People love games. They’re fun, they provide a sense of winning, and often you get something to take away for your efforts. That’s the primary reason why gamification has become part of our online shopping experience. Spin-to-win is a popular eCommerce feature that provides a fun game element, offers your consumers a little bonus, and, at the same time, provides a boost to your sales and engagement metrics.
For a moment, let’s take a step back and investigate how gamification works in marketing. It’s true that gamification (the process of adding game elements to something) has grown within marketing, and it has grown out of necessity. People simply don’t engage with traditional invasive eCommerce marketing techniques. The likes of pop-ups and banner ads are largely ignored by the vast majority of online shoppers, and worse still, they’re deemed to be spammy.
Spin-to-win is just one example of gamification in marketing. You’ll also see award points that are added to a user’s account based on challenge completion (challenges being adding reviews or sharing a product, typical user-generated marketing techniques), referral marketing leaderboards, and, especially noticeable around mobile games, playable adverts.
When adding gamification to marketing efforts, brands tend to see an improvement in a variety of core metrics. Typically these results are found when gamification is added to a typical eCommerce site, where following a successful spin, the customer can reap the benefits immediately. As with all things related to eCommerce, there are advantages and disadvantages.
Increase in engagement: Games draw the eye and grab customer attention. People usually can’t help themselves and want to play, if only to see what will happen following their participation. For the customer, they’re simply playing a game. For the business, it’s another person entering the sales funnel.
Increase in sales: Gamification, when done correctly and in a way that isn’t obstructive, tends to lead to an increase in sales. Customers receive discounts or other prizes and often then feel obligated to use them.
Appeals to younger shoppers: Gen Z is shopping online in huge numbers. This is the generation of people where games are a natural part of their life. Gamers are no longer a fringe group, they’re the mainstream. Appealing to them en masse is a surefire way to increase engagement, grow conversions, and build revenue.
When we look at spin-to-win specifically, we see a similar trend. Increases in conversions regularly happen, with some businesses reporting increases of up to 20%. Especially when compared with traditional email opt-in tools such as newsletter popups.
Generally speaking, people don’t like popups. They’re invasive, they block your view, and they are just annoying. The main issue is when someone just lands on a site, and then the popup appears moments later. They haven’t even had the time to react or interact with the website before the website is telling them to do something else.
Making the decision to move away from traditional popups and gamify them is a great way to alleviate some of the concerns mentioned above. Taking the time to consider when the popups should appear and how customers might trigger them is the way to ensure that they’re not annoying and rather an enhancement to the user experience.
Following the steps written below is a great way to ensure that your spin-to-win promotion is successful. You will need to, of course, adapt the steps so that they’re appropriate and relevant to your own brand and website. That said, these are great starting points that will send you on the right path to success.
As briefly mentioned above, you need to think about the best time for your spin-to-win wheel to appear. The majority of popup platforms will allow you to set certain conditions that when met display the popup. These are often based on the amount of time the user has been on the website, if they visit a certain page, or if they try and leave the site by navigating to the exit button of the browser.
To achieve the best timing, you’ll need to test interactivity rates with the popup in different scenarios and then adapt accordingly. If users are exiting them rapidly without interacting, then chances are that you’re showing the popup at the wrong time. Try a longer delay, or only on certain pages, and then analyze the results.
You might be tempted to find a wheel, install it and wait for the conversions to come flooding in. That’s not surprising. There are lots of perfectly good-looking wheels that are available as templates straight out of the box. The issue is that they often jar with your company’s branding. The best option is to spend a little bit of time with the customization features and make the wheel match your branding. At a minimum, the wheel should feature your brand colors. At best, the wheel could incorporate graphics that align with your brand, including font and vectors.
You might also want to consider altering the wheel to match seasonal events or specific promotions that you might have on. Remember, the more relevant the spin-tp-win wheel, the more likely it is to be successful.
Not everyone is going to be a winner. If they were, then you might as well just advertise a giveaway or a limited-time coupon. There needs to be an element of competition involved, especially if you’re offering a small selection of high-value prizes. The issue is that some people will want to keep trying to win, especially if they didn’t win the first time. This might mean that your email list slowly fills up with many fake or invalid emails.
There are ways to combat this. You could only send prizes to emails that have been verified through an emailed link. This is a great option as it also verifies their email for email marketing campaigns, thus reducing bounce rates. Another option is to simply create a wheel that doesn’t require the user to input their email at all and limits participation by cookies or IP. The issue with this method is that you lose out on their email and, therefore, future marketing efforts.
