Retail Marketing Gamification is the Battleground for Customer Loyalty and Attention. How Do Retailers Win?

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Experts Talk Market Scales Premium debate and discussion round table, where we sit down with the key voices in your industry to talk shop on major trends, technologies, topics, timely news, you name it, the market movers that are defining your industry. And again, hearing from the voices, the experts, the thought leaders, the professors, consultants, researchers, the entrepreneurs, you name it. The folks that are making it happen every day, we put them on the mic to talk shop, to discuss, to debate it out, and to get actionable with their analysis on how we, as a larger b to b community, can make sense of these trends, and both tackle the opportunities and challenges. So welcome to the show. I'm your host per usual, Daniel Litwin, the voice of b two b. It's good to be here. And we've got a real stacked show today. And for the whole month, we've got powerful voices coming on to talk everything from, edge computing and and IOT, applications like smart cities to, the impact of real world asset tokenization on the supply chain to tomorrow's roundtable, which is on, new EdTech leaders report that's getting a pulse on how the k through twelve industry is adapting to major stressors on EdTech implementation. But all is that to say, head to market scale dot com to tap into all of that great content. Again, you can find not only previous episodes of Experts Talk, but also a full lineup of the show and its upcoming episodes, and panelists, again, on market scale dot com. Alright folks, let's jump into today's episode because we have a lot of great voices, and we have quite a topic to unpack with a lot of very tangible examples that need some analysis and some grading, honestly, on their success, and where we can continue to fine tune. What you see below, an evolution of retail marketing that's embracing gamification. So, motivated by some of the creative pressures of the larger experience economy, retail is constantly looking for for and finding new ways to elevate the customer experience, right? Through interactive, engaging, and personalized customer facing strategies. Retail marketing is taking on this challenge in its own way, and that is taking on the form of gamification. And when we think about retail marketing gamification, this isn't a particularly new trend. I mean, we're all familiar with loyalty programs. I mean, I know my fiance is a points fiend. She's got a points app for every place she shops, and, you know, hey, I love punching her, punching in her number at Target and getting some discounts. Right? But, again, this is a, a trend that's growing in prominence in its creativity, in the way that it's embedding itself with other retail strategies and leveraging new technologies, as well as the sentiments and energy and desires of the consumer market to evolve and get, again, more creative. So we're seeing this through unique loyalty programs. We're seeing, you know, gamification with on-site marketing content. We're seeing it even with in store pop up experiences that, further blend the omnichannel retail journey. So what kind of impact is the modern phase of gamification having on retail marketing strategies? Which retail marketing campaigns, are seeing resounding success through gamification? Are there any that are maybe floundering that aren't doing so well, and why? And how can gamification improve the customer experience? Does it offer tangible ROI in terms of revenue growth, product education, a more loyal customer base? Well, the answer has to be yes or it wouldn't be happening. Right? So then how do we measure that ROI and make it actionable for today's retail marketing teams? We're gonna unpack all that and more. Let's let the Experts Talk here on Experts Talk. I'm pleased to welcome our core panelists for the show today. Welcome to our four guests. We'll go down the line here. First up, we're joined by Catherine Orr. She's a brand strategy director with Design It. Catherine, welcome. How are you? I'm wonderful. How are you doing? Doing very well. Thank you so much for joining us. We're also joined by mister Scott Swanson. He's CEO of Bondur. Scott, welcome. How are you? Thank you. Doing great. Thanks for having me here today. Absolutely. Welcome. Welcome. We're also joined, again by mister John Riley. He's a returning panelist. John, welcome to the show. How are you? Great. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Absolutely. Welcome back. And last but not least, mister Dennis Yu, chief technology officer at BlitzMetrics. Dennis, welcome. How are you? Welcome, John and friends. Alright, team. So we have a stacked panel here today. The folks that we've got chatting with us today have a, a wealth of experience working in retail marketing, in in the social media space, in designing loyalty programs from the ground up, in integrating, loyalty programs and this concept of gamification with the larger retail marketing strategy. And so what I wanna do is let them explain some of their experience here in the context of analyzing the field. So folks, let's start by getting a pulse check on where we're at in this evolution of retail marketing gamification. And, you know, when we look back at the loyalty programs of twenty years ago, what looks different today? Right? So, let's kick this off with how has the concept of gamification in retail marketing evolved over the past decade even? Right? And what are some of the key factors that are driving its current growth, but also creative strategies? Right? Whoever wants to kick us off. I'll go ahead and take a swing at that. I think it's a combination of multiple things coming together at the same time where everybody is used to having their phone in their hand all the time now. That's just a a a normal. And the fact that a lot of people are also expecting things to be fun. We, my family, we jokingly refer to it as the yummification of everything. Everything has to be fun or else we're not interested in it. So the combination of those two things coming together at the same time creates an environment where retailers are almost expected to create fun experiences for their customers, and this gives retailers a great opportunity to get information from their customers in ways that the customer