How Can Businesses Turn Email Campaigns into Unlockable Discount Games?

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Email marketing has been around for years. In fact, it can be traced way back to 1978 when Gary Thuerk, a manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, sent a mass marketing email to about 400 users on ARPANET.

You may think that after all these decades of development and technological innovation, something would have replaced email marketing. It’s true that new forms of internet marketing have emerged, but the email campaign still remains a powerful tactic. However, in today’s attention economy, introducing gamification elements to email marketing campaigns could make them more interesting and engaging.

Email Campaigns Need Sprucing Up

Although email marketing is still one of the most effective ways of reaching customers, competition has grown fiercer over the years and now it’s harder to stand out. The problem is that people are being bombarded with marketing emails and it’s easier to just delete them than engage. Indeed, according to a piece in Meetanshi, the average click-through rate for marketing emails on mobile is only 1.4 per cent, highlighting how marketers need to embrace novel tactics to be part of that select group that gets the clicks.

In today’s attention economy, it’s all about engagement and giving customers something to do. This is where gamification comes in. If you can think of ways to give people things to do when they read your emails, it may improve their enjoyment and increase the click-through rates. For example, you can give them challenges to complete or questions that make them think. This would make your email completely different to the standard ones that people usually get and give people more reason to remember your brand.

Promo Codes Can Become Digital Treasure Hunts

When companies combine email marketing with special offers and discounts, it can be an effective method of engagement. However, with promotions now being so prevalent online, even these fill customers with trepidation. There’s always the niggling feeling that there’s some sort of catch, especially when an offer seems too good to be true.

This is where promo codes come in. The concept of a promo code gives an offer an air of exclusivity, with customers having to manually input them to a company to take advantage of an offer that isn’t always available to everyone. This is commonly seen in ecommerce, where online shops like Amazon and delivery services like Deliveroo often give users the chance to input codes. It’s also found in the online casino industry, where Hollywood Casino has a special promo code that awards 50 bonus spins to people who use it.

Promo codes could be part of an effective email marketing campaign in which you use gamification to turn it into a treasure hunt. Customers could collect part of the code each day or have to solve puzzles to reveal the code, making them feel like they had to work for it and therefore increasing its inherent value.

It’s time to think outside of the box with your email marketing campaigns, and offering users the chance to complete tasks to unlock promo codes could be the way forward. If you’re looking for a new way to market your business, you should try this.