In this episode of Event Experience by Bizzabo, host Rachel Moore explores the significant impact of gamification on event ROI with a panel of experts:Incentli CEO and Founder, Jeff Campbell, Director of Revenue Optimization at Informa Markets, MK Granados; and Head of Klik at Bizzabo, Will Curran.
The discussion covers the practical implementation of gamification strategies to engage diverse audiences, avoid common pitfalls, and leverage AI and post-event data. The experts delve into the enhancement of attendee experience through technology like wearables and the importance of understanding audience personas.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
[00:00:09] Rachel Moore: Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo, the podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events. I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host.
[00:00:32] In this episode, we hereby declare that it's game on. As we level up by unlocking the power of gamification to boost event ROI. With our guest experts, Incentli's CEO and founder, Jeff Campbell, Informa's Director of Revenue Optimization MK Granados, and Bizzabo's Head of Klik, Will Curran. We'll help you understand and apply gamification to engage a diverse audience, use practical game of vacation strategies, avoid common pitfalls, and wield AI and post-event data.
[00:01:06] Vault yourself beyond chat and polls into wearables and other new ideas to create all the fanfare around your next event experience.
[00:01:25] Rachel Moore: Hello, everyone. We're so glad you're here. I'm Rachel Moore, and I'm the host of Bizzabo's Event Experience podcast, and I'm thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to Level Up! Unlocking the Power of Gamification to Boost Event ROI. In this session, we're going to explore the effective implementation Gamification for event ROI. Our goal is to equip you with knowledge and practical tips to help you understand the concept of gamification as an important yet challenging element of attendee engagement in your events.
[00:02:02] We're also going to help you use practical tips and strategies to incorporate gamification in experiences that meet extroverts, introverts and neurodivergent audiences where they are. And we'll embrace the integration of event tech with gamification. We're going to talk about how gamification taps into success, not just for attendees, but also sponsors and sales teams who all need to achieve ROI goals from your events.
[00:02:28] We're also going to dig into post event data we can glean from gamification, if and how AI plays a part in gamification, and how smart wearables, like Bizzabo Klik badges can enhance the entire experience.
[00:02:43] Jeff Campbell: I
[00:02:43] Rachel Moore: t's my pleasure to introduce today's speakers. First, we have Jeff Campbell. Jeff is on a mission to revolutionize how businesses engage with our customers and attendees. As the CEO and founder of Incentli, Jeff and his team focus on turning every interaction into a revenue generating opportunity.
[00:03:01] His go to event day shoes are Doc Martens with AirSoles. Jeff, welcome to the discussion today.
[00:03:08] Jeff Campbell: Thanks so much, Rachel. Super excited to be here.
[00:03:11] Rachel Moore: Same. All right. Next, we have MK Granados. MK is the Director of Revenue Optimization for Informa Markets and author of The Sponsorship Playbook Newsletter on LinkedIn.
[00:03:24] Her mission is to explore events and brand activations that create frictionless, immersive and memorable experiences for attendees. MK has developed fan engagement strategies for New York comic con star war celebration, (woo!) and packs. And her favorite event day shoes are Adidas ultra boost. Welcome MK.
[00:03:44] MK Granados: Thank you. Those shoes have been helping me out here in London so much this week. They're more than just Oh, I bet.
[00:03:49] Rachel Moore: Oh, I bet. I bet. Oh, yeah, I would imagine. That's awesome. Also joining us for this gamified ride today is Will Curran. Will is at the intersection of technology and in person events. As the head of Klik for Bizzabo, he brings wearable technology of smart badges into the event ROI mix.
[00:04:08] Will, it's a pleasure to see you as always.
[00:04:10] Will Curran: Let's get started on the actual topic.
[00:04:13] Rachel Moore: what do you think is the biggest thing that holds people back from gamifying their event? MK, I'll, I'll start with you first. What's the biggest thing quickly.
[00:04:20] MK Granados: I feel like it's one of those aspirational things, but when budgets get tight, you often go, we need it, can we get by without it? You know, you can't get by without your chairs and stage and AV, but maybe gamification gets cut in those tough moments.
[00:04:33] Rachel Moore: That's totally a good answer. Jeff, how about you? What's something else, or something you think people are, is holding back people?
[00:04:38] Jeff Campbell: Often just because people are so busy. It kind of, to MK's response about organizing a bunch of other things, and it tends to get tossed into the nice to have, not need to have category.
[00:04:49] Rachel Moore: Agreed, yep. And, and Will, what's something you see pretty much that holds people back?
[00:04:53] Will Curran: I think a lot of times, like, people, our concern that it's not going to actually move the needle for the event and actually create true engagement. It's going to feel like kind of like a fake engagement in some ways.
[00:05:03] Rachel Moore: Little performative. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:05] Let's get into the discussion. It's always felt a lot like AI kind of feels right now. We all know it's out there, it exists. And we all know it can help us succeed, but we don't all know how to win at gamification. And by win, we mean that everyone wins. Attendees, sponsors, sales teams, and of course, we as event planners want to be the winners in this experience.