probably wouldn't provide if you just asked them. If I ask you specific information about your habits, you may not share those with me. But if you're tapping a button to get more coins, you might do that. So those two things coming together is a as it's a gold mine for retailers to be able to build loyalty and get data at the same time. Yeah. And I I would have to agree with what you're saying. But one thing I wanna hit on, and this is kind of my personal view of what's going on in the world. The utmost operative word that we've shared so far is experience. The client journey, the customer experience, what it's like when you walk through the threshold of a door. The adoption of apps and what you actually get is probably minimal. And what are we really trying to achieve with our customers when they when they come and visit us? So I'm a big advocate of the human experience. I feel like today, if we're gonna do gamification, if we're gonna do anything, we need to understand that in the retail space, the only thing that we have other than online sales or Amazon is the human experience. So what are we doing to really touch, connect with, engage with, and and build community at a local level? This is kind of what I'm really passionate about. And gamifying it too, making it fun. Because why open an app? Why go on Wi Fi? It should be w h Wi Fi. Wi Fi. I like that. Yeah. That's that's that's gonna stick, I think, after today's, round table. I was gonna say, like, your point about, the the personalization aspect of what's the trade off, John. So why am I going to give you my personal information? And that is that's a key point that that we found in our work is that we know that almost four out of five customers are willing to share basic information in exchange for a more personalized experience. Purchase drivers in retail is personalization. Eighty percent of customers are more likely to make a purchase if a brand offers a personalized experience. And so the challenge for retailers is how do you personalize it scale? How do you make that, normally what is normally a one to one experience? I had a great experience with an in store retail associate. They helped me find a new outfit for an event that I was really stressed about. I would shop at that store again with that associate. That personalization is fantastic, but how do you scale that? And that, I think, is where gamification is coming in. That's where retailers are turning to gamification because in exchange for what's my reward for giving you my email or or allowing you to send me text messages. I'll give you that information if you give me a discount or if I'm now part of a loyalty program where I earn stars in exchange for coffee. I think that that is where we're starting to see and have seen a lot of success with retailers, engaging, driving personal getting personalization, through gamification strategies. I like that. Right. The engagement is a huge factor here because it has people not only interacting with your brand, but coming back to your brand over and over again because, again, you're making it personal to Scott's point, and you're making it fun to your point, Catherine. Yeah. To to Daniel's point and what Catherine just said, it's not just the consumer gamification, which is causing every CMO to launch their own app, which is just creating a lot of noise. A lot of it requires, like Catherine said, tying back to the CRM and having the employees be able to personalize. So I've seen, like, working with Lane Bryant and Starbucks that when you can train the employees to be able to get points for doing things like getting a review. For example, we've we've trained employees to say, hey. Part of my compensation is tied to getting more reviews. And then would you be happy to help me, leave a review for me? And then these customers will say, why sure. And then we taught them this one magic line. If you give me your phone, I will show you how. And the customers just magically hand over the phone. So there's so many things that can be done on the employee side to enable gamification and personalization instead of just, hey. Let's, you know, buy seven burritos, get one free. Everyone else is doing that. That's table stakes. So things have really changed in the last ten years in gamification to focus on the employee side and the CRM. Yeah. I guess use case there or case study, I think, is a better term. Because when we see, you know, new ways of trying to get customers engaged with a brand, It seems like even when we lay all the right stones and the the vision for it is right, the app looks good, the experience is actually, you know, entertaining, it's integrated into their normal shopping experience. There's sometimes that like activation energy challenge or that like that last mile of, hey, will you leave a review? You know, I don't know how to navigate to that. No. Right? It's like there's there's a just a little bit of extra effort sometimes that it takes to get customers to understand the value that comes from a small change in their consumer habits that will then, you know, lead to obviously not only, you know, wins for the brand itself as it launches these strategies, but for the consumer as well as they get more, you know, rewards out of their experience with that brand. And so, you know, let's expand on that a little bit. What are some of the strategies you're seeing today that brands are launching to make gamification a more natural sort of, integrated aspect of the consumer experience to where it doesn't feel like an add on, attack on, one extra step that that they have to sort of learn how to participate with. But something that is a a natural extension of how they're already engaging with these brands in a way that they know, adopt it in in a a frictionless manner. Right? What are some examples y'all are seeing in the market today that are really standing out to you? We have a we have a really interesting patent, and it's very interesting. Think about this. One of our patents, is, we have domestically and internationally is connecting customers with employees and employees with customers via a device under any locate, within any physical space. And it's very interesting to think that, out of the big, big world of retail and marketing and trying to connect and communicate with human beings and make it interesting and fun and increase the adoption, like