upgraded version of the same product, your upselling recommendation should belong to the same category as the initial product. If someone is looking for a laptop, you cannot upsell them a keyboard. Show them laptops, but with better features.
Pricing: Yes, the aim is to increase the profit and sell a product at a higher price. But a big price difference between the initial and the recommended product might come off as aggressive, and the customer might not even consider taking a look. Pre-purchase upselling should be soft and plausible.
Personalisation: We have already covered the importance of personalisation in eCommerce cross-selling. But it is also worth noting that the purchase history can be used to tailor special offers and discounts for a specific customer base. And you can display products according to their browsing history to create a better shopping experience.
Wrapping Up: Which One is Right for Your Business?
To decide between cross-selling and upselling for your business, analyse customer behaviour, evaluate your product range, consider business goals, utilise CRM data, test both strategies, and prioritise the customer experience. Tailor your approach to provide genuine value and boost sales effectively.
If you haven’t tried upselling and cross-selling yet, you’re missing out on their abundant advantages. These strategies can boost your AOV and revenue while increasing customer satisfaction and retention in the long run.
However, don’t forget the importance of segmentation and personalisation to make the most of these benefits. Want to witness the wonders of AI-based personalisation? Consult us and book a demo now!
Launched as an alternative to Twitter, Instagram-based social media app “Threads” activated over 40 million users in its first 24 hours and more than 100 million sign-ups during its first weekend.
Key Takeaways
Instagram Threads reached over 100 million users in its first weekend after launch.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri believes Instagram Threads can attract more users due to growing dissatisfaction among Twitter users.
Twitter accuses Meta of intentionally and unlawfully misappropriating Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.
What’s Instagram Threads?
Meta, the parent company of popular social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, recently unveiled a new app called “Threads”.
Defined as “Instagram’s text-based conversation” platform, Threads is clearly a Twitter alternative and might mean bad business for Twitter, which has been unstable, to say the least, since the billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social media platform.
How Does the Instagram Threads App Work?
The Instagram Threads app operates similarly to Twitter. It allows users to share text-based content, including the option to include links, photos, and videos. Here are some key points to note:
Threads can be linked to your Instagram account.
Posts on Threads can have a maximum length of 500 characters.
Threads posts can include links, photos, and videos, with videos being up to five minutes in duration.
You can have either a public or private Threads account.
You have control over who can reply to your posts on Threads: anyone, profiles you follow, or only profiles you mention.
Deleting your Threads account will not delete your Instagram account.
Instagram Threads Threatens to Destabilise Twitter
The rivalry between Elon Musk and Meta leader Mark Zuckerberg has been more intense than usual for a while. Only last month, there was talk of a literal cage fight between the two billionaires.
Threads’ launch is strategically timed following Twitter’s limitation over how many tweets users can consume based on their subscription level, which was quickly dropped upon user backlash but not without some consequences.
The decision to rate-limit access to the blue bird app caused it to lose some important keyword rankings. According to a crawling case study, Twitter lost 32% visibility in the US in the 24 hours that followed.
Source: Sistrix
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri believes there is an opportunity for Instagram Threads to gain more users due to increasing dissatisfaction among Twitter users. Many users have become frustrated with Twitter, particularly after Elon Musk’s takeover, and are exploring alternative platforms like Mastodon.
Mosseri sees this as a chance for Threads to expand its user base. He believes that the volatility and unpredictability of Twitter, along with potential stability issues or drastic product changes, could create an opening for Threads in a competitive space.
Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta over Instagram Threads
Shortly after the launch of Threads, Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Twitter, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The letter accused Meta of intentionally and unlawfully misappropriating Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property in a systematic manner.
Source: Semafor
In the letter, Spiro accused Meta of hiring numerous ex-Twitter employees who still possessed access to Twitter’s trade secrets and confidential information. According to the lawyer, Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop the Twitter-like app “Threads” with the explicit intention of utilising Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property to expedite the development of Meta’s competing application. Spiro alleged that this conduct violated state and federal laws and the employees’ ongoing obligations to Twitter.
To be clear: No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee — that’s just not a thing.