[00:05:27] Rachel Moore: So why don't we start with the fundamentals and define gamification as a concept and event tactic. And to do that, let us tap into the expertise of today's speakers. Jeff, I'm going to take this first question to you.
[00:05:40] Why is the ask of let's make sure we add gamification into this event, something event profs must consider today for every event that they craft?
[00:05:49] Jeff Campbell: Well, first of all, I think it's important to start to define gamification better than it has been done in the past. It's been very loosely defined. And I see, especially in the event industry, I see people lumping in gamification with a bunch of different varieties of the term.
[00:06:06] And so one thing is to figure out what is it that you're trying to achieve with gamification?
[00:06:11] So often games get put into that category and games are designed to be entertaining and designed to be fun and sure. Things like whack a mole and maybe, putting a mini golf green in an exhibitor booth is a good way to start a conversation. But I think that's one form of gamification I've seen being used.
[00:06:33] I think another category that should be identified is what we call content gamification. And that's where you take the content and you actually change the narrative to fit more into a game type situation. A good example of that would be like trivia. And then there's another category, which we call structural gamification, and that's what you're seeing today with incently, and that's where we're adding game mechanics to the event, and those game mechanics are tied to actions or behaviors that we want to encourage or incentivize.
[00:07:04] And when we start to look at events and we work with planners and even exhibitors, we start to look at who are the players around the event, and then what are the time frames, and where can we then use that structural gamification to maximize ROI and revenue generation.
[00:07:21] So I think that's a big strategy part that's been missing when people look at gamification, they look at it and say, Oh, we're just going to provide some more entertainment. Whereas we're looking at how do we add value in terms of getting more behaviors and more actions that lead to ROI. So in the timeframes, we look at pre event in event and post event, and then the different players we look at are who are the event planners, the attendees, the exhibitors, and the speakers.
[00:07:48] So as an example, we can look at the event planners in pre event. What's the major action that they want to see that will drive revenue. Okay. Well, of course that's registrations.
[00:07:59] You want to get more registrations in the pre event stage, then those are the types of behaviors that we're trying to look at structural gamification and incentivize. Of course, with the attendees, then we're looking at engaging in events. What actions would help you consume more content, maybe meet more people, maybe go and meet with exhibitors.
[00:08:18] If you're an exhibitor, what actions do you want to see by the attendees so you can capture more leads. And then post event again, we start to look at how can we extend the value of the event as well for actions that people might take afterwards. And then lastly, I think people have been focused solely on the tech stacks that are around the event platforms themselves.
[00:08:42] So we are looking at connecting structural gamification can connect to platforms outside of the event platform. So as an example, we could award coins for when payment transactions are recorded or, for example, when surveys are replied. Or maybe when someone uses the klik badge and scans another klik badge at an event.
[00:09:04] So you can start to make a larger digital ecosystem of engagement. And we think that's really where the long term value and ROI is going to be seen and achieved with the data and the information that we're getting. And hopefully that's going to get people to think of using tools like this, not just to improve engagement. But to actually drive business results.
[00:09:28] Rachel Moore: Great, great. Very full answer, too. You gave us a lot to think about there too. And I love that basically the whole time I'm thinking like, so you're saying this can go farther than my little social post earlier today that correlated this all to super mario brothers.
[00:09:40] We can do more. We can go further, faster with this. MK, I'm going to come to you next. As far as demand and expectations of today's audiences, and we have an audience with us today, but we're talking more broadly about our event planners audiences. How are today's attendees responding to events without gamification versus the events that have gamification in their DNA?
[00:10:01] MK Granados: Fundamentally, they're bored, but like really, I think, you know, it's something they don't know they're missing, they just are easily disengaged. They're checking their phone, they're opening a new Internet browser tab. If it's a virtual event, they're checking their email. If they're sitting in an event chair, there may be, you know, I'll go into that session in a few minutes if I'm not in a rush. And so that urgency and engagement and things like that might be missing.
[00:10:24] And Jeff, I love all the ways that you described reframing the definition of gaming and what all that can entail, and a stat that I think is fascinating is that 90 percent of Gen Z, identifies as gamers in some way. Be it through mobile gaming, be it through Twitch streaming and spectating gamers, I mean, the fact that we'll watch people play video games, it's fundamentally very interesting.
[00:10:48] So when we think about those rising young professionals coming to your events and things like that, that's one core element. They're going to speak fluently. And I've been following that and seeing that a lot of folks are actually having the problem at the other end of the spectrum with more senior attendees, where I think one of the things that you're walking the line of is grinding.
[00:11:07] Is it transactional? Am I only doing these things to jump through hoops? Because I don't want to. Versus, yeah, that swag is pretty cool. I'll go, you know, walk 10, 000 steps to get all the stamps to get the thing. There's very different things. So I love that this is a topic today.