Dennis said, the noise of all the different apps, that we aren't really focusing so much on that. What is it to what is it to empower the customer when they walk through the door? We're so busy on the back end, and data's a great thing, and gamifying is a great thing. Right? How do we bring it all together in one platform and in one environment? And I feel, me, personally, and this is what we are really passionate about, is, you know, the the the phone is a great piece of hardware, but having a great piece of software in there that elevates wherever you go, like I mentioned before, we we jumped on here. In five years, everywhere you go, you should be able to instantly connect with people, places, products, discounts, offers, and make it fun. So I feel like we've done a lot on the retail side, on the back end, on the AI side, on the data collection side, on the on the making it fun and exciting to get rewards. But how much have we built towards the actual customer and giving them the power to come into an environment, get what they want, when they want it, and have a more elevated experience between themselves and the employees via technology. This is kinda what we're focused on. And what I think is really important is not is both sides, not just one-sided. Right. Yeah. That's a critical part because it's gotta be a two way conversation. It's gotta be good for the customer and good for the brand. And to Dennis's point, everybody's jumping on the bandwagon. Right? And we have so much noise out there where we have the risk of fatigue if you don't get it right or have something that's actually a differentiator between you and your competitors and also between you and everyone else. Because consumers just don't they're not convenient. They don't just say, oh, I'm only gonna grade this within my airline bucket. I'm not gonna grade this within, you know, my Starbucks bucket. That's gonna be different. They don't do that at all. They just think of this is my phone. This is something I'm interacting with, and I like it or I don't. So the tricky part for us as retailers and marketers and brand ambassadors is to create experiences that are authentic and not just a me too, not just I'm doing this because I feel I have to, and ensuring that it works for them and not just for us. And I advise brands about this all the time. If you as a developer, and I mean developer in the sense of you're creating a product, if the consumer can sense when they cross a business unit within your company, you have failed. And that is a critical part to the point where it has to be seamless and authentic because in many cases, you only get one swing here. And if you don't get it right, they will leave, and they'll never come back. So true. Amen. Just like what Shep Hyken says, he's the master in customer experience. The trouble with loyalty programs, incentives, gamification is they just end up being back end discounts. And if everyone is doing the same thing where you're earning points, all it is is just a loyalty discount that's run by marketing. And then there's too many sales, too many points, too many promotions, earn ten coins for spinning the wheel. If all the brands are doing that, you're just ruining your brand experience. You're ruining the fact that brands care about you because of the relationship, not because they're earning twenty points by, you know, doing this one random thing inside the app. With everyone doing apps, we have the app fatigue. My mentor invented frequent flyer programs, which started the whole credit card point earning kind of thing. He was the CEO of American Airlines. And when we did analysis, we found that you could get people to change their behavior because you wanted to, you know, fly go from forty nine to fifty segments to maintain executive platinum, whatever, at the end of the year. So all these flights on December thirty first, it would happen just because people wanted to maintain their status. But real gamification has to extend beyond marketing. It has to extend the customer experience. So if you don't train up your staff, if you don't gamify the employee side, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Just on the customer side, people see through that. I love that you're taking gamification outside of the customer space into the employee space as well, recognizing that that experience of the employee translates to what it is that the customer feels on their end. And so having an employee experience, gamify gamifying the employee experience as well just is a really great angle that I think not enough retailers are looking into. And I think that that is something I would I would love to see more of, as we as we go in, to building more strategies. I agree with you, Catherine. I love what you're saying, Dennis. I think you're really on point there. And, see, it's it's same with us too. Roll rolling out into so you sign a big deal with a big retailer. Guess what? You need to get internal adoption. You need to get the employees on board, managers on board, and and get them excited about what you're doing, in in that environment. So gamification, I think, is definitely an exciting way to do it. It it's it's you don't just sign a deal and it's done. That's for sure. There's a lot between, having a vision and having your customers embrace your new tech or whatever it might be. So Can I say something that that I think might offend some folks? I recommend most brands not to do gamification because so many people are jumping on it because of social media, because of blockchain, because it's the cool thing to do. And I see the majority of gamification strategies fail because they didn't integrate with the CRM, because they didn't think about how it enhances the customer experience, because it requires too much on the consumer's part to collect more information just because the CMO thinks like, we we saw for Coca Cola. Remember, my Coke rewards, you have to peel off the thing and type in the code on your like, it's a horrible experience, but someone thought it'd be a great idea for gamification. There's a smoothie chain who I'm not going to name that we got access to their back end data and they launched a loyalty program. And they found that the average customer who participated in our loyalty program was worth twelve hundred dollars versus the one who didn't was worth thirty or forty dollars. So we