Looking for a way to stand out from the thousands of cosmetics retailers in the industry and boost customer engagement? Offer gamified experiences.
Chances are, you’ve already seen or even participated in gamification, maybe without even realizing it—if you’ve earned points for completing specific tasks, spun a wheel to win products, or taken part in a social media contest, you already have.
Gamification is becoming a fixture in retail marketing, breaking the monotony of traditional marketing campaigns and allowing customers to play more active roles in their experiences. It may be just what you need to get customers interested in that new product you can’t seem to get off your shelves or encourage brand loyalty.
Here, we guide you on how to use gamification in cosmetics retail.
How gamification looks in the retail industry
What do you think of when you hear the word gamification? Do video games and other conventional games come to mind? If so, you’re on the right track but not quite there yet—gamification involves a lot more than just typical games.
Gamification is the process of applying game principles and features to non-game contexts like retail shopping. Think reward programs, augmented and virtual reality experiences, puzzles, spin-the-wheels, and so on. In short, it involves introducing game-like elements into real-world experiences to spark fun customer interactions and improve sales.
In cosmetics and skincare retail, gamification can take many faces. You can provide competitive virtual makeup try-ons, introduce loyalty programs to reward your highest-purchasing shoppers, or give customers a chance to win skincare or makeup by creating puzzles, social media contests, and the like.
With customer spending at an all-time high, particularly in the cosmetics industry—customers spent $94.36 billion on cosmetics in 2023—gamification may be what you need to get your piece of the pie. If well executed, it can drive sales, boost customer engagement, and, most importantly, foster relationships with your audience, facilitating customer loyalty.
Why should you use gamification in cosmetics retail?
The cosmetics industry is one of the most competitive in the world, with new products and brands popping up every year. With this comes the establishment of more retail stores to meet supply needs.
How do you survive in the competitive beauty industry? You adapt!
Right now, there’s a focus on user experiences across all industries, with 60% of consumers reporting that they’ve determined whether to buy from specific brands based on the kind of experience they expect to receive. Therefore, solutions that improve customer experiences, like gamification, are definitely worth trying.
Let’s take a deeper look at why gamified experiences are important in retail:
Boosts customer engagement
Engagement is key to any business’s success, as it helps customers feel valued. Gamification increases customer engagement by allowing shoppers to be involved with your brand beyond just purchasing products. It creates fun and more interactive shopping experiences that help you to build customer relationships.
There’s no shortage of gamification ideas to boost engagement. You can arrange in-store challenges where customers earn rewards or get discounts after answering cosmetics-related questions, schedule online beauty contests where they can participate and vote on their best looks, or create store-related challenges where customers complete specific tasks. For example, you may ask them to follow your social media pages and tag their friends to win prizes.
Enhances brand loyalty
Gamification in retail can build stronger emotional connections between you and your customers by helping you appear more fun and relatable. This can enhance brand loyalty, securing your retail store’s position in the beauty industry.
Further, the rewards and achievement systems in gamified experiences can encourage repeat purchases. After all, who doesn’t want the chance to win something after completing purchases?
Increases product awareness and education
Want to boost brand awareness and educate customers on how to use products effectively? Gamification can help you do this in a fun and engaging way!
You can create quizzes and tutorials to encourage customers to learn more about your products or arrange virtual try-on competitions to let shoppers experiment with various looks and vote on the best ones. These tools are not only fun, but they can also provide valuable product information, helping customers make informed purchasing decisions.
Drives sales and revenue growth
Gamification can drive sales and revenue for cosmetics retail stores by boosting engagement and brand loyalty. Typically, customers are more likely to buy products if they have enjoyable shopping experiences and if they already have a relationship with your retail store.
Additionally, it can increase sales by providing upselling opportunities and boosting average order values. You can encourage customers to buy additional items through a “buy one, get one free” promotion or provide incentives like gifts for reaching specific spending targets, encouraging customers to buy more from you.
Many cosmetics brands have already seen considerable revenue growth with gamification. Take Ulta Beauty, for example—the company’s loyalty program and Semi-Annual Beauty Event contributed significantly to its 28% increase in profits in 2022.
The loyalty program encouraged purchases by giving customers points for their buys, while the Semi-Annual Beauty Event—previously known as the 21 Days of Beauty—boosted sales by providing different daily discounts on makeup and skincare products. The event is quite interesting because the beauty retailer typically refreshes product sales daily, creating a sense of urgency and excitement.
