Unlock 10X Engagement with Event Gamification

Jun 14, 2024 Praggya Joshi

What makes a brand truly unforgettable? It's all about delivering innovative experiences and staying top-of-mind with your target audience. Hosting virtual events is a fantastic way to boost brand awareness and connect with more people. But how can you make these events not just memorable but also effective in driving ROI? The secret is gamification. 

Virtual event gamification ideas transform your event into an educational and immersive experience. Attendees' complete tasks to earn rewards like points, badges, or even cash prizes. This pursuit of rewards keeps them deeply engaged with your event. As a result, you'll see increased interaction and better retention of the information you present. 

In this post, we'll dive into the ins and outs of virtual event gamification.

The Benefits of Gamifying Virtual Events
Gamification ideas for events are not just for making people have a good time. They work like magic to retain the event experience in the minds of attendees. Studies suggest that even a 5% growth in retention can skyrocket your ROI by 25–95%. So, it makes sense to create experiences that attendees will recall. Here are some more related benefits of using interesting gamification techniques in your virtual event:

1. Keeps Attendees Glued to the Event 🙋
Event gamification draws the attention of participants and keeps them hooked until the end. After all, it’s hard to resist the lure of challenges and competitions with interesting rewards.

2. Facilitates Easy Networking 🧑‍🤝‍🧑
Gamifying virtual events help participating teams to interact with each other in a relaxed manner. They bond easily and feel confident in communicating about shared goals. 

3. Promotes Your Sponsors 🎖️
Digital event gamification incentivizes attendees to visit your sponsors and engage with their offerings. Sponsored challenges or branded activities allow attendees to learn about the sponsor’s products without aggressive promotion.  

4. Builds Your Brand Identity 🆔
You can gamify different elements of the event in line with the values of your brand. The more attendees engage in the games, the better they forge a relationship with your brand.  

5. Improves Event ROI 💵
Making an event highly engaging is a critical goal for event planners. It’s intrinsically linked to their broader ROI. The good news is that you can map event engagement with gamification and keep adjusting your strategies.  

6. Increases Attendee Satisfaction 🧏‍♂️
The different gamification ideas facilitate a worthwhile experience. It makes participants feel a sense of accomplishment as they get to enjoy, network, and learn simultaneously. 

7. Gives Valuable Tracking Data 🔎
Planners can inform the future course of events with the valuable post-event analytics they receive. In turn, it promotes even better and more memorable experiences.

Major Components of Virtual Event Gamification
All gamification ideas for virtual events hinge on the following major elements:

1. The Game is a Part of the Overall Event Theme
Your virtual event’s theme influences the setup of your game. Don’t make the mistake of gamifying each aspect of the event. Instead, make game-like elements a part of the entire event where they seem relevant. For example, rewards can be given to attend specific sessions, answer questions, polls or download a document. Doing so will keep the participants engaged and make them retain the learnings from the event afterward.  

2. Set Specific Goals
You need to measure engagement and post-event metrics. Isn’t it? That’s why setting specific and measurable goals in games is crucial. You won’t be able to map the event performance through gamification if the goals are not strategically set. An example of a specific goal is to increase the usage of your mobile event app by 20%. 

3. Use a Point System
The simplest way to see how well you are performing is by looking at your scores. The points system allows attendees to easily see their scores on the virtual leaderboards. They gain clarity over how behind or forward they are from others.  

4. Have a Provision to Mark Progress
Having something that showcases an elevated status pleases people. So similarly, use badges or rankings to show the progress specific attendees are making. Your leaderboard can show the top 10 participants or celebrate the top five at frequent intervals. This will keep up their enthusiasm and they will engage even more.

5. Incentivize with Meaningful Prizes
An important yet often-ignored part of an event is rewards. You cannot cut corners here. Even the most innovative gamification ideas will fail if you haven’t set the correct rewards. Some good options include product discounts, gift cards, or a sponsor-provided gift. A mini trophy will act as a souvenir and retain your event experience in the minds of the winners.  

Also, ensure to spread the word about exciting rewards before and after the event on your social media. 

