Gamification at Events: Utilizing Event Technology to Boost Attendee Engagement

When you are planning an event, one of your primary goals will be to create the maximum amount of attendee engagement. Engaged attendees are far more likely to find value in the event, participate during session times, connect with other attendees and leave with a positive impression. Engagement will enhance the event experience itself, and lead to essential business outcomes for events such as building relationships, sharing tips and knowledge, and creating partnerships.  

 So how do we create engagement for the attendees?  

The answer is – Gamification! When done correctly, gamification can employ different elements of games like points, badges, leaderboards, challenges, and rewards to create richer experiences thereby engaging attendees’ minds more effectively.  

In addition to enhancing and creating a more engaging experience for the attendees, gamification through event technology creates another avenue for engagement and allows you to achieve your event goals faster and more successfully.  

Let’s examine why gamification is strong at events, and explore ways to gamify your next event, including tips to maximize engagement  

The Benefits of Gamification at Event

While attendee engagement is valuable, gamification has benefits beyond attendee engagement that include event return on investment (ROI) and provide valuable insight into planning of future events. Here are several reasons to utilize gamification at your next event:   

Lead Generation – gamification strategies creates an environment for the attendees to partake in active event participation such as challenges, quizzes, and scavenger hunts. These strategies create an opportunity for event organizers to collect valuable attendee information like attendee contact info, attendee preferences, and attendee interests and generate valuable leads for current and future events.  

ROI – Gamification will improve the experience overall, and in turn, increase attendee satisfaction. This can result in positive referrals, recommendations, and repeat attendees, which benefits ROI. Further, gamification provides opportunities for showcasing sponsors, increased exposure for sponsors, and attracting potential new sponsors for future events – all of which improves business and ROI. 

Sponsor Exposure: Gamification offers sponsors interactive experiences that provide valuable brand exposure. Sponsors can be showcased in specific challenges, on leaderboards, or within branded game elements, creating awareness and recognition. The nature of gamified sponsor events requires attendees to actively participate and engage, allowing sponsors to showcase their products/services, network with potential customers, gather leads, and ultimately convert business. 

Attendee Engagement: Gamification provides attendees with an interactive experience to engage in event content through goals, rewards, and competition. Gamification turns networking into a fun & engaging experience while helping to develop professional relationships amongst attendees. 

Through gamification, event planners can not only enhance the attendee experience, but they are also able to generate leads, enhance ROI, and showcase sponsor exposure – all outcomes equating to overall successful and effective events for event planners, attendees, and sponsors alike. 

Leveraging Event Technology for Gamification

Event Technology has changed how events are planned, delivered, and experienced. Event technology includes numerous digital tools and platforms that ultimately enhance the attendee experience while streamlining the event process. By leveraging event technology event planners are able to automate gamified experiences, easily track progress, update leaderboards and distribute rewards. Real time engagement improves attendee experience, generates excitement, and creates valuable data for future events. 

Assessing Event Technologies that Can Support Gamification 

Mobile Event Apps – Mobile event apps are a very popular solution for gaming because of their flexibility and availability. It is easy to incorporate challenges, quizzes, surveys, and networking element features into a mobile event app. Since attendees can utilize their own smartphones to access any gamified elements, they will be able to play immediately and receive alerts and updates designed for the event. 

Event Technology Platforms – An event platform can do even more to support gamification. An event platform may be able to host virtual games and interactive experiences or offer an area for participants to view their dashboard. They may also create an opportunity for social media interaction. This gives participants a chance to earn points, badges, and trophies and create a culture of sharing with other participants. 

QR Codes – Quick Response (QR) codes are quickly becoming the most popular option for gamification at events. QR Codes are placed at spots throughout a venue to allow attendees to scan for gamification content. Gamified content can be clues, challenges, or bonus points. QR Codes can also provide solutions for networking where attendees can exchange contact information digitally or participate in a gamified activity or experience. 

Once you have event technology for gamification, you will need to apply it to effectively engage the audience. You can program event technology to foster interactive and immersive experiences that will engage and involve participants. Now let’s discuss some gamifications strategies for events. 