should get everyone to be in our loyalty program. Wrong. That's self selecting. Of course, the people who are gonna come more often are gonna sign up for the, you know, do a number, buy x smoothies to get more smoothies free. Of course, they're gonna refer their friends in. Why don't we think about the basics of referral marketing and LTV? Focus on who your best customers are and what can you do to make their life easier instead of just give them more points, which is just a discount. The best customers don't want a discount. They wanna be rewarded. How do you do that? You do it by increasing LTE, by personalizing. I totally Dennis, I a hundred percent agree. If gamification for I'm hoping we're when we're talking about gamification, we're talking beyond buy nine and get the tenth thing free, please. We really need to evolve beyond that. What about building community around the brand? What about inviting people into private ecosystems specific to each store outside of social media? Facebook and Instagram and social media platforms, they don't care what's going on in the retail space. They don't care what's going on in the physical space. So I agree. I I'm I'm aligned with you on that. When I'm thinking gamification, I'm thinking something that may maybe like Pokemon Go for people. Who knows? Whatever it takes to collide bodies, build community, more intimate communities, and more intimate ecosystems of people helping people, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm really passionate about. Something above and beyond buy nine and get the ten thing free. Right? Yep. Yeah. I that's huge. And I think you mentioned Pokemon Go. That made me think of Gucci where they took they built out avatar, clothing and accessories for Roblox. I believe Pokemon Go as well. Louis Vuitton also released custom skins for players' avatars avatars in League of Legends. So what they did is they took the idea of the customer centricity, and they said, these are our potential future customers or our potential customers. They what are they doing? What are they excited about? What engages them? And it was esports gaming. And they said, how do we expand? How do we meet them where they are? And so they built out these experiences to drive loyalty, customer to really enhance the customer's gaming experience, not necessarily the customer's experience with their brand, but said, hey. Look. Here are these really great skins that you can buy that are Louis Vuitton branded and that you can use in your in game experience. And so they're digitizing their brand in exchange for driving supporting a community that they believe will hopefully down the line in turn support them. So when we talk about gamification, it's it's less about that sign up for emails and get ten percent off or get free shipping or, you know, buy nine, get the tenth free. It's how do we personalize it? How do we look at what it is that a customer is doing in their in the three sixty of their life, not really in the context of the brand, and and identifying what is it that the where can the brand support the community that already exists rather than trying to bring people to them, which is really, doesn't always resonate. How can the brand go out and meet them where they are? Gamification. Right, Catherine. And the best thing oh, I'm sorry. Please go ahead. No. I I was just gonna say, like, retail gamification strategies that really work, it seems like they are taking to the logical conclusion what marketing, like, has known for decades, which is, you know, tapping into the existing social conversation, social language that we already have in our environments. And retail marketing gamification is just taking that into, okay. Let's activate these natural impulses that people already have as consumers. Right? So that then opens up strategies for different layers of retail gamification. So it's not like, okay, we need to launch the one app with the one spinning wheel for all customers and get them all under the same umbrella, but rather, okay. We have some customers that literally their relationship with us is super transactional. All they want is twenty percent off here and there. Cool. Let's come up with a strategy that gives them access to that by engaging with our brand in a really seamless way. Hey. Buy five, you get the six three. Right? Okay. Yes. That's part of it. But then there's also, you know, dripping out in, you know, supreme skins on Fortnite or something. Right? That's that's a completely different gamification strategy because that's tapping into clout, that's tapping into social status, that's tapping into the, the sort of way that people see themselves in the way that they take on and reflect brands and the the feel, the character of that brand to their communities. So you gamify that, you naturally tap into where people are already motivated to, you know, to basically express themselves to their existing communities and turn that into a way to win with that brand and for the brand to win. Right? By having more loyal customers. That brings me to really I wanted to get y'all thoughts on different types of gamification strategies. So, this is maybe an oversimplification, but we see like three big buckets right now of gamification strategies. You've got individual gamification. Right? This personal progress and achievements. You earn points, badges, new levels. Right? Users complete tasks or challenges, they get rewards. Boom. Great. Then you've got reciprocal gamification. A little more mutual exchange interaction between an app, let's say, and the user. There's social sharing of achievements, inviting friends to join, community building, peer interaction. Then there's relational gamification. This is building connections and relationships with an app or even larger community. So this is team challenges, collaborative tasks, things that place you in a physical environment and have you interact with a larger community. I think these all play a role, but I'm curious how y'all would recommend brands even approach engaging with these different strategies. Because not only do they speak to different customers, but they require different technologies, and different, like, literal day to day marketing operations to achieve. So any thoughts on how you would recommend a brand start engaging with any one of those strategies? Is it worth focusing in on one, thinking about them in a big picture? Does one win out over another, you know, in today's environment? What are you all thinking? What do you see? I'll go first. It's a tapestry. