Blog

Creating Memorable Experiences: 4 Tips for Gamifying Events

From planning your event logistics to promoting your event, there is so much preparation that goes into the event management process. But when it all comes down to it, the day of your event is what attendees will truly remember—if you play your cards right.

One of the best ways to grab and keep attendees’ attention during your event is gamification. As EventMobi’s event gamification guide explains, gamification “repurposes gaming tactics for an event context, inspiring friendly competition amongst attendees and incentivizing active event participation.”

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps you need to take to gamify your event and keep attendees engaged for its entire duration.

Define your event goals.

You likely already have an idea of what you want to achieve with your event. Fine-tuning these goals can help you develop gamification elements that push your objectives forward. For instance, you may aim to:

Increase participation in speaker sessions. You can achieve this goal through gamification by hosting a challenge that awards points for answering polls, asking questions, or contributing to the conversation during speaker sessions.

Boost donation revenue. Try running a text-to-give campaign during your event and using a donor leaderboard to track who’s contributing the largest donations.

Promote your sponsors. Engage attendees and spread awareness of your sponsors by running a sponsored social media contest with prizes for the best posts.

Encourage networking. Host a networking challenge that awards points for each new connection attendees form or conversation they engage in.

While gamification is meant to introduce some fun into your event, it should also serve a purpose. Your goals should come first, followed by the gamification elements and mechanisms you’ll use to accomplish those goals.

Understand your audience.

When you have a solid understanding of your audience members, you can tailor your gamification efforts to their interests, preferences, and demographics. Use data collected through your event registration software to get a sense of who your attendees are.

Then, segment your audience based on factors like:

Age. Young participants may be more receptive to tech-savvy gamification elements like social media challenges, text-to-give leaderboards, and rewards won through your event app. Older participants may appreciate more hands-on games like bingo and scavenger hunts that leverage printed materials instead.

Professional background. When you know the industries or causes attendees work for, you can create networking spaces dedicated to those areas that encourage attendees to meet and network with people of similar professional backgrounds.

Giving capacity. Level the playing field for giving challenges by creating different leagues or leaderboards for small, mid-level, and major donors.

If you need more information about your audience to personalize the gamification experience, consider enriching your database. Deep Sync defines data enrichment as “the process of supplementing your first-party data with third-party data to confirm you have the most accurate, reliable, and comprehensive database possible.” This process can help you unlock information you may not collect during registration, such as attendee demographics, education, income level, net worth, and lifestyle information.

Choose the right event software.

The right event software can help you facilitate engaging gamification opportunities. Look for an event app that offers the following features:

Challenges and objectives. Your event software should allow you to set up the challenges you’ve planned and make it easy for attendees to participate.

Points, badges, and leaderboards. When attendees complete certain tasks, they should earn points and badges to mimic a game-like experience. You might also use leaderboards so they can see how they’re performing in relation to other attendees.

Rewards. Motivate attendees to complete challenges by giving rewards like gift cards, branded merchandise, and social media shoutouts to the winners.

Progress tracking. Help attendees track their progress with a platform that incorporates elements like progress bars or fundraising thermometers. These visual indicators can boost morale and encourage attendees to keep working toward their goals.

Games and activities. Your software might have games and activities built directly into the platform, such as quizzes, scavenger hunts, and puzzles.

In addition to these gamification features, you should also find an event software solution that allows you to incorporate your organization’s branding, communicate with attendees, share important event resources, and analyze valuable event insights.

Gather feedback.

After your event, collect feedback from your attendees to improve your future gamification efforts. Ask them questions like:

How would you rate your experience with the games and challenges offered at our event?
What was your favorite activity and why?
Was it easy to participate in the games and challenges offered? Why or why not?
Did you find the games and challenges offered engaging and/or valuable to your event experience? Why or why not?
Is there anything we could do to improve these opportunities in the future?

Send the survey directly to attendees, and add it to the event page on your website for greater visibility. Once you’ve gathered all responses, store the insights you’ve gained in your database to strengthen your gamification strategy.

Gamification makes your events more fun, memorable, and impactful. Leverage these techniques to stir up healthy competition, achieve your event goals, and keep attendees coming back for more.