Gamification Strategies for Events

When looking to source gamification strategies for in-person events, establish your objectives. This will help define what your gamification experiences should achieve and how they align with your overall event goals.  For example, you might want to stimulate attendee engagement, facilitate networking, or enhance attendance at sessions and activities. Here are examples of Game Mechanics that you can incorporate into your event.  

Developing Game Mechanics and Elements for engagement  

For gamification to be engaging, fun must be the important element of good game mechanics and elements. Here are some examples:  

• Points, Badges, and Leaderboards: Use a point-system where attendees will accumulate points for completing specific tasks, and the completion of tasks can be rewarded with badges. Leaderboards can be used to display the highest scores and recognition of merit for a bit of challenge and motivation to engage. 
• Scavenger Hunts: Create scavenger hunts that send attendees all around the venue or asking them to interact with an exhibitor booth to find clues or objects. The goal is to create an environment of interactive learning and engagement.   
• Competitions: Develop challenges and competitions for attendees to take part in that create a competitive yet collegial environment. This could be pictures posted or taking a trivia challenge to earn prizes. 
• Rewards and Incentives: Enhance engagement of gamified activities by incorporating rewards and incentives to offer some motivation for attendees. For example, offering early access to special session content, priority for the next event, or branded merchandise to attendees who engage consistently.                                                               Simply adding these features to your event will not maximize their use, maximize impact by strategically using these elements in the right context with your attendees.  

Creative Strategies for Integrating Gamification into Different Aspects of Event Planning

Gamification can help enhance the attendee experience in several ways. Consider the following ideas: 

• Registration: One way you can gamify registration is to provide attendees with incentives or early-bird rewards for registering early or for referrals to friends to join them. 

• Sessions: To take the session experience to another level, you can bring live polling, quizzes, or challenges that your attendees can engage with virtually using their mobile devices. Gamification allows for a more engaging experience for the attendees and active learning. 

• Networking: Gamification can also foster networking by offering icebreaker challenges or various matchmaking features within the event app. Attendees can earn points and receive badges for connecting with new people to networking and meeting goals. 

• Interactions with Exhibitors: Exhibitor interactions can also be gamified by creating challenges or tasks to be completed at each booth. Attendees can receive prizes for visiting a certain number of booths or completing tasks such as participating in a product demonstration or participating in assigned scavenger hunt tasks.
• Gamification strategies can help organizers create an immersive experience for attendees that engages them in the event, network, and will only serve to improve overall attendees’ satisfaction with the event experience.  

Measuring the Success of Gamification

It is critical to explore meaningful metrics and tools to accurately gauge the impact to measure what success looks like for each of its gamification strategies considered. Here are a few options:  

• Engagement metrics: Assess how all the attendees have participated. This could be any of the options you engaged with, the number of challenges completed, or points earned or badges achieved. The number tells you how engaged the attendees were with the metrics you applied to each gamified experience.  

• Survey attendees about the areas they liked most in the gamification experience. Make sure to ask where they ranked and the value of their enjoyment.  

• Social media conversations that are created as a result of the gamification. These could be overall mentions of the gamified experiences that made it even better or even the use of a hashtag that continues the community for attendees. 

• Utilizing event technology that includes tracking behavior or using a stand-alone analytics tool to measure behavior of attendees in a gamified event or activity. For example, tracking attendance within a session or hours spent on an activity or competitions met. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, event organizers should think about and embrace gamification in various aspects of event planning as a tool to create fun, interactive, memorable experiences at events.  

Event organizers can create varying levels of engagement and depth within systems that facilitate engagement, connections, and results with the support of event technology within effective game mechanics and gamification framework models.  

Gamification can unlock the best of what events can be through evaluation, testing, and feedback regarding gamification experiences that make the event memorable and talked about by attendees for years.   

For an event experience that delivers, these recommendations highlight the importance of event technology.  Reach out to Samaaro today to learn more about event technology solutions that can support gamifying your next event experience and just how immersive and engaging it can be for attendees.