The decisive factor in determining whether a business will achieve an effective customer loyalty strategy is a commitment to both communicating with and understanding the needs and wants of consumers. As the digital world persists in its universality, conversations between brands and customers should endeavour to reflect this. Brands can capitalize on the immediate mode of digital communication to achieve authentic engagement with their user base, which lays the foundations for a robust customer loyalty strategy.
In order to achieve effective and authentic communication, a brand needs to understand not only what types of conversations need to be had with users but what form these will take. Businesses can often find themselves falling into the trap of attempting to engage with consumers through mundane and monotonous means of communication, whether in the form of surveys or interviews. Research from Twilio’s The State of Customer Engagement Report 2022, found that while 75 percent of companies believe they’re providing good personalized experiences, more than half of consumers surveyed disagreed. This need not be the case, and brands' decision to employ gamification methods, such as polls and trivia, to solicit feedback regarding products or the brand itself can be instrumental in changing this perception held by some consumers. Gamification is less intimidating for consumers to engage with and is viewed by many as a form of interactive entertainment. Brands choose to use polls, trivia, or other games, with the incentive of boosting interaction and involvement, which can be positioned in various ways. Quizzes or polls can be utilized to discover more about a consumer’s perception and sentiment toward specific products or directly asking users to answer questions relating to a product's features and users can allow brands to better understand how their marketing messages should be positioned across different market sectors.
A research report from Springer has shown that when customers are engaged, companies can expect improved referrals of their content, company, brand, or platform to other consumers. The rapidly increasing online engagement rates between consumers and brands have propelled the internet to a new frontier, where the potential possibilities for businesses to benefit from customer interaction are boundless. Initiatives, including live trivia events ensure that brands stand out from their competitors and build customer loyalty and are effective mechanisms of enhancing trust. Engaging with consumers in this manner can mean businesses can access sentiment analysis in real time. Accessing sentiment analysis in real-time can allow brands to quickly develop strategies for the lowest-ranking or most disliked services or products. Additionally, companies are better prepared to deal with any potential negative feedback. They can prevent unfavorable consumer experiences from happening more efficiently and effectively. Understanding these sentiments is crucial in facilitating how brands create different personas for personalization. Depending on the consumer's profile, personalized campaigns and marketing can target various groups. This allows
for better and more effective targeting and for easing each sector's specific pain point. These mechanisms can also be applied when polls and trivia are utilized during live streams. Opposed to completing a transaction online through a series of clicks of a button, live-streaming, when combined with gamification technology, immerses consumers in the buying experience. It also enhances a brand's ability to understand interest levels in relation to certain products or categories amongst a live audience and can inform the direction that the host takes the live stream.
Gamification enables increased dialogue and engagement through direct interaction with consumers when used in conjunction with live streaming. This can allow brands to build on instant positive feedback, tap into a potential new consumer base, and access the emotions of individuals who may not have engaged with the brand previously. Polls and trivia can aid in gaining a more in-depth understanding of interest levels in different products or categories amongst live viewers. The host can then adjust the time spent demonstrating products in which consumers have expressed a higher interest. All of this works to ensure that brands gain more valuable and significant feedback from real-time sentiment analysis.
The importance of building consumer loyalty through effective communication that seeks to address the needs of consumers cannot be understated. In order to ensure a brand is achieving this, however, it needs access to accurate, appropriate information. The insights generated through the use of polls or trivia can provide a greater quality of sentiment analysis. These gamification methods that engage consumers can result in a greater participation rate, owing to the novelty of participating, making information gathering a less daunting process.
