How A Small Team Uses Gamification In Marketing

The Covid-19 times were unprecedented and difficult, with many companies in the hospitality industry having had to close down for a period of time. Making up for the time they’ve been closed and making a comeback can be extremely difficult.

A silver lining for us is that it’s been rewarding to watch as marketing teams utilize the Leadfamly gamification platform as a tool to drive customer engagement again. Our Finnish client Långvik Congress Wellness Hotel is doing just that.

Långvik, an upscale congress hotel and restaurant in Finland, has been creating wonderful campaigns with just two people in their marketing team. We were curious to hear how using our platform has impacted them as a company, but specifically what it means for their marketing team. Are they really able to conceptualize, develop, and promote game campaigns to bring the hotel out of the crisis given current events and their team size?  

Hi Kati and Laura, we at Leadfamly have been following your campaigns and are impressed by the work you’re doing in the platform. Especially since we’ve heard it’s just the two of you responsible for all the marketing and communications for the hotel. Have you handled all of this in-house, or do you also work with an agency?

Hi! Wow, thank you, we are glad to hear that. Generally our compact two-person marketing and communication team gets the job done alone but we do get some help from a marketing agency. But when it comes to these games it’s just the two of us.

I think it could be interesting for other marketing teams to hear how you split the various tasks up from concept to execution. How do you divide the work between the two of you?

Usually we do conceptualizing together, then I’m (Laura) on the execution side, Kati finalizes the game with prizes. 

For example the most recent campaign we came up with is this idea of 10 games during 10 months – one launched game on each month – as we are celebrating Långvik Congress Wellness Hotel’s 10 year birthday this year. 

Do either of you have backgrounds in graphic design and/or web development?

We both have backgrounds as industrial designers. I (Laura) am an experienced graphic designer and Kati has worked with web development. Both of us do strategic planning and executing just like art directors, copywriters, or graphic designers in other companies.

“So, while our backgrounds give us a leg up, we also think that other two-person teams could also execute campaigns like we do.”

— Laura Kesti, Marketing & Communication Designer, Långvik Congress Wellness Hotel

Do you find that having just a small team makes it easier to move quickly with campaign ideas, development, and execution? Are there positives and negatives to this?

Sure, it’s faster and easier when fewer people are making decisions. But a negative could be that sometimes you can run out of ideas when you’re too overloaded – in that situation it’d be nice to have a bigger team to cover your back.

Your campaign, the summer Memory Game from June 2020, is a good example of a hospitality company staying active during this time of Covid-19. The prize is BBQ burgers for two in Långvik’s Summer Kitchen, which is meant to draw people back to the restaurant. Has there been a good redemption rate?

Oh yes, our terrace’s Summer Kitchen has been busier than ever! Sure we had other campaigns rolling as well to get people back but gamification was a great tool to get people spending more time with our brand when landing on our homepage. There we have a pop-up web banner directing visitors to play games. Also it’s a great tool to bring out our celebratory message this year.

Was the purpose of this anniversary campaign spread over 10 months to reactivate previous customers, people, or corporations that are familiar with your brand already?

Yes, that’s right. We wanted to activate our customers as the hotel and restaurant was closed for a while. Also we wanted to send out the message about our wide selection of summer services with a visual layout.

When you run campaigns, what are the main KPIs? What are you hoping to achieve with these campaigns and what data are you looking for?

The main KPIs are to spread the word about our anniversary this year and to collect marketing permissions. At the moment due to Covid-19, we want to offer something fun for our customers and make sure we stay in people’s minds even though they won’t be able to enjoy our product right now. We had ideas about getting  more detailed insights about our customers but as there are only two of us we need to prioritize our focus right now.

And in the future are their plans to achieve more from these campaigns?

Our next game will be for B2B customers trying to help identify their needs in this weird time we’re going through. It will be launched for the Congress Fair event in Finland.

Kati and Laura’s marketing efforts have had positive results for Långvik Congress Wellness Hotel. They’ve managed to create a long-term campaign consisting of 10 games for their 10 year anniversary in-house. The Memory Game alone has collected 972 registrations, which resulted in a conversion rate of 56.5%. Although the game was initially intended to create attention to the anniversary, it has become a way to retain customers during Covid-19. 

This two-person marketing team can conceptualize and develop games independently from coders and outside help. They do have backgrounds in design themselves which is evident in the quality of their output, but they wanted to assure us that this experience is not necessary to build similar looking campaigns. The Leadfamly platform is a powerful tool and this Finnish duo has figured out how to utilize it to the fullest.

Want to know more?

Check out our webinar, Fuel Your Lifecycle Marketing In 2020 With Gamification.