German beauty retailer
How a beauty brand turns marketing gamification into sustained engagement and measurable revenue growth.
At flaconi, engagement is not just a marketing tactic; it is one of the four pillars of the company strategy. That’s where gamification comes in, as a powerful way for flaconi’s marketing team to connect with customers frequently and meaningfully. Their most important KPI is participation, though the impact of gamification on email open and click rates, push notifications click rates, social media activities, sales, and loyalty is also undeniable.
Their strategy is simple but effective. Games are offered one to two times per month and are available for only a short period, usually a single day. This limited availability creates urgency and leverages the FOMO effect, encouraging customers to act immediately. flaconi pairs this with attractive rewards, from instant prizes to high-value incentives such as a €1,000 flaconi shopping voucher.
When we compare a gamification campaign to a regular sale using discount codes, we always see around 40 percent higher click rates, which shows the high effectiveness of gamified experiences – Julia Piep, Head of CRM at flaconi
When we compare a gamification campaign to a regular sale using discount codes, we always see around 40 percent higher click rates, which shows the high effectiveness of gamified experiences
– Julia Piep, Head of CRM at flaconi
flaconi began its gamification journey in Germany, its core market, focusing the first 6 months solely on local campaigns. This allowed the team to experiment with different game formats and understand what drives participation. The German market consistently performs strongly in previous campaigns, making it an ideal testing ground. The results during this initial period were so impressive that after just six months, flaconi decided to expand gamification across all of its existing markets. This eventual rollout now spans 12 markets today.
In the German market, because our competitors do not use gamification as strategically as we do, this has become a strong USP for us. – Julia Piep, Head of CRM at flaconi
In the German market, because our competitors do not use gamification as strategically as we do, this has become a strong USP for us.
Building on the success in Germany, flaconi now runs 1 to 2 gamification campaigns per month across all 12 of its markets. Each campaign is available in their app, and web shop, and is promoted across all their channels, including email, push notifications, and social media, ensuring maximum reach and engagement.
What makes scaling possible is the way campaigns are set up in the Playable platform. A single concept can easily be duplicated into 12 individual campaigns, one for each market. This allows the team to localize the experience with the right language and track results separately, while still keeping the process fast and efficient.
Let’s have a look at two examples!
One of flaconi’s most successful initiatives was its anniversary campaign. Unlike the usual one-day format, this game ran for two days to mark the brand’s birthday and celebrate on a bigger scale. The campaign featured a Slot Machine game, which is flaconi’s second-best performing format, giving customers the chance to win tiered shopping vouchers. The mechanic was simple: the more you spent, the higher the discount you could unlock – from €4 off a €29 purchase to €24 off a €139 purchase.
Even though the campaign took place in summer, typically a slower season for online shopping, participation and conversions exceeded expectations.
“Beauty in your pocket” is the core pillar of flaconi’s strategy, and gamification has been used to strengthen it. Wanting to boost app downloads, the team launched a Halloween Memory Game campaign that shoppers could play to win discount codes. The game was available as usual both on their website and within their app. But, at the end of the game, players were informed that by playing in the app, they could also enter the draw for the €1,000 shopping voucher, available exclusively to app players.
This approach encouraged app installs and reinforced the app as a key channel for engaging customers.
Aside from their monthly campaigns, flaconi has started to apply gamification to automated lifecycle flows. These include cross-sell, upsell, birthday offers, and 2nd-purchase campaigns, among others. The team selects the highest-performing flows and builds gamified versions to test whether engagement and conversions improve. Worth noting that in these campaigns, the vouchers are valid for 2 weeks instead of just one day as in their monthly engagement campaigns.
One of the first tests targeted inactive customers, an audience that traditional discount campaigns rarely motivate. For this test, flaconi ran an A/B test where one group received the standard voucher email and the other received a gamified Slot Machine experience. Both versions offered the same voucher (10%), but in the gamified version, customers only discovered the discount by playing the game.
The click-to-open rate was extremely high thanks to the mystery effect that gamification brought. Customers wanted to see what they could win, and in the end, the campaign drove a 19% increase in revenue, which is a great success. – Julia Piep, Head of CRM at flaconi
The click-to-open rate was extremely high thanks to the mystery effect that gamification brought. Customers wanted to see what they could win, and in the end, the campaign drove a 19% increase in revenue, which is a great success.
flaconi also uses partnerships to offer customers higher-value rewards and drive stronger engagement. For example, they launched a one-day Wheel of Fortune campaign featuring a paid partnership with a major beauty brand. The partner contributed financially to be promoted within the game, while customers received attractive vouchers for the partner’s products. This created a win-win situation: customers enjoyed the greater discounts because of the partnership, flaconi benefited from increased participation and sales, and the partner gained extra visibility and ultimately higher sales.
The campaign performed exceptionally well. Participation and conversions were strong, reinforcing Wheel of Fortune as flaconi’s top-performing game format.
The results
With Playable, flaconi can save time, scale campaigns across multiple markets, and leverage a wide variety of game formats. The platform allows for seamless integration into their existing martech stack, which was one of their main concerns. Implementation was much faster than originally planned, and without putting pressure on their development team.
Thanks to these capabilities, flaconi has tested over 15 different game formats since working with Playable, including both luck-based and skill-based games. They learned that luck-based games like Wheel of fortune and Slot machines drive the highest participation and revenue, while skill-based games with leaderboards and tiered rewards effectively increase time spent and deepen brand connection.
“Gamification has proven to be a powerful driver of engagement and sales conversion. On a single day, flaconi has seen over 600,000 game participations, and CRM email campaigns with gamified elements achieve, on average, 40% higher click rates compared to strong non-gamified sale campaigns.” – Julia Piep, Head of CRM at flaconi
“Gamification has proven to be a powerful driver of engagement and sales conversion. On a single day, flaconi has seen over 600,000 game participations, and CRM email campaigns with gamified elements achieve, on average, 40% higher click rates compared to strong non-gamified sale campaigns.”
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