[00:11:23] Rachel Moore: You know, as a parent of gen alpha folks, who are watching video games, like she's, one of them's upstairs right now watching video games while she's playing a video game. Make that make sense. It's like inception. But you're so right. We, and I think, um, this kind of leads to like, to one final question for this particular first segment.
[00:11:39] What is holding people back? You know, it's still missing or it's still ineffective. And that leads to the challenges, the biggest challenges that we all have to overcome. MK, you talked about budget. Jeff, you talked about tech stacks, you know, and complexity of like trying to incorporate it.
[00:11:53] And we just touched on generational, you know, which we're going to dig into a little bit more too in the next segment. But, what are some other big challenges that we're facing aside from those two that anyone wants it and Will, of course, you can unmute as well if you want and opine.
[00:12:06] Will Curran: I, you all know, I can rant for days, so I'm happy to share one of the biggest challenges. But I think one of the, the biggest challenges that I found when it comes to gamification is that, in the past, gamification systems rewarded behavior that didn't matter. For example, like, liking a post on a social feed for an event.
[00:12:26] You know, here's one of the worst ones. Messaging other attendees on the app. So then you get somebody who messages every single person and just spams them. You know, like that's not authentic in any sort of way. Or you know, like one of the worst is like RSVPing for sessions versus actually attending them.
[00:12:42] So they'll just like RSVP for all of them. And I think what ends up happening is that, people very quickly figured out how literally to game the system to get the prize, to get the Amazon gift card, to get the iPad was a couple years ago, and now it's, we have to figure out, okay, like, games do work, this fundamental theory that we use games to incentive, scent and engage and get people excited, but the question is, like, how can we make sure that it's doing, moving the needle that matters?
[00:13:09] I'll tease that for a little bit later, but for now, anybody out there who knows what Klik is, you know where I'm going with this. But I think that's one of the big reasons why I also really love our gamification system. And I also love incentive. Is that like you it's, it's doing actions and the ability to customize it to reward things like guessing which of my shoes was the bright shoes that I'm wearing. Like getting them engaged in the chat versus just the quantity of chat messages that are happening.
[00:13:35] MK Granados: I also think that events have like an attention economy. You can only consume and absorb so much. And so if an event planner is being really, really intentional about like, how full can that sponge get before more is going to be absorbed? Is the game going to be the thing that breaks the camel's back?
[00:13:50] Or is it going to be the thing that supports them learning and engaging and absorbing?
[00:13:54] Rachel Moore: Really great point. Really great point too. I love that you mentioned that too, there, there's such a thing as too much. No, maybe you're, you are saturating with, they're just like, Oh my gosh, I only have so much room in my brain.
[00:14:05] I know I just talked about my daughter who she's, you know, playing a game and watching a game. There is a limit to that. Like me trying to go in and say, now, okay, I hear some chores they need to do later. She's going to just, it's not going to resonate. Well, let's move into our next segment.
[00:14:19] Rachel Moore: We're going to talk about these practical insights and strategies. Uh, we did just all talk about games generally, and this might be a good opportunity, as I mentioned this next sentence, we all have our favorite games. Be they board, video, card, or show.we all know how the game should feel as it's delivered.
[00:14:37] What we may not know is how to successfully deliver gamification. Which is what we're about to delve into. And even as we've incorporated gamification into this webinar, it is just scratching the surface, as Jeff mentioned, of what's possible for all kinds of events. This segment should be super insightful, even more than the last one, if that's believable.
[00:14:57] As we're about to hear some examples of epic gamification from each of our speakers. Before we do that, I want to ask, both of you, and actually all of you, as event planners approach gamification for their event, what things should they consider as they decide how to proceed and like resources and things?
[00:15:13] Jeff, I'll go to you first.
[00:15:15] Jeff Campbell: Yeah. Great question there, Rachel. Well, first of all, I always encourage people to think about the attendees. Who are they? What are their personas? And if you get into gamification research, most of the gamification gurus will talk about someone named Bartle who identified four different player types, which are killers, achievers, socializers, and explorers.
[00:15:39] And so within an audience, you're going to have a general persona, but then even within that audience, there's those four player types, generally speaking. And if you're, you know, if you're in today's webinar, you are likely kind of one or two of those different player types. So if you're a killer, for example, you are solely focused on that leaderboard and you're wondering, like, how can you beat other people here at the gamification opportunities?
[00:16:05] If you're an achiever, you might be looking more at that level and thinking like, Hey, what can I do to fill that progress bar and get to the next level? You'd be moderately interested in the leaderboard. If you're a socializer, you're probably looking around and figuring out like, Hey, can I earn some coins from networking with people today?
[00:16:22] Or can I explore other opportunities to maybe enhance this community. And in terms of an incentive, you're probably more drawn to the Doctors Without Borders fundraiser contribution. And if you're an explorer, you're poking around all over the webinar. You're poking around inside the incentive piece as well.
[00:16:41] And you're trying to figure out like, where's my Easter egg? And so when you look at the different personas that are generally categorized in your event, it's really important that you then figure out what gamification strategies are you going to use to not only the general persona of the group, like if they're salespeople, they're probably going to be more competitive.