Andy Stone, Communications Director at Meta
What Instagram Threads Means for Marketers and Advertisers
Zarina Stanford, the CMO of Bazaarvoice, a user-generated content platform, emphasises the significance of convenience for the success of social media platforms. Stanford tells Vogue Business that Twitter’s recent imposition of limits on the number of free posts for users could potentially impede brands’ marketing objectives. She highlights the increasing difficulty marketers face in capturing social media users’ attention.
The same Vogue Business article mentions that the fashion industry “has not historically thrived on text-based social media”. Instagram Threads might actually end up changing that:
Users can sign up to Instagram Threads with just one click through the Instagram app—extremely convenient.
Once you sign up to Instagram Threads, you can choose to follow all the accounts you follow on Instagram automatically.
Most fashion brands, for example, have a lot higher following on Instagram than on Twitter due to the visual emphasis of the former.
Considering these facts, marketers must keep in mind that their audiences on Instagram Threads and Twitter are going to be different. The difference will not just be in numbers, but the demographics, preferences, behaviours, and expectations as well.
In other words, copy-pasting your old Tweets will likely not resonate with the Threads audience and work in building engagement.
Wrapping Up: Do You Need an Instagram Threads Strategy?
According to the social media marketing tool Later, you don’t need an Instagram Threads strategy as of yet.
Right now, all of us, Meta included, are in the learning curve phase. There are a lot of things that the users have accepted as a natural feature of any social media platform, such as direct messaging, which Instagram Threads doesn’t have at the moment.
Instead of trying to build a strategy for a platform that’s only a couple of weeks old, here’s what we should do according to Later:
Explore the app and experiment: See what others in your community are saying and doing; try to find out what your audience on Instagram Threads is responding to.
Connect with your community: Threads is just another platform to connect and engage with your community. Use what’s already working for you on Instagram, but repurpose it in a more text-focused way.
Take your time and don’t overthink: During these initial phases, anticipate the introduction of new features and updates in the upcoming months, weeks, and even days. Adam Moseri himself said that users can expect some recommendation-related features at a later point in time.
“Sign up, don’t be too serious with your content, and engage with other like-minded people and brands. We’ll all just wait and see how this social platform develops.”
Later’s Marketing Team
As we reach the midway point of 2023, what’s better than now to explore the current state of the fashion industry, perpetually shaped by evolving trends, changing consumer behaviour, and technological progress?
This article delves into insightful publications from credible sources, exploring the intersection of fashion trends, music, social media, and technology, and examines their intricate relationships.
Key Takeaways
The arena tour fashion is in; festival fashion is out! The concert fashion takes over the frenzy and excitement that once belonged to “festival fashion”.
Gen Z’s new obsession “old money aesthetic” takes over social media and second-hand marketplaces.
Personalised marketing solutions continue to become more crucial as consumers become pickier and competition fiercer than ever.
A study by Mirakl, a French company that builds marketplaces, reveales that marketplaces grew by 38% in 2022, while brand websites grew by only 6%.
Jewellery sales are declining globally; however, the market for men’s jewellery is thriving.
New Google feature allows users to virtually try on clothes on models of different sizes, skin tones, body shapes, ethnicities, and hair types. (Available in the US)
Did the Arena Tour Kill the Festival Fashion?
Gone are the days of festival fashion, where attendees would don impractical outfits and costumes for the sake of self-expression and fashion for whole weekends, usually under terrible weather conditions.
The excitement surrounding concert fashion has reached new heights with viral social media moments, elevating individual artists’ global tours to the same level of attention that was once reserved for festival fashion, Vogue Business reports.
Music fans everywhere are now putting on their finest attire for the newest addition to a series of arena tours. Taylor Swift fans, or “Swifties”, are dressing up as their favourite eras for The Eras Tour, while Harry Styles fans are adorning themselves with boas and stylish Gucci-inspired glasses.
So what does this trend change mean for the future of the eCommerce fashion industry?
With the prolonged duration of arena tours, the fashion industry must adapt new brand strategies and maximise opportunities. Unlike festivals that have a limited timeframe, arena tours allow eCommerce fashion brands to adjust their strategies as they progress, avoiding the risk of misjudging demand.
Here are some key actions the eCommerce fashion industry can take to leverage the rising trend of arena tour fashion:
Excess inventory can be managed by offering discounts or using local inventory ads to push out surplus stock.
Optimising product titles with specific keywords, such as including the artist’s name, can greatly improve visibility and attract the right audience.