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Dennis, please. Go ahead. Oh, hey. I was just gonna say, it's a tapestry. You have to do what's right for your specific brand, and no one size fits all is gonna fit all. And that's exactly what Dennis was talking about earlier where many brands are just saying, I'll have one gamification, please, and it's a box on the shelf. It's got a barcode on it. You scan it, and they can tick the box and say, I now have this. But, ultimately, it's gonna be different because, like, a b two b brand that wants to introduce a points program in a fun way, those people aren't necessarily gonna wanna talk to each other about gears or metal sheets, but a travel brand is one hundred percent wanna go gonna create a community where users can talk to each other. So the important part is for brands to be authentic with themselves, decide what they wanna get out of it and what they can do from either a technology standpoint or a culture standpoint, and then create the framework for this without being heavy handed. Right? It's almost like design was twenty years ago. You know? If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. If you create the frameworks and foster a community or foster the ability for people to be able to do what they want, they will likely do things that you want them to do, get data, give more discounts, get more customers, turn those, you know, twenty percent customers that spend eighty percent of the money into a larger cohort. Those things will just happen organically if you come at it from the right to friction when brands wanna start gamification programs because it requires a CRM, all this investment in these this huge program. Fine. You can do a poke command scan or whatnot, but it's as simple as this. The lowest friction gamification you have is social media. So how are you engaging? How are you building community? How are you highlighting fans? Are you getting engagement on your Facebook post, for example? Or if you have a Facebook group or on Twitter. And if here. Let me put it this way, and I'd love to hear what the other panelist think. If you can't get quality engagement and sharing and community off of, like, a Facebook group or LinkedIn or wherever your community hangs out the best, how likely are you gonna succeed in bringing people over to your area for your rules, points, leveling, unlocking badges, randomization that if you can't get in the most lightweight area like Facebook to get people to engage, you're not gonna get the high friction thing to work first. So get it to work first in social, listen to the community, and then build programs from there. Dennis, I I like what you're saying. And how, think about this. Why doesn't every single store have their own social media platform? Essentially, like a Salesforce, but but it's dynamic and interactive. Why I we can go to Facebook and we can go to Instagram. What is the engagement and what is the objective? The objective is convergence, to sell more at the end of the day, to represent your brand, to get people to like what you have and to and to purchase. I don't know how we can a hundred percent quantify that or say I spent ten million with Facebook or on social media last year and here's the ROI on that. What about what about social channels? What about social platforms where you have instant chat when you walk through the door, you're interacting with your guests, and then you're inviting them into your own private social circle specific to that store. Realizing that Home Depot in Alabama is a lot different than Home Depot in Beverly Hills. We're all these are very different demographics, different people everywhere. We need to, and this is what I'm another thing I'm passionate about, but bringing people into private ecosystems, your own social media channels, capturing all the foot traffic of the people that come into your store and leave and and walk through, but bringing them into an environment that's beyond a name, an email, and a phone number, and their address, and the last thing they bought. This is I feel where we really need to l we'll be able to elevate that environment. Our vision is in the next few years that we see these ecosystems that, comp like Best Buy or Louis Vuitton could say, oh, here's our community for Louis Vuitton and the fashion district. We have four thousand people in there. We have whalers who spend fifty thousand a visit. They're in a they're in their own circle. We have Home Depot here down the street on Lake Street in fourteenth. And somebody needs somebody to come and paint, and they're in the community that we created outside of social media help saying, I need a painter in two hours. Can you come and help me? Now we're now this is dynamic and it's interactive, and the customer is getting something beyond a discount. Right? Mhmm. So it's it is I feel like we are all we we can only do and achieve what has been provided to us in terms of the world of platforms. And for me, I feel this is where we need to elevate. We need to we need to move beyond that and into more dynamic and interactive platforms that go well beyond social media. Or real time actionable data. We collect data for the purpose of getting somebody to convert and potentially buy something. What about the data when somebody walks through the door and being able to see the control panel, see eighteen hundred locations during Christmas, take a picture of a Christmas gift, put twenty percent discount, hit send, and hit thirty two thousand phones. Right? And and and actually and then track that to the POS system and then invite them into that private circle for that store and interact with the people in that community specific to that store and that brand. Now we're elevating. Now we're getting beyond. We're automating ourselves out of the human experience. I could just go on to Amazon and buy something if I wanna have a screen there where I click and sell and buy something and it spits out my food. We're human beings. When we leave our home, we are in the world of commerce. We're going somewhere to buy a coffee. We're going to buy a car. We're going to a game. So where's the technology and the platform out there that's create helping