[00:17:02] So you can have maybe a tilt more towards the killers and the achievers. But if you're, you know, maybe working with a philanthropy group, you're likely going to have way more socializers. And so it's important to identify who are you working with and then what are the types of mechanics that will appeal to those people. And where we've tried to come at it as try to add multiple different elements of gamification that will appeal to the broadest audience there.
[00:17:27] And if you look at other gamification structures, like generally points and leaderboards, and even badges, they're typically a systematic, like they have, they have, appear to your profile systematically and predictably and you can't really do anything with that.
[00:17:43] And so that's where the virtual currency is a really important aspect of adding in that element of autonomy. So it's a feedback mechanism. You're communicating that people are taking the actions that will help them get more value out of the event. But it also gives them autonomy to go in and spend it on the things that are more aligned with their level of interest.
[00:18:03] And a great example of that is a conference that is actually just ran last week. I didn't get to go to it this year, but it's called the Mountain Moot. And it's an event for LMS professionals that use a learning management system called Moodle. And if you go to their event, they introduce what's called moot box.
[00:18:20] And Moot Box are like the found, if you go to their website, mountainmoot.com, I think, and you'll see it's like the foundation of their engagement strategy. And if you go there, they really appeal to the three different players. Again, the, the attendees, the exhibitors, and the speakers. And I've been at their event playing, like wearing all those hats at the same event.
[00:18:39] And if you're an attendee, you're constantly looking at like, okay, how can I get more out of this event? Cause moot bucks come to you for those actions. And on the second day, they run a big moot bash party, and then you get to spend your coins and, and then take other people's money and collaborate and try and buy the things that are of interest. But as a speaker, I could also dole out moot box that gave me a, I kind of had three different wallets.
[00:19:01] I could give out moot box for people that engaged with me as a speaker, and wanted to follow up with me as an exhibitor. I also had a stack of moot box that I could give away for people to come and engage with us as exhibitor and obviously do lead capture. So there's examples of like in person events that I've seen this work incredibly well.
[00:19:22] It's still my it's by far the favorite event I've been to. It's build such a community and a loyal following just because of that.
[00:19:29] Rachel Moore: Yeah, I bet. And actually MK, I'm going to segue over, to you, a question for you next. And I, if you want to, you know, also work in like things that people should keep in mind, but this kind of tangents off of what Jeff was just talking about, because I was going to ask you about like, you know, we've got polls, leaderboards, engagement points, contests.
[00:19:47] I mean, we can all rattle off. A lot of these cookie cutter gamification tactics that so many of us are used to, but, we're probably missing out on those more creative out of the box gamification ideas that are available. could you share some, what some of those more novel ideas might be and how they worked perfectly in an event?
[00:20:03] MK Granados: Yeah, and also Jeff that was an amazing answer. And I think it sums up as event planners need to think like economists. I wish I could like rewind eight, nine years back in my career and be back at the planning table for our first implementations of gaming, where we were looking at the vendors pitch deck, and all the bells and whistles they had and then reverse engineering trying to plug our event into the things they had already built. Versus having a really intentional conversation about, what do we want? What's going to delight our attendees? What's going to deliver the messages and things that we want? What's going to appeal to our sponsors?
[00:20:37] Instead we're going hey sponsors pick from this menu of three different gamification options that can be done for a booth versus really having a deep understanding.
[00:20:45] So I love all of the intention and stuff that you bring to that. For background on some of this,Gamification technology at New York Comic Con, Chicago, C2E2, PAX events, which are for gamers, they're gaming conventions. You want to talk about how high the bar is and how, um, how candid the audience will be if you are not meeting their standards. There were some bumpy roads there. And tech friction and connectivity and badges and QR codes and all kinds of things that we learned along the way.
[00:21:14] But sometimes it's not about the tech itself. It's about the value you're giving to the attendees. And so this is how I love this example. It gets me so excited every time. This was from New York Comic Con and our sponsor, Direct TV now, wanted a high volume of lead retrieval, right? Just needed all the emails they could get their hands on as ethically as possible, right?
[00:21:33] You have to engage with their content. We're not just selling them a list. Absolutely not. So what we did was we had instant win stations with some prizes.
[00:21:40] MK Granados: And any day that you were at the event, you could tap and win. But say you could only make it to the event once and, you know, one day and you couldn't spend the whole weekend there.
[00:21:47] And how do we make sure that they leave with as much sense of value and participation? We commissioned artists to design five different statues. These are acrylic figurines. The artist is standing, pointing out his one there with the red mask on. These are one of a kind. Money can't buy them. These are commissioned pieces.
[00:22:05] They're on display. They're visually striking. You stop dead in your tracks and go, what is that thing? Oh, all I have to do is tap my badge to enter to win. Count me in. And we kept it open all weekend long. Just a big raffle sweepstakes entry. And we had five of them scattered throughout the event and key areas we wanted football.