By targeting ads to the appropriate demographics and locations, eCommerce fashion brands can expect a higher return on investment for their advertising efforts.
Old Money Goes Viral: TikTok’s Influence on the Fashion Industry
The lives of the ultra-rich have been the object of fascination for decades, serving as a backdrop for cinema, TV, and literature. Think of The Age of Innocence, Gossip Girl, and the latest edition to the list, Succession.
This lifestyle generally existed as a distant dream, suggesting that anyone could attain it if they worked hard enough. However, social media has now brought the ideal of old money into the view of younger generations.
Depop’s Brand and Category Manager Agustina Panzonie tells Harper’s Bazaar Australia, “The old money aesthetic has been revitalised into a 21st-century reboot, removing the presence of logos and the only for rich and famous stigma”
Although considered a micro-trend popularised by Gen Z on TikTok, the old money aesthetic focuses on timeless pieces that can withstand the test of time and last for decades.
Source: Succession | HBO
The appeal of a timeless wardrobe lies in its enduring relevance, with pieces that defy passing trends and never go out of style. As for the trend’s target audience, buying from the luxury brands associated with this aesthetic is out of the question.
As a result, Gen Z is increasingly drawn to second-hand shopping as an alternative avenue to explore and express themselves with the old money aesthetic: Since the rise of #oldmoney on TikTok, Depop has seen a 70% increase in searches for ‘collared shirts’, and a 76% increase for ‘trench coats’.
The Continuous Rise of Fashion eCommerce Personalisation
The world of the eCommerce fashion industry is no easy feat. With the convenience of shopping from the comfort of our couches, customers have gotten pickier and more price-conscious than ever.
It’s a fierce battleground out there, with big names and small startups fighting tooth and nail for their place in the consumers’ minds. But let us tell you; there’s one trick you can adopt that can help you win over even the most evasive or most demanding customers: personalisation.
Personalisation has become the driving force behind capturing customer loyalty and boosting sales for the eCommerce fashion industry. The name of the game is tailoring the shopping experience to match each person’s unique preferences and needs.
If you want to make waves and keep those shoppers coming back for more, personalisation is where it’s at.
To gain a deeper understanding of personalisation in online fashion retail and unlock actionable insights, download Segmentify’s latest industry report: State of eCommerce Fashion Personalisation 2023
The Fashion Industry, the Marketplaces, and the Inflation
2022 witnessed a noteworthy difference in growth rates between brand websites and marketplaces, indicated by the Enterprise Marketplace Index developed by Mirakl, Fashion Network reports.
The study by Mirakl, a French company specialising in building marketplaces for brands and businesses, reveals that marketplaces experienced a growth rate of 38%. In contrast, brand websites only witnessed a modest 6% growth. And this gap is being further deepened by inflation since consumers are in a constant search for better deals.
According to Mirakl, 94% of global consumers anticipate using marketplaces to the same or greater extent in the future. Moreover, 62% of retailers and brands have plans to expand their presence by selling on more marketplaces within the next 12 months, suggesting that the marketplace ecosystem is growing and gaining momentum.
While the marketplaces are great for acquiring new customers and reaching wider audiences, they have one drawback the Fashion Network article falls short of mentioning: The customers are the marketplace’s, along with their behavioural data.
Zero-party and first-party data are more important and valuable than ever now that we’re living in a “cookieless world”. In other words, creating a loyal customer base is more important than ever as well, not to mention more challenging than it has ever been.
eCommerce fashion brands in question need to create loyal customers and increase customer lifetime value to ensure their existence. Hence, customers who purchase their products through marketplaces are not enough. These eCommerce fashion brands need the consumers to use their “first-party” site so that they can segment their customer base according to their behavioural data and implement the appropriate cross-channel retargeting strategies.
One of the most fun and engaging ways for eCommerce fashion brands to lure customers to their own websites is to implement gamified marketing strategies.
Gamification involves integrating gaming elements, like rewards, into non-game contexts, and it has gained popularity as a valuable marketing tool. By utilising rewards and achievements, gamification incentivises customers to take specific actions.
To get valuable insights into the benefits of gamification in customer segmentation and sales enhancement, as well as a comprehensive guide on implementing an effective gamification strategy, download Segmentify’s Gamification Playbook.
The Driving Force Behind the Men’s Jewellery Boom
There’s a new hot trend in town, and it’s called men’s jewellery —signet rings, beaded bracelets, silver chains, you name it!
