Gamification is arguably one of the biggest marketing and UX movements these days, with many startups today engineering some element of game theory into apps to keep their users engaged.
If your app doesn’t include some form of gamification, then you’re probably missing out on harnessing this power to keep your users retained and delighted.
Gamification works, and the data is there to prove it. Take Foursquare – for example, which grew 10 times its size in five years when it incoporated gamification into its mobile application (Scavify, 2020). Or software company Autodesk – which, upon leveraging gamification, lifted its trail usage rate by 40% and conversion rates by 15% (Mordor Intelligencee, 2021).
I’ve taken a look at how there are consumer-focused SaaS apps using gamification, and other apps are using gamification for productivity and habit building, but in this post I want to look at some apps in the B2B SaaS space that are using gamification to improve performance, motivate teams.
There are far too many examples out there to list, so I wanted to share a just a couple of examples I’ve come across that are worth mentioning.
1. Asana
Asana is one of the most popular project management tools used by teams today.
As a way to celebrate task completion, Asana provides a unique setting that allows a variety of animals to appear on the screen after marking tasks as completed. This can be enabled on/off within the “Settings” page, but it’s a creative microinteraction that makes it a little more fun to complete tasks. Yes, unicorns do exist.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot provides products and services related to inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. They have implemented a badges system for HubSpot Academy, a certification program around their products.
By completing a certification programs, users earn certifications and badges to represent their inbound expertise. HubSpot encourages its users to download printable certificates, embed them into their websites, and share them on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.
This system motivates users to complete their certification trainings, as the badges represent all the hard work they put into earning it and is also a way for them to show off their expertise.
3. ProdPad
Launched in 2012, ProdPad is a product management platform that helps product managers develop product strategy.
They’ve incorporated a lot of gamification techniques and principles into their product’s user journey, even utilizing it within their own user onboarding flow.
One example is their use of offering rewards for completing in-app actions. You start off with a free trial for a certain number of days, and ProdPad allows you to increase the number of days in this trial through actions like inviting a colleague, adding a user persona, adding billing details, and so on. I’ve published a whole post about how ProdPad uses gamification to onboard their users.
4. Trailhead by Salesforce
Ranked 2nd place on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2021, Salesforce provides cloud-based CRM and enterprise solutions for some of the world’s top brands.
Trailhead by Salesforce is their online education platform, creating an easy and accessible pathway for anyone to start learning the Salesforce ecosystem.
The platform uses a mix of points, badges, community-building, all tied into a fun and friendly theme with creative vector illustrations to keep users engaged in their educational content.
5. Upviral
Upviral is a referral marketing platform that uses sweepstakes, rewards, and leaderboards to help businesses with their marketing campaigns.
Visitors get a unique referral link they can share on their social platforms. They gain points for every referral made and are ranked on a leaderboard. Prizes can be awarded for those who’ve attained the most points, or given at random.
6. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is an online cloud-based customer support software providing help desk support. The team has gamified customer support by turning their helpdesk into a game.
Customer support agents using Freshdesk can earn points, level up, win rewards, and unlock various achievements and rewards. Additionally, the platform provides “Quests” – which are little missions that customer support agents can complete to unlock badges and gain even more points. Finally, the app utilizes leaderboards to generate a little competition amongst the support agents.
7. Influitive
Influitive is a customer advocacy and marketing SaaS platform based in Canada. The product helps companies to discover, nurture, and mobilize their advocates to accelerate sales and increase customer lifetime value.
Influitive has adopted gamification into many areas of their product – from customer onboarding, to community discussions, and collecting customer feedback and data.
One of their stellar features is AdvocateHub, allowing managers to turn their customers into loyal advocates through various gamified campaigns.
8. LevelEleven
LevelEleven is a sales gamification app helping to the improve the effectiveness and performance of their salespeople.
Sales employees are motivated to perform well through the usage of points, leaderboard rankings, and customized contests. They’re rewarded and recognized for their performance and meeting sales goals.
9. Scavify
Scavify makes it easy for groups to participate in challenges that educate, increase team building, or create interaction amongst its participants.
In the context of B2B, Scavify is utilizing gamification through their use of scavenger hunts, allowing members to play and compete. The app helps setup tasks, challenges, and even scoreboards, allowing members to engage each other with a little friendly competition.
10. GamiPress
GamiPress is an open-source plugin for WordPress, the CMS powering 34% of all websites on the Internet. GamiPress lets webmasters award their users with digital rewards for interacting with their WordPress website.
The plugin allows site owners to customize and create a number of different achievements and unlockables based on certain actions completed by their visitors. For example – reading a specific page, logging in, commenting on a number of articles, etc. Visitors can earn and collect badges, maintain a points balance, and move up ranks.
11. Kaizo
Kaizo is another example of a customer support SaaS app that helps transform performance management for support agents.
They have utilized fancy illustrations and a “Dojo” class theme to empower their customer support agents, help them improve skills, and achieve weekly goals all while having fun at the same time.
12. HoverSignal’s Lucky Lottery
HoverSignal is a company that produces HTML widgets and add-ons for web developers. One of their widgets, Lucky Lottery, allows users to add gamification to their websites or online store through a creative scratch-off lottery interaction.
Users get a lottery ticket with scratch-off sections and are encouraged to exchange their email addresses for the possibilities to win prizes.
It’s a fun and interactive form of gamification that boosts motivation and helps convert into more email addresses.
Got an example you’d like to share?
Are there any examples you think are interesting and you’d like to see added to this list? Feel free to send me an email.