[00:22:22] So I think, really thinking about the prizes and value you unlock and the ways in which you can provide something that money can't buy or not just give them more swag, give them things they'll really value.
[00:22:35] Rachel Moore: Love that.
[00:22:35] Rachel Moore: And real quick Jeff, you have a bit of an assignment because I think people were asking about those personas that you rattle off.
[00:22:40] So we definitely want to hear more about that possibly, uh, when you are not answering a question directly a little bit later. But I am going to swing back to you as well, because one thing I want to make sure we tackle before we move on to the next segment. Jeff, I'm going to take this to you too, but MK, I certainly welcome your input as well.
[00:22:56] What are, um, pitfalls and common mistakes that event planners should avoid. When they're implementing gamification to a mixed audience. And let's say you've got introverts and extroverts, where maybe everybody's not, and this might drive back to the personas a bit and even might speak to that generational aspect we just were talking about.
[00:23:14] So not everybody's going to engage the same way, for a multitude of reasons. Um, so Jeff, first for you, what are those pitfalls and common mistakes that our event planners can avoid if they're approaching that kind of a mixed audience?
[00:23:24] Jeff Campbell: Yeah, definitely back to the persona answer that I gave us a couple minutes ago is recognizing the, you know, who's there.
[00:23:32] I think a few people comment, Oh, like we have like professional audience or it's a serious nature event or whatnot. And I often get, you know, those kinds of objections when people are looking at gamification. And I would say that that's where I think you need to be very careful back to the definition of gamification.
[00:23:49] Like, are you putting in games that seem to be gimmicky or maybe take away from the content in a way? And, and that's where one of the reasons why we've stayed on the structural gamification side was because we're more interested in incentivizing and rewarding actions that lead to value creation and value generation.
[00:24:10] And then the other part of that, of the piece, I'm going to speak to it probably at a little bit later, but if, if you're looking at it from a value ad, I think there's a shift that needs to happen, not just for a sustainability reason, but also for the new generation and marketing lead capturereasons. Is that exhibitors and sponsors should be looking less to give away stress balls and logo pens, and start offering services that add value to people.
[00:24:36] But one of the reasons why, like, if you look in the incentive store today as a giveaway is, so it's a free incentive event, or there's a Doctors Without Borders, there's a consult with me, doesn't have to be like, those are just examples really for today, but to get people to start thinking of how can exhibitors add value to people beyond, like, not a branded tote bag or, like, we don't need more of that.
[00:25:00] We should be looking to how can we build a connection with the attendees to provide true value because then it's not sales. You're actually supporting this person and you're going to generate revenue by providing a quality service with that. So I think that's the other part of, In the incentive piece, there's a whole another topic.
[00:25:16] We prefer the acronym called SAPS, which is status, access, power, and stuff. And that's a really good way to frame your ideas around what should you be looking to give away to add value and then capture leads.
[00:25:29] Rachel Moore: Mech MK. I want to go right to you. Cause I saw you nodding and pointing along.
[00:25:32] MK Granados: I know. I love that snap framework. I think Holly Firestone and then the Salesforce community is put that forward and, having come from community management, community marketing, we relied on that heavily and access is my absolute favorite word there. This idea of going back to what money can't buy, you know, could you give your sponsor a handful of spots for a keynote or author signing meet and greet kind of things. These fleeting things that can only happen at the event.
[00:25:59] And so now you've unlocked the door for them because they've been doing behaviors. You want to see. A snap, the snap framework. Yes. All the way.
[00:26:08] We'll be right back with more event experience after the break. Ever wished your event badge did more than just display your name? Whether you're an event organizer, exhibitor, or attendee, Bizzabo's Klik Smart Badge transforms the event experience. From interactive networking to real time attendee insights and lead capture, the Smart Badge is the ultimate game changer. Visit bizzabo.com/Klik, that's B I Z Z A B O dot com forward slash K L I K to learn more about the next generation of wearable event technology. Bizzabo, your partner for building conferences that captivate.
[00:26:49]
[00:26:52] We're back to ask our experts about how event tech empowers gamification for attendee experience.
[00:27:00] Rachel Moore: Let us move into the final topic that we're going to cover today.
[00:27:04] Technology is the undercurrent of most, if not all of the events we plan. It's the undercurrent of what we're doing right now. When gamification and event tech work in concert, magic can happen, data can be gathered, and ROI can be achieved in the short and longterm. MK, I'm going to come to you first for mobile apps for in person events, to gamification features for virtual and possibly both for hybrid.
[00:27:28] I mean, we've got the whole run the whole gamut. How can event planners today ensure they're providing the tech needed to tie attendees into climbing that leaderboard?
[00:27:37] MK Granados: Yeah, that leaderboard, I think connects directly to a sense of identity.
[00:27:41] So for events where you can really embrace that individuality, focusing on avatars and being able to customize your name as it appears on the leaderboard, right? We use gamer handles in the gaming community. But it's a way to express yourself and it's maybe not necessarily a professional persona, but it's a composition of identity. And I think giving people a chance to add flair, right?
