A Formulaic Approach to Loyalty – the 4 Keys

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3 steps A Formulaic Approach to Loyalty 8211 the 4 Keys

Still looking at loyalty this week, I wanted to see if we can create a more formulaic approach to it. Now, huge caveat – there is no proof or evidence to support this in anyway, but it makes sense to me, so I thought I would share it!!

There are three basic states of Engagement and Loyalty. Not Engaged, Engaged and Loyal.

If you are running a shop, these three phases would play out as;

  • Won’t shop with you for reason XY or Z.
  • Will shop with you because of reason XY or z.
  • Will shop with you under any circumstance.

The question is, how do you convince people to shop with you and then how do you convince them to be loyal to you? Read More ...

Loyalty: What is it and how do you cultivate it?

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Image 5 for jobs coleen telly your life 01 12 11 gallery 634930849 96475 Loyalty What is it and how do you cultivate it

I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but it wasn’t until I answered a question for someone yesterday that I had some words that actually made sense to me!

Old School Loyalty

When we think of loyalty, especially when we consider it in the context of gamification, we tend to think of loyalty cards , air-miles or other point collection systems. You spend £X and we will give you points that can go towards other goods or discounts. When I was a kid, we used a petrol station called Texaco. There were two reasons for this. The first, it was on the way home from church on a Saturday evening and two, it was cheaper than other local options. Something they started to do, was give you stickers based on how much petrol you bought. These stickers were used to fill up cards. These cards could then be traded in against goods – the more cards, the better the goods you could get. Using this method, my Mum and Dad managed to kit out our kitchen with new mugs, new glasses – I even got a Swiss Army Knife out of it! Read More ...

What is a game or Why There is a Time and a Place for Philosophical Debates.

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Rules rule What is a game or Why There is a Time and a Place for Philosophical Debates

After my last item about serious games (Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful), one topic of debate came up. How can we determine if the term Serious Games is too broad, if we don’t really understand what games are?

I have looked into this question before and it has to be said, at an academic and philosophical level – it is muddy as hell. Generally it is accepted that a game is structure play (where play is free from form and rules). Here are a few definitions (taken mostly from Wikipedia).

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is often cited as discussing games in great detail in his book “Philosophical Investigations” in 1953. The simplest quote i can find about his view (that may well be paraphrased!) was Read More ...

Serious Games: Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

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Darfur is dying Serious Games Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

A while back, I wrote a piece on the difference between serious games, games and gamification. It was simple, but covered the important areas of what makes them different from each other.  Since then, I have had more involvement with serious games (recently helped as one of the judges for the Serious Play Awards for instance) and it has started to dawn on me that we are still confused as to what they actually are.

Yesterday, Mattie Brice posted the following on twitter

Hey y’all, tell me the most popular serious games you know of Read More ...

Disruptors: My Negative User Type

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Alfred Disruptors My Negative User Type

One of the questions I get asked about when people see my User Types, “What about Killers?” Now I have spoken about the Bartle Killer type and why I don’t really account for them in the types. In a nutshell, Killers want to destroy and humiliate other players in MMO’s. This is not a behaviour we are trying to build for in gamificaiton and as my User Types are written to help give ideas and structure for designing systems – they didn’t really have a place. This is especially in enterprise gamificaiton where this type would be handled with internal policy! Read More ...