So – you’ve built an app, you’re sending emails, and you’re giving out loyalty points — but your engagement rates still feel flat.
You’re not alone. With attention spans at an all-time low, fast, attention-grabbing content is the new ‘it’ thing. You need something that will hook your customers straight away.
Here’s the good news: Gamification is proving to be one of the most effective tools for turning passive audiences into active customers.
Talk to our sales team to discover more about The Interactive Marketing Hub.
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Why Retail Engagement Falls Flat
Customers today expect more than a transactional relationship. They want value, entertainment, and relevance — not just another notification or loyalty point. Retail apps that fail to engage users with interactive, meaningful content are often ignored or uninstalled altogether.
The result? Declining open rates, shorter session times, lower loyalty programme participation and weak cross-channel performance.
The current customer market craves interaction and genuity, but how do we translate this demand onto marketing channels like email, app and in-store? Gamification is so effective because it’s motivationally aligned with our core drives – competitiveness, achievement, and the desire for fun. This creates a journey that feels personalised and genuine.
The Gamification Advantage
Gamification solves these pain points by transforming everyday touchpoints into exciting, reward-driven moments. Whether it’s a quiz, spin-to-win, memory game or digital advent calendar, gamification adds fun and value to your customer journey.
Here’s how retailers are seeing tangible improvements:
1. Higher Engagement Across Channels
When games are promoted through email, push notifications and in-store QR codes, the results speak for themselves. Hotel Chocolat’s Chocolate Love Match quiz is a simple and interactive experience that is now live across all channels, including their website, emails and within stores. Customers can interact with the Love Match quiz at kiosks in store, via QR codes or within the website and be matched with the best chocolate for them straight away. With a 64% completion rate, the quiz has proven its popularity. Due to the popularity of the Love Match quiz, Hotel Chocolat have continued to use Odicci for similar experiences, which have achieved amazing results, such as a +165% uplift in conversions and 95% click-through rate uplift from the Hot Chocolate Quiz.
2.Boosted Retention & Repeat Visit
Seasonal activations like advent calendars or monthly ‘tap-to-win’ incentives keep customers coming back. Since launching their first app experience with Odicci, Asda Rewards has achieved just short of 50m Customer interactions with a consistent 80% + redemption rate. This also included data-driven insights linking to £49.3m of sales. These high reward redemptions indicate strong Customer retention and loyalty.
3. More Customer Loyalty
Gamification adds emotional value to customer loyalty. From using Interactive Calendars to acquire and engage their target audience, SEPHORA supercharged opt-in and traffic to the website and app. The Digital Calendar gained a whopping 272k entries and 11k average daily entries. Furthermore, SEPHORA gained a 60% uplift from test B of the A/B testing in 2024. The Type B experience gave customers the option to opt in to updates about the Beauty Calendar, which ultimately supercharged sales. From digital calendars to opt-ins for their physical calendar, SEPHORA were able to truly embrace gamification into their Christmas Marketing strategy and optimise customer engagement during a peak season
The Best Part? It’s Easy to Get Started.
Whether you want to:
- Drive app downloads with a social media quiz,
- Increase footfall through in-store QR games,
- Boost email engagement with a countdown calendar, or
- Encourage loyalty members to spend more through prize drop games…
Gamification offers flexible, low-effort ways to enhance your marketing,d without needing a complete tech overhaul.