[00:28:05] God, I'm thinking about, uh, what is it, Office Space movie? And I have to wear a million buttons and pins, like.
[00:28:10] Rachel Moore: Oh, flair!
[00:28:11] MK Granados: Yeah, let someone think with intention about what pins they'd actually want to wear on their neck. You know, how do they want to express themselves? Who do they want to strike up a conversation with?
[00:28:20] The gamification can totally trigger to all of that. And for simplifying, one of the best lessons we learned was for an event, a consumer event with way too many people, leaderboards were just going to get lost. People are going to grind for points. It was going to be absurd by the end of day one, and no one could catch up by day two. Drafted the audience into teams and made it event wide team activity.
[00:28:41] So then before sessions kicked off, while you're walking by the big screen in the lobby, we were showing the live leaderboard of how the teams were doing. And so as long as you were on the winning team at the end of the event, you are entered to a grand prize. So we only have to give away one grand prize, but you had a sense of being a part of something bigger than you.
[00:28:57] You knew that if you only had the event for one day, you were helping advance the progress of your team. And that started to be less about big grind, big work, you know, I have to spend my whole event time working up a leaderboard to I'm part of something bigger than me, and now I'm chatting with the person behind me in line to find out if we're both earning points for the same team and interacting on a different level.
[00:29:19] Rachel Moore: You know, that's when group projects are good. When you're actually like, Hey, we all could win something, and this is the positive aspect of that. Will, you know, I've got to come over to you on this topic. I'm just going to ask, this might seem like a silly question, have you seen wearables play a part in gamification for in person events, and how?
[00:29:39] Will Curran: For sure, for sure. If you haven't heard of Klik before, definitely go check it out. And I highly recommend it. I was a customer of Klik. And one reason why I became a customer was because it allowed there to be a tracking of physical interactions at an event.
[00:29:55] And so, for example, allows you to exchange contact information, it allows you to interact with exhibitors and exchange contact information with exhibitors. To engage with things called touchpoints, which basically allow people to, like, gather content and scavenger hunts and all these things like that.
[00:30:10] But one reason why I love wearables for this, to kind of sprinkle on top of everything we've been talking about, is that now we can gamify in person actions. Which is a big deal, because before, like, it was all, you know, through the phone, it was through your EMS system, whatever it may be. But now, hey, we can gamify who's actually connecting with the most amount of attendees.
[00:30:30] Who's, uh, maybe, giving points to connecting with the platinum tier one title sponsor. I think there's a lot of options out there that allow wearables to really, like, add a ton of energy. And it's basically taking this idea of gamification, which is kind of that spark. That initial flame and it's like pouring gasoline essentially on it.
[00:30:48] And I think that's a really, really exciting idea for wearables and how it can basically take gamification and really gamify the things that matter. People networking with each other. You can gamify people tending actual physical sessions for them until the duration of the entire session meeting with sponsors and exhibitors. And it's like, If you had to pick like top three things you want your attendees doing, it's, it's definitely those.
[00:31:11] Rachel Moore: Yeah. You know, and I just had an idea. Remember how like we, we've all been in the rooms where it's like, okay, everyone check under your chair. One of you has, you know, whatever the thing is. What if you did that with a Klik with a wearable where you're like, okay, one person here has like the, and they don't know someone's got it.
[00:31:27] And then it's like, your challenge is to find who that person is. But there there's obviously, there's a limit to kind of, like, make that fun and make everybody try to find them, right?
[00:31:35] Will Curran: Well, technically, we have a light cue, so we can light up, like, one person's badge and be like, the one person's badge who lights up, you know?
[00:31:40] And people just lose their minds.
[00:31:43] Rachel Moore: And then they'd all fight over the badge and it's like, it turned messy quickly. Jeff, I'm going to come back to you.
[00:31:48] Rachel Moore: So we're going to talk about kind of payoff on ROI here. We all know there is immediate payoff of attendee experience as they discover those chances to win everything from recognition to tangible rewards or tea with Will.
[00:32:01] I've just realized he didn't, you know, alone is in here. He said he doesn't drink coffee. So now I know. But let's talk about the rewards for the business that come from ROI, stemming from that event data.
[00:32:10] How do event planners ensure a win for ROI once all the awards have been handed out? How does that data help ensure that later?
[00:32:18] Jeff Campbell: Yeah, that's key is, is again with structural gamification and you're tracking and listening to what are those actions and behaviors that people are taking. And that obviously is going to give you the reams of data to make informed decisions that should impact your sales and marketing opportunities going forward.
[00:32:36] So for example, I think most people think of gamification as an engagement layer, and it certainly does that. But when you look at the backend and you see what information is coming in, just look at, for example, the leaderboards, and the levels. So if you look at those, even if you turn them off, you can turn leaderboards off and we do that for certain clients, if it's a non competitive environment, but on the backend, we can still see who's on the leaderboard. And that gives you information about who are the most engaged and action based attendees at the event.
