Gamification V. Marketing Automation: A Comparison

Find out why an interactive marketing gamification strategy can be  more effective for your business than many automation tools.

When it comes to automating time-consuming tasks involved with marketing and promotion, the use of marketing automation tools can be an effective method to help speed things up. Whether you want to automate emails, schedule social media posts, or instantly reply to queries on your website with chatbots, marketing automation tools certainly have their place within the marketing industry to help you achieve a wide range of marketing goals.

In fact, marketing automation tools are becoming more and more popular. The research firm Forrester predicts that businesses will increasingly invest more and more for these kinds of tools, and that the market will reach US$25.1 billion annually by 2023. This is a sharp increase from what was a US$11.4 billion market in 2017.

However, marketing automation tools are generally one-sided, meaning the use of them doesn’t really entice or encourage engagement from the consumer. And the wrong application of marketing automation can be detrimental to a campaign, such as when a business emails prospects too frequently or is not personal/targeted enough during communication.

Below are some of the most common problems associated with relying on automated marketing techniques to achieve your marketing goals:

Marketing automation can be perceived as  impersonal by your target audience

The overuse of marketing automation in campaigns can be perceived as impersonal by your target audience. This can ultimately lead to potential customers either disliking or ignoring any of your future marketing attempts in the future.

It can be costly

The cost of purchasing the rights to use reliable marketing automation tools can be quite costly — with premium features of automated marketing tools typically coming with an extra cost. Consider if these funds could be better spent on a tool that has a higher ROI (return on investment).

It’s time intensive

There is a common misconception that marketing automation means less work. This is not true by any means. While automating certain tasks can help improve work flow, the elements needed to fuel your automated marketing system still need to be created.

For example, a social media marketing strategy that uses a post scheduler like Buffer or Hootsuite still needs someone to actually create the necessary content for the posts, plan to schedule the posts, and respond to comments or questions.

It can limit campaign optimization

One of the main factors of any successful marketing campaign is the ability to optimize marketing activities on-the-go to achieve better results. The use of automated marketing tools can sometimes limit the flexibility of marketing campaigns and restrict marketers from making the necessary changes needed to improve performance.

It can be complex to set up, use, and manage

Marketing automation platforms and software are sophisticated applications, which means inexperienced users can soon find themselves spending more time navigating the functions of a tool than actually using it to improve marketing effectiveness.

For example, the use of popular SEO automation tools such as Ahrefs provides value only if the marketer knows how to use the tool and interpret its suggestions.

It can magnify mistakes or make them go undetected

Marketing automation platforms can handle huge numbers of requests at any given time and process a lot of information. Without keeping a close eye on these processes, this can lead to errors going undetected or something being unintentionally shared with the wrong segmentation of a marketer’s list.

Think about the needs of your consumers first — then automate

With marketing automation, businesses and brands have endless opportunities to automate a variety of tasks and connect with target audiences. However, as explained above, the use of automation in marketing can lead to some serious problems when not implemented properly.

When it comes to who consumers choose to interact with online, it should also be noted that your target audience probably has no shortage of options. So it’s imperative for marketers to think outside the box and always have the consumers’ interests, needs, and wants front-of-mind when creating and developing any type of marketing campaign.

Marketing gamification: a better way to generate leads, convert prospects, and retain customer loyalty

The use of marketing gamification strategies has long been a proven method for achieving a wide range of different marketing goals — for businesses who operate in both consumer (B2C) or enterprise (B2B) businesses.

Gamification works by providing users with a more fun, entertaining, and personalized experience when interacting with a brand or business. In return, this provides an excellent opportunity for marketers to extract valuable consumer insights from target groups, nurture consumer relationships, and establish brand loyalty to significantly increase the lifetime value of each customer.

By incorporating highly engaging gaming elements into marketing campaigns (such as competition, achievement, rewards, entertainment, and fun), marketers are able to leverage powerful human emotions that invoke a response and encourage them to want to interact.

But gamification in marketing isn’t just about playing games to escape reality or only for enjoyment. It involves using the psychology and rewards of gameplay to achieve marketing objectives.

The benefits of marketing gamification v. marketing automation

The benefits of adding gamification elements into marketing campaigns and having prospects willingly interact with your brand or business because the experience is fun, personalized, and rewarding has tremendous benefits. This stands in stark contrast to other forms of marketing automation, such as blanket email auto-responders, which don’t really compel prospects to interact or engage.

With the maturation of internet users and their ability to identify common internet marketing tactics, marketers and online businesses need to develop innovative ways to reach and engage authentically with their target audience online. The use of marketing gamification strategies and applications such as LeadFamly’s gamification software provide a very cost effective and cost efficient solution.

From lead generation, all the way through to customer retention, brand loyalty, and genuine brand advocacy, gamification software can be utilized at every stage of the buyer’s journey to engage with a target audience and successfully influence their buying behaviors.

Marketers who are looking for an effective marketing strategy to generate GDPR-compliant leads in 2019, a better way to segment target audiences, engage with them on a much deeper level, or increase conversion rates can look to LeadFamly’s gamification software. It is a cost-efficient solution to integrate customized, high-engagement marketing gamification strategies into marketing campaigns — without the need for technical abilities or a designer to create the campaign’s game.