The overall global jewellery market is on the decline. However, men’s jewellery is experiencing an accelerating growth, Business of Fashion reports. The driving force behind the men’s jewellery boom? It seems to be the changing gender norms and casualisation of fashion.
Olivier Reza, the second-generation head of the luxury jewellery house Reza, offers another explanation for the recent boom in men’s adornment. According to the French entrepreneur, this latest trend is a return to the natural order of things. Historically speaking, that is.
Before wardrobes took on a more staid and serious tone in the 20th century, men wore ornaments and made their surroundings beautiful and unique, whether it was their hair, clothing, horses, swords, or carriages, Reza further explains. And he sees “this more embellished way of living slowly returning.”
You can find countless online articles and videos teaching men and those identifying as men how to wear and style jewellery. Similarly, the eCommerce fashion brands we’ve been discussing so far can also use this strategy.
Here’re some things online jewellery retailers can do to use this recent boom in men’s jewellery to their advantage:
Create styling guides for different styles and categories —gold, silver, gems, chains, rings, watches, etc.— and showcase them on your website.
Don’t just create styling guides for a simple landing page; write articles or prepare video content to leverage SEO. Remember that this is a new trend, so curious minds are bound to google “how to style men’s jewellery”.
Prepare bundle offers for layering options to help your customers who’re loving the layered chains but have no idea how to match the items themselves.
Collaborate with influencers on TikTok or Youtube to build gift guides for men’s jewellery and use targeted ads to drive traffic to your website. This would especially be useful around Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Black Friday, and Christmas.
State of Fashion Technology: Google Introduces Virtual Try-On
Source: Google
The integration of technology into the fashion industry continues to change how consumers interact with brands: Google has introduced a new shopping feature in response to the increasing demand for hybrid online shopping experiences.
The virtual try-on feature offers US users a virtual fitting room where they can view clothing on models representing diverse sizes, skin tones, body shapes, ethnicities, and hair types.
Google’s AI model accurately simulates how the clothes would look on the body, considering factors like draping, folding, clinging, stretching, and forming wrinkles. The platform also includes guided refinements powered by machine learning and visual matching algorithms, allowing shoppers to fine-tune their preferences in terms of colour and style.
The feature also provides product listings from various online stores. Google aims to enhance the online shopping experience by leveraging advanced technologies such as AI to assist consumers better.
Every passing day brings us closer to bidding farewell to Universal Analytics. It is crucial that you migrate to GA4 and securely store your Universal Analytics data if you haven’t done so already. As of July 1, 2023, GA4 will be the only option available.
A few key considerations require your utmost attention when setting up your GA4 account and properties. Without any delay, here are five essential things you should know about GA4 integration:
Key Takeaways
In GA4, data streams unite user journeys across platforms within a property. A property can have multiple streams for measuring different platforms, such as websites, Android apps, and iOS apps.
The Measurement ID is used to identify and transmit data to a web data stream and is essential for tracking performance in Google Analytics. The data collection will not be enabled without inserting it into your website or Google Tag Manager (GTM).
Activating Google Signals is crucial to avoid incomplete user journeys and ensure accurate analytics reports. Linking Analytics and Ads will allow you to analyse campaign performance within Google Analytics and create audiences for targeted advertising.
1. Set up data streams under the same property for the website and the apps
In GA4, a data stream is used to collect data into your property and reports. And since GA4 aims to unite the user’s journey across different platforms, it allows for multiple data streams within a single property.
If you’re only going to be measuring a website, you will only have one data stream. However, if you want to measure an Android app and iOS app alongside the website, you will have three data streams—one for each platform.
To add the data stream:
First, make sure you have the right account selected.
Go to Admin > Property > Data Streams > Add Stream
Select your desired platform amongst your choices: iOS app, Android app, or web.
When an app data stream is added, Analytics generates a corresponding Firebase project and app data stream. If your project and property still need to be linked, the Firebase project is automatically connected to your property.
🚨 Perhaps the most critical point is that the app data can only be sent to one property. In contrast, web data is not subjugated to such limitations. However, assuming you want to report and analyse the app and website data together, the property in which the Android app, iOS app, and website data flow should be the same.