[00:33:07] And if you think about the leaderboards for one, but even levels give you thresholds of kind of like bands of where people land, then that certainly will then prioritize your follow up your marketing messages. I know who's the most engaged people at our last event. They're most likely going to be the people that are going to come back again to the next one.
[00:33:29] So those would be priority number ones, but it also helps me filter out things like maybe I, maybe I segment those users and I offer them VIP opportunities or I'm going to say contact points or other value based offerings to keep them most engaged and provide more value opportunity to keep them in your community and likely to return.
[00:33:50] So that's one in terms of levels and leaderboards. But then when you look at the incentive piece, again, coming back to the whole SAPS acronym and getting exhibitors and sponsors to think about how can they offer products and services that add value to the customer or to the attendees that they can then look to capture those leads.
[00:34:09] But we can do things like, for example, with the raffle draws that you're seeing today. Is that when people are spending their coins on purchasing a raffle ticket, we capture who that person is. And they're spending that coin on that particular item, but it also captures sentiment. So if I see that MK has bought only one raffle ticket to the Amazon gift card, but I see Will has bought a hundred tickets.
[00:34:35] Will is clearly more interested. So we can actually capture sentiment around the level of interest of that product. So now as an exhibitor and sponsor, I can prioritize my entire, not only lead capture, but my entire followup order, like who, who do I want to speak to first, who showed the most interest.
[00:34:53] And I think then, taking all of that and considering stretching the value of the actual event in terms of post event activities, if you can start looking at, say, multi stream days where you have, say, recordings, you can start to incentivize people to come back and consume content that they couldn't consume during the event. I think adding the incentive layer for a longer duration past the event to encourage people to keep coming back and engaging with that content.
[00:35:20] So that's another big goal of, taking the event, stretching the value, and then looking at all the metrics and the coming in to add value to, specifically exhibitors and sponsors, I think is, is where I feel like that's a missing part of what most event planners, um, have been considering with gamification, and how they can help the exhibitors get more value.
[00:35:39] Rachel Moore: But, um, MK, you mentioned to you, it all comes back to thinking like an economist. I'm going to come back to MK cause we just have a couple more minutes before we get into Q and A and wrapping things up.
[00:35:49] You knew we had to bring it up.
[00:35:51] Rachel Moore: AI. It's going to come up sooner or later. MK, how can it play a helpful role in gamification planning without turning us all into automatons?
[00:36:01] MK Granados: Oh, I love it. I love AI. I love its capabilities for personalization. I love the idea that if you're building your custom agenda in advance of the event, we know what you're interested in.
[00:36:13] We know what you're curious about. We know that we can unlock networking opportunities with the things and people that matter most to you. Because of inferring information from data you've supplied. We can look at registration data and use that for some customization as well. We can look at your onboarding during.
[00:36:31] I think there was a question that came in somewhere about that of extending the life of the event. I think you can definitely look at it as a tool to customize your pre event communications and create that high engagement behavior earlier in a way that your marketing team would probably kill you if you had to do manually and try to do off of a spreadsheet in some awful, awful way.
[00:36:51] Exactly.
[00:36:52] Rachel Moore: Jeff, briefly from you of AI, yay or nay, helpful, harmful. What do you think?
[00:36:57] Jeff Campbell: I love it. I'm hoping that based on personas and player types, if you get some information about who's coming to your event, it can help inform you about what would be optimal incentives that you could offer to the attendees.
[00:37:11] One that I'm really keen on, I don't know anyone who's doing it, but is to take that information and to help to devise specific scavenger hunts with the exhibitors and sponsors that will help them navigate the expo hall in such a way that can better find the right vendors that are going to meet the needs of what they're actually looking for.
[00:37:31] So scavenger hunts like these passport stamps and all of that, that are I'm going to say rudderless, is I think AI will play a role in helping us better align those types of activities to add value to everyone.
[00:37:45] Rachel Moore: Excellent. Absolutely. All right.
[00:37:47] Can you provide some examples of KPIs to set when using gamification? Anyone want to grab that one first?
[00:37:55] MK Granados: I think there's two questions there. Cause it's the KPI for the gamification itself. And then it's the KPI of what the event overall was trying to achieve that the gamification was health incentivizing. So let's just say it's keynote attendance. Yes, we can quantify the gamification thing, but overall year over year, keynote attendance go up.
[00:38:11] It can that then be attributed back to incentives and gamification placed behind it.
[00:38:14] Will Curran: MK is 100 percent right. Yeah, like, in my opinion, look at your overall KPIs that you have for your event as normal, and then figure out how to use gamification to amplify those.
[00:38:23] And then obviously, yeah, you have your gamification kind of setting metrics as well. I think one of the things I think about too, is that I would really love to see more of is, How can you use gamification to increase your revenue for your events? Like, we're in a stage where, like, events are more expensive than ever, we're all worried about budgets, but, like, we're forgetting, like, this tool of gamification can be used to get more leads to exhibitors by incentivizing exhibitor interactions. Uh, it can be used for things like increasing networking, which makes it more valuable, so I can raise my ticket price, right?