Key gamification strategies for cosmetics retail
Convinced about the value of gamification in retail? Here are some strategies for inspiration:
Loyalty programs with tiered rewards
Loyalty programs are some of the most effective tools for motivating repeat purchases. They allow customers to accrue points after purchases, which they can redeem for discounts, gifts, and other prizes. These programs are incredibly motivating, as more points mean more rewards.
To secure even more sales and boost brand loyalty, create tiered rewards where customers receive high-value prizes the more they spend in your store. For example, you could categorize customers who spend $10-$500 per year in one tier and offer them discounts. Then, you could group those who spend over $500 in another tier and offer discounts plus something extra—like coupons or free shipping. This can motivate shoppers to buy more to climb the ranks and enjoy exclusive deals.
Has this strategy worked with a real-life brand? Yes! Sephora, the cosmetics retail giant, runs a loyalty program known as the Beauty Insider Program, which allows customers to earn exclusive deals, rewards, and experiences based on their purchase values.
The program divides shoppers into three categories: Insider, VIB (Very Important Beauty Insider), and Rouge, each offering more benefits than the one below it. For example, the Insider tier enjoys 10% off during seasonal saving events, while the VIB tier enjoys 15% and the Rouge tier 20%. This tiered structure encourages Sephora shoppers to purchase more.
To start your own loyalty program, consider leveraging Bitly’s retail solutions. You could provide short links or retail QR Codes to direct customers to pages that allow them to register their information. This way, all it takes is simple clicks or scans to enroll themselves.
Virtual try-ons and challenges
Augmented reality (AR) solutions and virtual try-ons are fun and allow customers to find the best product matches, making them valuable additions to your marketing strategy. With some creativity, you can gamify them to create even more interactive and fun experiences for your customers. Here are some ideas you can borrow:
- Create a rewards system where customers earn points when they complete an AR beauty tutorial or virtually try on makeup.
- Create timed challenges where customers attempt to complete makeup looks with your virtual try-on tool within a specified timeframe for the chance to win prizes.
- Ask customers to vote on looks created with your tool and award those with the highest points on the leaderboard.
Cosmetics giant L’Oréal, through the L’Oréal Paris Makeup Genius app, allows customers to try on different products to find the best fit. This makes the purchase process more interactive and brings a sense of excitement to the shopping experience.
Social media contests and campaigns
Creating social media contests can increase your visibility and boost customer engagement. To gamify your social media campaigns, ask customers to complete specific tasks on social media, rank them, and award your top performers with deals or gifts. For example, you could ask interested shoppers to create content about your makeup or skincare, post it on social media, and tag you. This way, you can assess who gets the highest engagement or creates the best content and reward them.
Take Benefits Cosmetics, for example. The beauty brand runs an annual contest (the Benefit Brow Search) where fans create content with its products and post it on social media for votes. In 2022, Benefit Cosmetics had nearly 3,000 social media entries competing for the grand prize of $50,000, highlighting the impact of social media contests.
Personalized gamification experiences
Want to make customers feel even more special? Create a more tailored experience. Personalization in gamification can encourage engagement and motivate customers to participate more in your challenges or experiences. You could create quizzes to better understand existing and potential customers and then provide product recommendations and challenges based on your findings.
Sephora excels at all things personalization. It provides quizzes to help customers find the best products for their needs and goes further to use the results for personalized experiences—the retailer’s messenger bot leverages customer data to send unique product recommendations and content.
Leverage Bitly’s tools to maximize your cosmetic retail gamification strategies
Gamification can be a game-changer in cosmetics retail, as it boosts engagement, brand loyalty, product awareness, and sales. Whether it’s loyalty programs or social media contests and challenges, there’s plenty of inspiration out there to help you use games to elevate your marketing campaigns and customer experiences. Adopt one that aligns with your business goals and resource capabilities.
With Bitly, you can maximize your cosmetic retail gamification strategies effectively and cost-efficiently. Leverage the platform’s URL shortener and QR Codes to create short links and QR Codes for easy access to your programs, challenges, contests, and so on. When you do, you’ll receive real-time data on their performance, helping you identify those that maximize your engagement.
Create a Bitly account today to gain access to tools and insights that can help optimize gamification strategies in cosmetics retail.
