1. The gamification of contests and sweeps will continue to grow. Online games will be enhanced with popular techniques heralded by gamer enthusiasts, including leaderboards, missions, badges and news feeds, and players working in teams.
2. Watch for more marketers to build branded games that not only engage consumers with the brand, but also educate them about a product or service to help drive sales.
3. Digital and instant rewards will encourage people to return to play over and over again, a tactic that helps build personal data collection. Marketers ask a few questions at the start of each new play to learn more about these players, and then follow up with customized messages.
4. Threshold prizing, also called tiered prizing, means prizes become more valuable as more users sign up—and it will be standard operating procedure in 2012. Threshold prizing puts consumers in the driver’s in terms of influencing prizing and encouraging viral spread. It also creates strong brand advocacy, according to ePrize.
5. Sweepstakes will be executed on social and viral platforms to make sharing easy. Rewarding these social behaviors will become a mainstay of games, contests and sweepstakes. Consumers are already sharing, tweeting and watching videos across multiple social channels—this gives them extra reasons to engage by tying those behaviors to a chance to win, ePrize says.
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