[00:38:55] Like, so thinking about all these ways gamification, like, how does this tie back to adding more revenue to your event, if that's a big key for what you're trying to do, but I find for most people, everybody wants more revenue when it comes to their events.
[00:39:08] Rachel Moore: Revenue? More? Yes, please.
[00:39:09] Is there an instance where we should not use gamification?
[00:39:13] Jeff, I see you thinking. What do you think?
[00:39:16] Jeff Campbell: I often get people that will, again, objections, they'll say, Oh, but I've got this super serious, you know, it's event going on or this super serious topic. And I will say that I think it's all about how you present it. And then what is the actual, the rules? And what is the framework?
[00:39:36] I think if you add in, I'm going to say whack a mole to a very serious topic, I feel like it really does distract from what is happening. But again, I would argue that that's a game and not gamification in terms of what. Like Will and MK are alluding to is I think, if it's about getting more attendees, provided more lead captures to exhibitors, then I think that those are the KPIs that matter and it shouldn't be dependent on your content or the context of what you what the event is
[00:40:09] MK Granados: So if you can find a local charity, you can find something relevant to the industry, find the event itself the core content The keynotes everything we're doing is very serious or professional or whatever.
[00:40:21] But thinking about the hope for the future, the hope for the youth, feeling like there is an avenue and an outlet for that, can actually help lighten the whole event if, if it's feeling like it can't fit gamification.
[00:40:32] Will Curran: I got one and it probably can apply to all event technologies and concepts is that if you're not ready to properly enable it, right?
[00:40:40] Like if you're thinking you're just going to put up, say there's gamification, say there's a lead board to help people check out in an app, don't, like, don't do it. Like, unless you're really ready to enable your attendees to communicate to them, here's what the rules are, here's what the power of this is, you know, for them to understand all the ways that they're going to get points, like, don't just, you know, slap it on and expect it to do wonders.
[00:41:00] It's not just a checkbox in some sort of, back end settings that you can just turn on, and it's going to magically make your event better. I think it's one of the things that you have to come thoughtfully for. But most importantly, what I see lack of is proper attendee enablement.
[00:41:13] Rachel Moore: Excellent.
[00:41:13] Thank you for answering that. All of you. We have to, I'm going to squeeze one more question in.
[00:41:16] Rachel Moore: Can you advise on how to scale gamification on an international level?
[00:41:21] We are struggling to find a gamification element we can implement over several events. over several countries. Any tips?
[00:41:29] MK Granados: I think if the all the regions aren't the same quantity wise as we're, you know, certain events are going to vary in scale and stuff thinking about percentages of participation, right? This idea of 90% of the people at this event scored this are higher on the trivia game and put countries head to head in creating a sense of competition.
[00:41:48] And I mean, we're about to see, I don't know, some countries go head to head, I think, in Paris next week, this week. Fundamentally, you could mirror Olympic style strategies, and that national pride, that regional pride.
[00:41:59] Rachel Moore: Jeff, how about you?
[00:42:00] Jeff Campbell: Yeah, we've, we've ran a few events with, international audiences, and I think the thing that you need to be mindful of is time zones and are like they synchronous or asynchronous events. And then how does that affect your leaderboard? Because if people are at an event and earning, I'm going to say earning currency or points, and then how does that influence, like, how does that affect people that are either not live or are asleep. I think you need to be mindful a bit about the framework and the structure about doing a multi time zone event.
[00:42:33] The ramifications of that, the way we solved that problem was we actually just isolated the, even though it was the same company, we just made like separate events on the event platform and supported those individually. So each group was isolated. So yes, you lose kind of what MK was saying about like the activity between the regions in terms of the event gamification aspects.
[00:42:57] But, it certainly solved the problems of, uh, the difference in time zones and synchronicity.
[00:43:03] Rachel Moore: I think too, it would come into play. I mean, obviously you're talking possibly different languages and things like that. You know, you want to make and, and nuances of that, right. Where that's going to be different.
[00:43:13] So it's really going to be, you know, this all drives back Jeff to what you've talked about and what all of us have talked about is knowing that audience, you know, what are the roles of that audience? Not just like how they're going to interact in the gamification, but also then, how are they going to, you know, take it in, whether they are extrovert, introvert. They are from France, they are from Germany, they are from the United States, they are Gen Alpha, they are Gen Z, or they're Gen Xers or Boomers or whatever.
[00:43:38] Rachel Moore: But it's going to matter, but, I just want to say thank you too, because I know we have packed so much in.
[00:43:43] I do want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our distinguished speakers, Jeff Campbell, MK Granados, and Will Curran. We're grateful for your time and knowledge.
[00:43:52] Thanks again to our panel of experts, Jeff Campbell, MK Granados, and Will Curran for joining us on Event Experience, and thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening. Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends.
[00:44:11] You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast.
[00:44:17] On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