2. Enable data collection with Measurement ID
Measurement ID serves as a web data stream identifier and enables you to transmit data to a particular web data stream. You have to insert your measurement ID into your website or use Google Tag Manager (GTM) before you can start tracking your performance in Google Analytics.
Some confusion may arise between GA4 measurement ID and property ID, most likely due to the latter’s name. It’s important that you don’t confuse the two because property ID does not and will not enable data collection.
How to Find Your GA4 Measurement ID
Finding your GA4 measurement ID is incredibly simple; you just need to follow these steps:
Go to your GA4 property, and click Admin.
Under Property, select Data Streams, and click Web.
Click the web data stream name.
Your measurement ID is at the top right corner.
Measurement ID follows a specific format, starting with “G-” and subsequent with a combination of alphanumeric characters.
In GA4, Google Signals is a feature that facilitates cross-device data collection. It is specifically designed to enhance demographic reports and aid in the creation of audience lists for Google Ads.
Enabling Google Signals within your GA4 account provides the following advantages:
Enhanced cross-device reporting accuracy: Google Signals enables more accurate tracking and reporting of user behaviour across multiple devices, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of user interactions while avoiding the same user being counted multiple times across different devices.
Cross-device remarketing audience creation: By utilising Google Signals, you get to create cross-device remarketing audiences, helping you target and engage with users across their various devices.
Demographic and interest data in reports: Google Signals enriches your reports with valuable demographic and interest data, including age, gender, and specific areas of user interest.
Taking the time to link Analytics and Ads means that you will be able to report on the performance of your campaigns directly inside Google Analytics. Plus, it lets you create audiences in Google Analytics that you can then use for targeting and reporting inside your Google Ads account.
🚨 If you do not activate Google Signals, you will have to deal with incomplete user journeys and hence, unhealthy analytics reports.
Some users will not opt-in for ad personalisation; however, for those who do, you will have the data for the complete user journey, which should be enough to help you analyse and optimise your marketing efforts.
Is Google Signals GDPR-compliant?
Google Signals is indeed GDPR-compliant since it requires users to actively enable (opt-in) the Ad Personalisation option for the feature to operate. Users who do not provide their consent will not be included in the Google Signals audience. This approach ensures that user consent is respected and aligns with the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
4. Increase the data retention period
The Google Analytics Data Retention controls allow for the flexibility to set the duration for how long Google Analytics will store the user-level and event-level data before they are automatically deleted.
Standard Google Analytics accounts have two options when it comes to data retention:
2 months
14 months.
Analytics 360 users, on the other hand, can set their data retention period as follows:
26 months
38 months
50 months
Another way you can increase the data retention period is by using Google BigQuery. By leveraging the BigQuery export feature in GA4, you gain the capability to store your analytics data in the cloud securely. This empowers you to seamlessly integrate GA4 data with external data sources and perform queries that span across multiple datasets. The BigQuery export feature facilitates advanced data analysis and opens up opportunities for deeper insights by combining GA4 data with other relevant information from various sources.
5. Ensure that names for custom events, dimensions and metrics are the same across all platforms
Let’s repeat this once more: The point of GA4’s introduction is to unify the user’s cross-platform journey, ensuring that our reports and analyses provide a comprehensive and uninterrupted picture.
For establishing a robust reporting system and ensuring efficient analysis, it is essential to maintain consistency in event names across all platforms. The same principle applies to custom dimensions and custom metrics as well. This means that if an event is labelled as “form_error” on the web analytics, it should have the exact same name, “form_error,” for the Android and iOS apps.
🚨 Consistency in naming conventions allows seamless data integration and facilitates accurate comparison and analysis across different platforms.
Wrapping Up
Universal Analytics belongs to a bygone era when mobile apps were not as prevalent as they are today. GA4 was introduced to address this gap and incorporate mobile apps into the user journey narrative. To fully capture the user journey, it is crucial to follow the steps outlined in this article:
1. Set up data streams within the same property for both the website and the apps.
2. Enable data collection using the Measurement ID.
3. Activate Google Signals to leverage its benefits.
4. Extend the data retention period to ensure valuable data is retained for a longer duration.
5. Maintain consistency in the names of custom events, dimensions, and metrics across all platforms.
By following these steps, you can ensure that your analytics setup in GA4 encompasses both websites and apps, providing a comprehensive and unified understanding of the user journey.
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