to create more efficient human experiences when we're on prem? Right? Proximity has been done. If you like something that I like, it doesn't mean we're gonna talk. We need something beyond that. What do you wanna talk about today? You walked into the store. You're gonna get something. Here's fifteen percent. Go buy it. Now you're gonna you were gonna bulk. You were gonna walk on that three thousand dollar television, but I hit you when you were there. You bought the TV. You joined our community for our store, and now you're interacting with all the other people that shop at this in this location and in your community. Connectedness, convenience. That brings up an interesting challenge though for, retailers and brands today, which is the data side of things. Right? Any good gamification strategy is obviously gonna have to leverage the mass influx of great, granular data that they now have on their, their customer base. And I'm curious what y'all thoughts are on, you know, what those major challenges look like in practice. Right? Where is making sense of and acting campaigns in general, but also in more real time ways. How is that, I guess, just weight and massive amount of data, creating a challenge for retailers and their gamification strategies? And do you have any advice or or, you know, sort of actionable, step ones, right, for gathering and acting on that data in more focused ways? I'd say step one is digital plumbing. And I saw, for example, with Ashley Furniture, they were just tracking things that were within the POS once you had a phone number and an email address. But there's literally a hundred times more data that you get from the platforms themselves. Like, Facebook and Google both have offline conversions and the conversion API where you can measure of the people who've been engaging with you, how many people went into the store and how many people actually bought. And you can map that back. Facebook lead ads, for example, did you know that if you do lead ads on Facebook, which is an instant form, that you have to pass that data back to Facebook? Because they don't have it even though they drove that for you. And even Facebook engineers didn't know that when we had a meeting with them a couple months ago. There's all these tools like LeadsBridge or Google Tag Manager, all the different pixels. Google's killing the the third party cookies, you know, at the end of the year, early next year. There there's all this data that most of us are not integrating and are not even aware that we call part of digital plumbing. The connecting of conversions, of of social data, of email addresses, of the CRM, of the call tracking system, all of that stuff is usually not even done. And if that data is not even there to Daniel's point, it doesn't matter what kind of gamification rules you have because you don't have the data to support that or you're only looking at the CRM purchase data, which is one very small view. What about GDPR and data compliancy and data infringement? You know, there's a big pushback on, and people are there's there's a starting to become a pushback from people, from users, being used as data points. So I'm curious because you're a data guy. I'm really curious what your thoughts are on the new regulations, and what does five years look like? What does it look like five years forward with data compliancy and data regulations? How do you function? So I argued with Zuckerberg on CNN live in front of millions of people talking about data and Cambridge Analytica and the government and the Russians interfering with elections and that kind of stuff. So the bottom line is that GDPR, even though technically it applies to Europe, actually applies to everyone, and and there's gonna be privacy harmonization across everybody. In other words, assume that the strictest privacy rules anywhere are going to apply to everyone. Even though the rules are different and we need to have a different POS and, you know, things like HIPAA and patient data cause certain challenges and and data storage and data management and all that. But you can talk about those things, but the the most practical thing is you probably don't even have a data policy. You probably have not updated your privacy policy and your TOS that's in the footer of your website. You know, people love to talk about like, we I consulted for the EU. I flew out to Europe, to Brussels and other folks to consult for the EU on data privacy for social media. I consulted for the FTC on what they should do with retargeting data. But you don't even need someone like me. You need the most basic stuff on what are you doing with customer data, and are you telling customers what you're do are you selling it to partners? How are you using emails? Are you using double opt in? Is it easy for people to leave if they wanna unsubscribe or leave your program? Most companies aren't even doing that. So don't worry about GDPR. Worry about the basics of data management. I think that's huge in in the the when we look at the push pull of what is it that the customer wants versus what is it that the real retailer wants. How do we personalize the experience, give them what they're looking for, help them find what they need faster? In order to do that, retailers need data. But then you run into the privacy and security issues. So customers will say, I don't want you to track me. I don't want you to know everything there is to know about my online behavior, etcetera, etcetera. But give me something in exchange. You can have my information. So customers are talk we talk out of both sides of our mouth a little bit when it comes to that. So it's definitely up to retailers to uphold and protect their customers and to make sure that they have things in line. Like you said, we need to make sure that the terms and conditions, that everything is clear. We avoid dark patterns in our experience. All of that is is done. And I think what we need to do when we're working with retailers and talking with retailers is that we need to know that it's important for us to look at it from the customer perspective. Is I'm a customer. I don't I don't care about the back end data systems that are that are happening. I just need to know that when I decide to shop in store versus online that my data ports over. So it's easier for me to view my past purchase history so I can repurchase the same product without