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Best Gamification Ideas for Virtual Events
Use these innovative options for your next virtual event:

1. Leaderboards
Give points to attendees for completing activities like polls, quizzes, downloads, sharing, and the like. Use a virtual events platform that automatically tracks engagement. It will help you know if people are finding the activities interesting.

2. Virtual Scavenger Hunt
Ask everyone to be on camera. The moderator says an item and participants will rush to find it and show it to everyone else. It’s a great game to keep up the session attendance. You can make the event more brand or vendor-focused by making attendees interact with the vendors for some reward.  

3. Trivia
Promote friendly competition and keep participants engaged with trivia games. Have a set of 5 to 10 questions and ask them at the end of the session. It’ll help you gauge the attendees’ attention and make them retain important information.

4. Bingo
Have a themed bingo party. Build out your statements and bingo cards in your virtual event app. For added fun, make color stamps that players can move to cross off your statements. It’s a classic game but always turns out to be effective in engaging participants.  

5. Icebreakers
Use icebreakers to make attendees connect with each other, which is even more important in a virtual event. Your icebreakers can be in the form of This or That, Never Have I Ever, and 20 Questions game.

6. Live Polling
Live polls can be used as icebreakers or to solicit opinions or feedback from participants or teams of participants. You can use the information to adjust the current or future virtual event. 

It also enables you to drive holistic engagement with interactive, live polls and quizzes using our all-in-one event management software.

7. Spin the Wheel
A round of Spin the Wheel will make the audience delightfully excited. You can set interesting rewards for this game such as cash prizes, a chance to talk with a guest speaker, or gain massive points in one go.

8. Escape Room
Creating themed virtual escape rooms facilitates event engagement with gamification dramatically. Design an intriguing storyline and set up multimedia puzzles which include links to follow. Live hosts can give clues to teams. To make the game more fun, incorporate codes, trivia questions, and role-playing. 

9. Digital Badges
Create personalized badges or trophies for participants. Award them when they complete a significant milestone. Publicly recognize those who collect all or a certain number of badges.

10. Photo Contests
Photo contests are another great way to gamify virtual events. Challenge attendees to get a picture with two other attendees from different countries, click pictures with certain number of vendors or get a photo with those who share the same profession as them. It is a great way to make the virtual event engaging and promote interaction in the way you desire.

11. Virtual booth
Forge interaction with sponsors by setting up a virtual booth. Ask attendees to visit the websites of sponsors in return for unique codes. This will generate awareness about their services.  

12. Engaging Puzzles
Create easy to complex puzzles based on your event. They function in many ways. Use them either as icebreakers or to prompt networking and interaction among participants.

Steps to Get Started with Virtual Event Gamification
After discovering the various gamification ideas, it’s time to learn how to implement them. No matter which technique you use, here are the major steps you should follow.

1. Establish Goals
What activity do you want your attendees to do the most during the event? Is it increasing the number of visits to your website, the download rate of your newsletter, or making participants interact with the sponsor brands? When you know the goals only then can you decide on the ways that will encourage and reward actions that meet those goals.  

2. Decide the Rules
Rules are linked to rewards. They are essential for gamification to progress effectively. Rules should be made with the thinking ‘If a participant does X, they will get Y.’ This will ensure fair play, and no one will feel the need to cheat. 

3. Decide Rewards
Rewards can be points, trophies, or badges. Keep them interesting so the players can be incentivized to play the game. Rewards should also be linked to your game’s objectives.  

4. Choose Appropriate Games
Choose games that you know will appeal to your attendees. Keep in mind the length of the event and whether it is recurring. If your virtual event or workshop spans two days, you need an assortment of games. If it is recurring, the games should be diverse.

Summing up
Now you know all the winning virtual event gamification ideas and how to implement them. The right games, when weaved correctly into the entire event, will transform it into a memorable experience. As we said earlier, the better you deliver, the more people can remember it. Make your virtual event experience truly special with the gamification techniques above and you will see the reverberating impact.  

If you are looking to host an exciting gamified virtual or in-person event, then take a demo to explore how Eventcombo’s suite of tools can make your event execution seamless.