Whether users are winners or not, if you’ve taken their email addresses, ensure they are entered into an automated email marketing campaign based on their results. It could be as simple as letting them know more about their prize or a smaller discount code (say 5% off) voucher to ease the loss for those that didn’t win.
It’s definitely tempting to get a few high-value prizes onto your wheel. The main issue with this is related to the previous point, people will try and break the system so that they have the maximum chance of winning the higher value prizes. Even with cookie systems in place, people can simply clear these and try again.
Many spin-to-win wheel creation tools come with some built-in anti-fraud mechanisms such as reCAPTCHA and IP reputation systems. Another solution is to simply offer prizes that are of value but not such high value that people feel compelled to break systems to win them. These would usually be discount codes to use within your store. You can always set a limit on the number of high-value coupons that can be won, and at least the person who wins it has to spend money with your store to “win.”
Many websites are now built mobile-first, but with additions and extensions such as spin-to-win wheels, often mobile users are forgotten about. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a feature that you’d like to engage with, but it’s either impossible or unresponsive on mobile. Whenever you implement a spin-to-win wheel on your site, take the time to test it on mobile devices so that the same experience is available for all users.
There are several different ways that you can implement spin-to-win into your eCommerce site. These examples are proven to build the number of leads and drive up conversions for the corresponding businesses.
Cedar Fort is an eCommerce company that specializes in book content, both publishing and end-user sales. Their spin-to-win system is entirely optional. It is visible to all users but only opens when the user chooses to click on the “Spin to win” button. They’ve kept the prizes really simple and offer 10-20% off codes in exchange for an email address. They also clearly state that by submitting your email you’ll also receive ongoing marketing from them.
Jewelry brand Isabelle Grace implements their spin-to-win wheel in a way that it automatically shows when the user scrolls a certain amount down the page. The prizes are 10-20%, but they also offer free shipping. These prizes make up the whole wheel, meaning that everyone is a winner. Discount codes are displayed to the user immediately and are automatically applied if the user chooses to “Continue and Use Discount.”
Texan clothing brand Texas Standard has higher value prizes included in their wheel in the form of some of their products alongside fixed cart discounts. You could win $10 off, free sunglasses, and free stickers. You could lose but get a try again, or you simply lose. The wheel requests your email address in exchange for the chance to spin.
The cryptocurrency and social media mashup platform ran a limited-time spin-to-win campaign when it first launched as part of a social selling campaign. The platform was looking to build its initial userbase, so offered some lucrative rewards, including welcome rewards for creating an account up to the value of $500. We’re sure that this wheel must have gained a lot of attention given the high-value prizes, and hopefully, Kikitrade gained not only considerably more users but also a host of additional emails that they could remarket to.
If you’re a Shopify store owner and you’re looking for Shopify marketing tools, you’ll be pleased to hear that there are many different spin-to-win apps that you can install onto your store within a few clicks.
Adoric is a highly customizable tool that allows you to change the colors of the wheel, the number of segments, the text on each and every segment, and also the orientation of the wheel itself. The helpful addition of the template bank is a welcome extension to the app. It doesn’t come cheap, with the essential package starting at $29 a month, the pro version is as much as $199 a month.
The name of this one is fairly self-explanatory, it’s an app that offers you both a spin wheel and also email popups. It has lots of customization, plus the ability to create unique coupons that are only valid for single use. Additional features include smart triggers, countdown timers, and analytical reports. Particularly useful is the A/B testing feature that allows you to run two wheels simultaneously and then analyze which works best.
Available for only $7.99 a month.
Another app that allows you to A/B test two different spin wheels at the same time. CrazyRocket wheels look great, and they pride themselves on their responsive designs that work great on desktop and mobile. The analytics dashboard is comprehensive and should give you access to all the metrics you need.
There is a free version, but it’s more of a testing platform without many features. The base level is available for $9 a month and increases to $49 monthly at the Enterprise level.
It’s clear that spin-to-win is a great way to increase engagement and conversion in eCommerce stores. At best, they’ll also increase the average order value of your carts! The integration of spin wheels allows you to entice customers with great offers through the medium of gamification. It’s important, however, that they are implemented correctly, the last thing you want to do is to upset customers.
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