having to to dig through all of the the whole catalog or sort through all the different racks. I wanna be able to find what I'm looking for faster. So retailers have that responsibility to to go in and how do you make that digital experience smoother while also maintaining and protecting your own customer who may not realize, well, when I gave you my email or when I gave you my information, I didn't necessarily read through the fine print. And I think we're all guilty of that is is signing up for something without looking through the full terms and conditions. So we've kind of willingly signed over a lot of data, And and so I think there's a retail responsibility, on the back end for us to be looking out for our customers while also trying to to give them the personalization and align them with products that can really help them with what they need. Right. And you're just we're just about to hit an absolute collision of things of regulation, technology, and consumer preferences. And, you know, you you said five years. You know, Scott, in five years, think what GenAI is gonna be able to do. Do. Think of what it can do today and what it'll be able to do in, you know, five years. And, Dennis, you already know this because you're, like, knee deep in all of this. But, you know, ten years ago, I ran the bookstore at Amazon, and we could pretty accurately guess the next book you were gonna buy. But if we showed that to you, it would creep you out. Gen AI can do that in an instant across a billion data points that you may not even know that you have. Like, that thing that came out recently where car dealers were actually selling data to insurance companies and raising your rates based on your driving habits because, oh, I only drive six thousand miles a year. Of course, I do. Those are the kinds of things that are gonna come crushing. And then to your point, Scott, of things like GDPR where the European Union starts to create laws about how these things can be done, those will be global standards very quickly. But we're in the wild west of this right now of the personalization. And, Catherine, you hit the point of just because we can doesn't necessarily mean that we should. And that's an important thing for all brands, but specifically retailers coming back to something we said at the top of the show of a lot of cases, you only get one chance to make a good relationship, and it takes, what is, eleven, twelve, fourteen chances to undo a bad relationship. So don't mess that up. And just because you have this awesome technology that can say, you know what, John? I know it's good to wear a blue shirt because it's Wednesday. Don't necessarily do that. I I really appreciate that. And, Catherine, I like what you said too. This is why we support this is why we support think instant chat and real time actionable data and being able to really report up to corporate and say, look. That person walked through the door. They had an instant chat with one of the employees. They found what they wanted to find more efficiently, and we tracked that little code to the POS system, and you had a sale. And I think that's that's really important. You know, I I was on the phone with a there's a very, very high end luxury brand. And, the CIO was saying, you well, we have everything. We have a lot in place. We have, AI, data collection, Sales Force. We have a lot of things for us. But we're very we we know that that the number one most important thing moving forward is the is, and they call them client, is the client experience, the client journey, that it needs to be more balanced out. And they're looking for things to help do that. They're looking for platforms to help do that. And I I think social media is great. I'm not taking them on. I'm not I just feel like listen. We, it's great to have all that, but I I feel that it's really important that if we're developing true technology, we can't forget about the human experience and the power of the human being. And that and that it's time for us to create some technology that helps create more efficient human encounters and allows us to feel, touch, and experience what we want in a retail store. We're not building in that direction. We're in the world of AI. We're on social media platforms, but that's a social media platform. You do threesings on it. You post a picture, you post a video, and you make a statement. And then they make money selling advertising, doing data collection, and AI for the purpose of creating convergence and generating revenue. All the power to them. Go for it. But for us, you know, really passionate about the human experience and making it making it something where you're walking into the door of of, Louis Vuitton or Best Buy or a high end brand or someplace, and you feel like you're in control, that you're sharing your data while you're there, and you're turning and burning it, and you're getting what you want the way you want it, when you want it. And when you leave, you're off the grid being left alone. So whether GDPR or regulations allow data or not, I think it's important for us to think about that. You know, just the human experience, what we're really giving, not to ourselves as a retailer, but to our customers and what they experience when they walk through the door. I ranted. Sorry. So what I wanna do is wrap things up with each one of y'all's final analysis here on ROI. So gamifying retail marketing has, you know, some more esoteric benefits. Right? Some of the intangibles, how it impacts your brand and the relationship that, you know, customers have with that brand. There's obviously the way more granular data. Did this turn that customer into a customer that buys from us more often? Did they spend more money with us? Are they now in store more often? Did they refer a friend? Etcetera. What would you all say are the most important data points to track to gauge the success of your gamification strategy? And is that even the right way to think about it? Right? Down to the most granular data point or are there more kind of big picture, less super tangible ways to gauge was this a success for my brand, and should we continue to invest money in it? And keep up with it as a key part of our larger marketing strategies. How do we approach that and get actionable for the marketers here? So most ROI calculations on gamification programs are fuzzy at best and usually