Event App Gamification Ideas For 2025 With Complete Guide

| Roughly 70% of marketers believe interactive content is successful at converting visitors.

What exactly is interactive content? How do you, an event planner or an event stakeholder, use this marketing tool to boost event engagement?

Keep scrolling to find out or skip to your relevant section.

Event App Gamification | An Introduction

The strategic use of game elements to attract, engage, and convert users or attendees is Gamification. This phenomenon taps into your attendee’s innate reward mechanism. No wonder it’s a rage in marketing circles.

93% of marketers are adopting gamification with the gamification market expected to grow by 30.1% by 2025.

Gamification is the new favorite on the block even across industries. Nike, KFC, and M&M’s are all trying their hand at involving their target audience with the use of interesting games. So the event industry is not one to be left behind.

The industry has hopped onto the Gamification bandwagon with 49% of businesses saying that clients interact the most with engagement elements, such as gamification, live polls, and feedback.

Why Event Gamification Has Higher Probability of Boosting Your Engagement

The reason why Gamification is a high rewards method for boosting engagement is because people thrive on validation - especially the positive kind. Gamification takes this understanding and applies it to adult learners with commendable results.

Research claims that adult learners score 14% higher scores on skill-based tests and 11% higher on factual knowledge tests with gamification.

This is why event planners are turning towards event apps like Eventify to incorporate Gamification in their event success strategy. Gamification also allows brands and exhibitors to reach out to Gen Z consumers - a generation that has grown up gaming on their phones and consoles. Yet gamification is not just popular amongst the youth. It is inclusive of the traditional workforce as well, with 93% of employees aged 45 and above claiming that gamification has improved their quality of work.

This appeal makes gamification a seamless fit into virtual, hybrid, or offline events. Engagement activities like virtual phone booths, scavenger hunts, trivia quizzes, and puzzles are instrumental in boosting your attendee's engagement. They also help your brand's recall value, benefit exhibitors, and highlight sponsors.

Want to explore Gamification, but unsure where to begin? Start with the key elements.

At Eventify, we have seen 68% rise in event app and overall engagement when you "Bring Out The Gifts". There were more connections made in events which had enabled gamification vs the ones which didn't. Who doesn't like being rewarded, eh?

Incorporate These Key Elements To Get Event App Gamification Just Right!

1. Define Your Goals

Where? How? What? When?

These questions are your holy grail of goals - which you will need before creating activities that your target audience will enjoy. Start by understanding your target audience, the nature of your event (offline, online, hybrid), and your desired outcome. Once your blueprint is ready, you can move to the next stage of curating engaging activities.

2. Make It Inclusive.

This is the key element to focus on. The type of event, whether it's virtual, hybrid, or in-person, will determine your activities. Since each type of event needs a unique format and approach. It’s even possible that the same event is held locally in person and also virtually for global attendees. This situation necessitates that activities and games be engaging for both audiences and help them collaborate.

3. A Clean UI

Keep it simple! A mantra that never fails in life or gamification. Ensure your gamification experience is easy to understand. A difficult interface for virtual activities often leads to less adoption. So it’s best to keep a clean, easy-to-understand, and familiar interface to ensure high adoption.

4. Timing Matters

You can’t expect engagement in a selfie booth in the middle of a session. Similarly, a trivia/quiz held long after the session will hardly grab anyone’s attention. Get your event’s timing right by introducing activities at the right time. Curate games based on sessions and make them relatable.

5. Bring Out The Gifts

We repeat - incentives and rewards matter. Gamification success is as good as the rewards offered. The most interesting trivia will fail to make heads turn if it’s not accompanied by coupons, hampers, shoutouts, and broadcasts. So tap into your attendee’s inner child by introducing exciting rewards.

6. Go Social!

The ‘gram is where the world is and that’s where you should be too. Ensure that attendees get the virtual spotlight with shoutouts, tags, and creative badges. Once these are shared, and reshared - you get higher visibility for your event.

7. Integrate With Event Apps

Gamification cannot be a stand-alone addition to your event. What you need is a marriage made in event heaven. Achieve this union by incorporating gamification into event apps like Eventify. This lets you create, customize, and measure your gamification metrics. Most event apps also have feedback features so you know what worked for your guests and what didn't.

8. Personalize That Leaderboard

A thread off from the previous point is using your event app to create leaderboards. These are further personalized so winners get visibility on event apps by using flags, badges, and awards.

Beyond Data | The 360* Benefits of Introducing Event App Gamification.

96% of employees enjoy gaming elements on their tasks.

