What are some examples of successful gamification and incentives in community outreach campaigns?

1 Define your goals and audience

Before you design your gamification and incentives strategy, you need to define your goals and audience. What are you trying to achieve with your campaign? Who are you trying to reach and influence? How do you want them to feel and act? These questions will help you align your game elements and rewards with your desired outcomes and audience needs. For example, if your goal is to educate your audience about a social issue, you might use quizzes, badges, and feedback to test their knowledge and provide information. If your goal is to encourage your audience to take action, you might use challenges, points, and leaderboards to create a sense of competition and achievement.

2 Choose your game elements and rewards

Once you have defined your goals and audience, you can choose your game elements and rewards. Game elements are the features that make your campaign more interactive and engaging, such as rules, goals, challenges, feedback, and progress. Rewards are the benefits that your audience receives for completing the game elements, such as points, badges, prizes, recognition, and social impact. You can use different types of game elements and rewards depending on your campaign theme, tone, and budget. For example, if your campaign is about environmental awareness, you might use a virtual tree that grows as your audience completes eco-friendly actions, and reward them with certificates, coupons, or donations to a green cause.

3 Test and refine your strategy

Before you launch your gamification and incentives strategy, you need to test and refine it. You can use surveys, interviews, focus groups, or beta testing to gather feedback from your audience and stakeholders. You can also use analytics, metrics, and data to measure the effectiveness and impact of your strategy. You can use these methods to identify what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly. For example, if you find that your audience is not motivated by points, you might try to offer more meaningful rewards, such as personal stories, testimonials, or social proof.

4 Examples of successful gamification and incentives

To inspire you, here are some examples of successful gamification and incentives in community outreach campaigns. The UNICEF Tap Project challenged people to go without their phones for as long as they could, with a sponsor donating a day of clean water to a child in need for every minute they did. The campaign used a timer, a progress bar, and a leaderboard to track and compare the participants' performance, and rewarded them with impact stories, social media shares, and certificates. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Earth Hour encouraged people to switch off their lights for one hour to show their support for the planet, using a map, a countdown, and a pledge system to show the global participation and commitment. The American Red Cross Blood Donor App made it easier and more rewarding for people to donate blood, with a scheduler, a tracker, and a reminder to help the donors plan and manage their donations, and rewards such as badges, points, and gift cards, merchandise, or donations to a cause of their choice.

5 Tips and best practices

To make your gamification and incentives strategy more effective and successful, there are some tips and best practices to consider. Your game elements and rewards should be simple and clear, fun and meaningful, social and collaborative, and adaptable and flexible. This will ensure that they are aligned with your campaign message and goals, relevant for your audience, and able to adjust to their preferences, feedback, and behavior. Additionally, it will create a positive and memorable experience for them, as well as a sense of community and belonging.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?