negative. Because the majority of gamification programs fail because there's too much friction on the consumer side like we talked about and not focused on the customer's experience. I believe that everything needs to map back to an increase in the lifetime value. Because if you're truly personalizing, then the customers are gonna spend more over time. It affects referrals, reviews, all these things that affect the LTV. But you can look at net promoter score. You can look at engagement. You can look at other sort of secondary diagnostic factors. But if your customers don't already love you, if your reviews on Google and Yelp and TripAdvisor and whatever are not four point five and above, then I would not recommend looking at gamification because that's just gonna rub salt in the wound. And that's why I think the majority of like, we're usually brought in once there's a failure. We're brought in once the CMO decided that she wanted to launch this gamification thing and hired all these consultants, most of them fail because there's a great idea. But if the operations and customer service can't support that, if the people aren't trained, if the brand doesn't have a great story and a great reputation, you can't amplify a bad reputation. If you're not engaging on social, trying to add more friction to bring them into your store and your environment that you control sounds great, but it doesn't work unless you can make it work in the lightweight area. If you don't have your data management done properly and privacy and whatnot, then you can't add all these extra layers of complexity. So gamification and social and all the recommend let's build our own, whatever sounds great, but it usually fails. So you measure it by the ROI. Look at the bodies that are littered on this trail of brands that have failed in trying to do gamification before you decide to embark on this yourself. Yep. And what what are we really offering at the end of the day? What does it distill down into? So much of what we're doing today and what we're using in terms of technology doesn't distill down into much. A little bit. I think we're learning. We're growing. We're evolving. We're better understanding what it is to really offer somebody something of value. I love what you said, Dan. Yeah. I agree. And I think it's Yeah. It's a discount. Yeah. It's absolutely if we're going to do gamification the right way, it's a long term play that impacts the affinity of the brand, for the brand. So are customers more happy when they shop with you? That to me is is a longer term. Did gamification help to remove a stress point, a pain point from their experience? How can we do that? And and to me, that's a that's a measuring point and it's a little bit more of a fuzzy metric, measuring brand affinity, but having that, more positive sentiment and conversation happening around your brand brand is a longer term, measure and benefit that that we would like to see, for an effective gamification program for sure. Yeah. It's a lot like social was in twenty fifteen. Right? The the the metrics are fuzzy. We're not really sure how it's gonna work. We know we have to do something. We're really not sure what that is, but, ultimately, organic engagement. Does that merry-go-round keep spinning when you stop pushing on it? If it does, you're winning. And if it doesn't, you need to retool. Mhmm. I like that. That's a really, really good analogy. Well said. And, you know, maybe the final point is just that the simpler the strategy, the better in terms of how it relates back to the core reason you're even launching it in the first place, which is not really converting more sales. It's not really lifetime value. It's more are you helping enhance the experience of the customer? Is your customer, you know, feeling like they have a better relationship with your brand? What does your customer want and need? So at the end of the day, going back to just better understanding who's buying your stuff and why. We'll probably chart a better path for a solid gamification strategy than just kind of looking at what, you know, Temu is doing or something and just copying it because they're doing it or something. Right? So I guess we'll leave it on that one. I feel like we're just scratching the surface. There's still so much to talk about, but I wanna wrap things up while we're, you know, still on a on a hot streak, and we'll just have to get everyone back here for more conversation. So thank you to the four of you for your analysis. This has been really insightful conversation, very actionable, and I appreciate the disparate perspectives we got here because I think we've got a better path forward here for the industry. So thank you again to our four guests. We'll go down the line again. Thank you to Catherine Orr, brand strategy director at Design It. Scott Swanson, CEO of Bondur, John Riley, president at McFadden Digital, and Dennis Yu, chief technology officer at BlitzMetrics. I'll definitely be in touch with the four of y'all for more. Till then, thank you again. This has really been a pleasure of a show. Great. It's wonderful speaking with you all. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. And thank you everyone for tuning in to today's episode of Experts Talk. If you like what you heard and saw today and you wanna tap into previous episodes, make sure that you're heading to market scale dot com, and keep an eye out for all of our future conversations including tomorrow's, which again is on EdTech leaders and some of their challenges and priorities for the twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five school year. And if you consider yourself an expert, maybe you've got some analysis you want to throw in the ring for your industry, hit me up. You may just be the next expert in our expert community and the next panelist on Experts Talk. You can reach me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email, daniel dot litwin at market scale dot com. Alright, folks. Signing off for this beautiful Wednesday morning. I'm actually gonna go get my marriage license here in about thirty minutes. So big things happening in the Litwin world, but I hope there's something equally as exciting to kick off hump day for y'all as well. Alright. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'm Daniel Litwin, the voice of b two b, and we'll see you next time on Experts Talk.