It’s established that gamification improves your engagement. What it also provides are recurring returns that bring footfalls to your future events as well. Here’s how!

1. Breaks The Ice

Events are often about networking, but let’s face it, most of us are socially awkward during introductions. You can help your attendees break the ice and mingle with other like-minded professionals by designing interesting icebreakers. For instance, you could ask attendees to introduce themselves with the title of a movie - and the one with the wittiest answer gets a shoutout. The best part? It gets attendees talking with the help of a common element - in this case, movies.

2. Fosters Healthy Competition

Build camaraderie amongst attendees by nurturing a spirit of healthy competition. This fellowship with like-minded strangers engaging in similar activities often leads to higher turnout in future events. How? Your events offer networking possibilities with folks that attendees enjoy interacting with.

3. Improves Engagement

Sale! Discount! Buy 1 Get 3! Free!
These marketing clickbaits seem irrelevant to event gamification, but the psychology behind them isn’t. A tried and tested way of improving engagement is by offering rewards and incentives. You can create a shoutout for trivia winners, offer virtual scratch cards for surprise coupons or a QR scanner for merch wins. These motivators keep attendees interested in the event.

4. Retains Attention

You curate an informative event filled with the best panel but are met with yawns. That's surely not your desired outcome. Now imagine turning that informative content into a fun quiz with witty questions. Or ending the seminar with a treasure hunt with clues that are linked to the session. How you package your information is key to how it will be received.

5. Improves Brand recognition.

Hamleys!
You read this and what springs into your mind is an image of red, white, and happy times. This emotional recall creates nostalgia. That in turn helps Hamleys market to people's inner child. This is the impact of good branding.

When you create fun-filled, exciting games that encourage learning then you have created an impact for your brand. So leverage the power of event app gamification to help more attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors remember your unique style. An added benefit? Your attendees will recall your unique business ideas and seek out your services. They may even want to attend future events owing to your brand's presence.

6. Accelerates Learning

Play to remember is the mantra for nailing Gamification. For instance when participants play a puzzle or quiz associated with a seminar then they are more likely to remember it and retain that information. This is strongly leveraged by training teams who want to induct new joiners into existing work systems in a fun way.

Let The Games Begin | Gamification Ideas That Are A Must-Try

Gamification isn’t just about a passive gaming experience - it’s active engagement that gets your brain cells tingling.

Wondering what type of gamification would work for my brand? Here are some examples that you can try in your event app gamification.

1. The Fitness Check - Take a leaf off Nike’s marketing approach and incorporate a fitness twist into your gamification experience. We are talking about launching a game that tracks attendees' step counts when moving from one booth to another. This boosts the visits to exhibitor booths since attendees with higher counts get rewards.

2. Adventure Run - Everyone wants to tap into their inner Indiana Jones. So why waste the opportunity? Curate a themed adventure game that centers on your event's core ideas. Your attendees will then follow your brand's story, unlock levels and earn brownie points. You accomplish these metrics while attendees learn about your/exhibitor's brand. You can also integrate Virtual Reality elements to take the game to the next level.

3. Engage with quirky notifications - “Smart enough to compete with Kal & Dave? Find out.” “ You should be paying attention to the event instead of scrolling “. Imagine these popping on your phone while you are bored during events. It’s bound to  get your attention. The same holds true for your attendees. Sending personalized, fun, and quirky notifications can help boost your visibility. Attendees also take immediate notice of quirky and witty notifications that are personalized.

4. Launch Attack - want to grab eyeballs for a new product launch? Then curate a game that features the product. For instance, you can create a virtual villain that can be defeated by using the product and its features. Watch this bring out the hidden hero in your attendees. Also, watch your product find the eyeballs it deserves.

5. Reward Kiosks - This is a great addition to offline events. You can set up physical kiosks that send signals to an attendee's phone when they are in close vicinity. Once they are notified, attendees have to either fill out a form or any other call to action to get a reward. This amplifies curiosity and immediately demands attention. The best part, it requires low effort to get to the award.

Apart from the above, you can incorporate treasure hunts, virtual selfie booths, bingo, offer coupons, spin the wheel, augmented reality and even add scratch cards to gamify your event.

Gamification With Eventify | The Collab You Need

Eventify, a lead event management software, has integrated gamification to boost attendee engagement. You can seamlessly customize your own challenges and keep an eye on the leaderboard - all within one application. This combination helps you create a fun, concise and clear gamification experience - something your attendees will appreciate.

So get out those leaderboards and sharpen your gamification ideas to create customisable and innovative games with Eventify.