Events have always been an asset to businesses across the globe, serving as key opportunities to increase brand awareness while nurturing sales prospects and networking opportunities. But the impact of COVID-19 has caused events to move into a virtual format at a blistering pace. According to a report by Wild Apricot, the number of organizations hosting virtual events doubled in 2020 alone. And, due to the lack of face-to-face interaction, it can be a challenge to engage people at virtual events. When remote workers are on video calls throughout the day, how do you make your event feel exciting and not another remote meeting? With this rapid shift away from in-person interactions, gamification is an ideal way to keep your audience engaged. Gamification takes elements of gaming and game design and incorporates it into a different application. But how do you implement it and how is gamification done right?
When hosting a virtual event, it’s crucial to grab and maintain your audience’s attention. And gamification is a perfect way to make an event session more fun or incentivise attendees to interact. Here are some gamification strategies that you can use to enhance your next virtual event.
Trivia Games
Everyone loves trivia night. And whether for a fun recap at the end of a webinar or a way to share branded content, virtual trivia is an excellent example of gamification done right for online events. These can be sessions to serve as breaks from the main event content to inspire your audience to network even if they’re not face-to-face, or may be geared toward session or company-specific content to help your audience remember the presentation and your business long after the event is over.
Augmented Reality Experiences
Augmented reality (AR) is an ideal choice for increasing interactivity.
To generate excitement over their trade show experience, Nekoosa, a specialty paper company, partnered with Trekk to create an AR app called Hoops Madness. The app is an interactive augmented reality experience that allowed attendees to scan their surroundings and play an AR-generated basketball mini-game.
AR strategies like these, which can be launched by scanning a physical object you send to attendees (such as a postcard) or simply launched from an app as markerless experiences, inject fun into any virtual booth or speaking session. Attendees would need only to download the AR app to enjoy the experience.
Giveaways on Social Media
Nothing gets people excited on social media like a giveaway. Whether you’re offering your own products or an eye-catching prize, announcing a giveaway during an event or speaking session is the perfect way to get audiences subscribing to your social spaces and engaging with your content.
With a giveaway that requires the audience to follow, like, and share or retweet, you’re gaining traction on social media while offering an exciting incentive for your subscribers.
Quizzes and Polls
During an event like a webinar or speaking session, including polls and Q&A throughout gets your audience participating while helping them remember the material you’re presenting. Another major perk of including a quiz or poll is the ability to use the data you generated during the event to create future content like blog posts, social media posts, and infographics.
Personalized Awards
As a reward for participating in a session or a quiz, offering personalized awards in the form of online badges or even physical trophies and other merchandise to mail to attendees is another way to encourage hands-on engagement for your virtual events.
If you offer a quiz at your virtual booth or session, you could provide badges based on how well attendees perform. Adding titles to the badges rather than number scores — for example, “Marketing Master” or “Marketing Cadet,” is a way for participants to take away a fun badge just by participating in the event itself without necessarily grading how much or little they took away — what counts is that they took their time to attend and engage.
When organizing a virtual event, keeping up engagement is vital. According to a new report by American Express, 54% of event planners spend more time panning attendee experiences than logistics. This is why gamification done right is a way to get audiences to remember your booth or speaking sessions while genuinely enjoying the experience they’re having interacting with your business.
