Gamification in Association Communities: What Works?

Events are prime opportunities to bring your association’s community together, engage them in activities, and help them build their networks. However, after your event wraps up, you might start to feel like your online community is a ghost town. 

While many of your members plan to come back for your next event, they could miss out on community benefits during the lulls in between. Fortunately, there is a way to keep members coming back and engaging with your community almost every day: gamification. 

Gamification is an engagement strategy that adds game-like elements to otherwise normal community interactions, giving members an additional reason to check in frequently. Take the Duolingo app, for example. Users complete online lessons every day, not just out of a desire to learn a new language, but also to earn points and keep up their streaks. This is the power of gamification! 

However, not every gamification strategy is equally effective. To help your association turn quiet forums into a lively online community, this guide will provide a deep dive into why gamification works, strategies your association can implement, and pitfalls to steer clear of. 

Why Gamification Works

Gamification doesn’t change your association’s content, but encourages your members to interact with it more often and more deeply. It instills a sense of intrinsic motivation by awarding points, badges, and other prizes that have no monetary value but feel rewarding and fun to earn. 

A few tactics that gamification features use to motivate action include:

• Fear of missing out: The fear of missing out (“FOMO”) is a common strategy for getting individuals to jump on opportunities, make purchases, or engage with ongoing conversations. For example, your event promotional emails likely evoke FOMO by showing photos of attendees participating in interesting demos or using language that emphasizes the event’s exclusivity. 
• Reputation: While it’s not possible to win or lose at being an association member, gamification tools can boost engagement by showing that some members of your community are more active than others. Tools like ranking systems, leaderboards, and badges let members show off to others just how much they’re participating in your community. 
• Sunk cost: You may have heard of the sunk-cost fallacy before, which is the notion that because you have invested a significant amount of time and effort into something, you should continue to pursue it. In this case, the concept of sunk cost can actually be positive: it’s the amount of time members have already spent connecting with others and engaging with content. Gamification tools can help members visualize what they’ve put into your association and encourage them to keep doing so. For example, your member engagement platform might record how many days in a row members log in, encouraging them to keep up their streak. 

If your association already has valuable, engaging content, you might feel that there’s no need for gamification. However, gamification doesn’t make content better or worse. Rather, it adds extra motivation that encourages members to start engaging or interacting with your community longer. 

For instance, many workout and productivity apps use gamification features to motivate users to perform tasks they know are good for them but have trouble completing. This same logic applies to your association’s offerings that members already pay for. In fact, many individuals who participate in gamified activities fully understand the psychological tricks at play and appreciate that they are encouraging them to do good, positive activities. 

Identifying Gamification Mechanics for Your Community

Not all mechanics work for every audience. Associations must choose tools that align with their specific member demographics, professional culture, and organizational goals. 

For example, OneCause’s guide to fundraising gamification suggests prioritizing gamification tools that have a social element for fundraisers. This approach not only encourages individual donors but also helps to promote the fundraiser to others, engaging donors and marketing the campaign at the same time. 

Consider the type of content your association offers, who your association’s community is, and how you want them to engage with your content. In contrast to the fundraising example, for instance, an association with many educational course offerings might employ gamification tools that instill individual motivation rather than public recognition. 

Survey your members to discover their interests and how they want to be appreciated. This should provide insight into what types of gamification features will most appeal to them. For example, if a majority of your members are interested in networking, you might lean heavily into social-oriented gamification tools, like public badges and leaderboards, which can spark conversation between members. 

Gamification Strategies for Associations

Once you’ve determined the general type of gamification that will work for your association, it’s time to explore specific features. Higher Logic’s member engagement strategy guide suggests a few specific gamification strategies for associations:

• Badges: Both virtual and physical badges can be used to incentivize participation in specific activities and events. For example, you might hand out event badges that feature a special code as part of a scavenger hunt or interactive activity. Or, in your online community, you might award users badge icons they can add to their profiles when they achieve various accomplishments, like completing a credential course. 
• Leaderboards: Encourage friendly competition and spark social interaction with live leaderboards. For a leaderboard or ranking system to be successful, choose something your members will care about doing well in. For example, leaderboards are particularly effective during fundraisers as they show off who in your community is particularly generous. 
• Goals and challenges: Motivate supporters to complete specific behaviors by issuing them as challenges. You might encourage members to jumpstart their networking journey by challenging them to form one new connection within your membership database every day. 
• Progress bars: Visual representations can help members understand how close they are to completing abstract goals. For instance, as a member works through a course, you might display a progress bar underneath each lesson so they can better envision how much progress they’ve made. 
• Point systems: Placing a specific point value on everyday interactions can boost interest in them. To encourage community participation, you might create a point system based on discussion activity in your forums. Every comment would be worth one point, with the potential to earn more points based on other members’ responses. 

When rolling out a new gamification strategy, keep a close eye on member engagement metrics and feedback. Ideally, gamification should be a motivator, and you should see a direct impact on how your community interacts with your content. 

Common Gamification Pitfalls

Not every gamification strategy will find success in every community, so plan to experiment with a variety of engagement tactics and avoid common challenges. 

In particular, when planning how you’ll gamify your association’s community, be on the lookout for these pitfalls:

• “Spammy” messages: Remember, the spotlight should always be on your association’s content. Your gamification features should always promote that content rather than drawing excessive attention to themselves through pop-ups, frequent reminders, or annoying messages that users need to click through to access the real value of your community. 
• Low-value content: Your members won’t engage with content solely to earn an intangible reward. Rather, the intangible rewards motivate them to seek out and engage with the content they already know is valuable. 
• Easy shortcuts: If members see a loophole in your gamified content, there’s a chance that at least some of them will take it, which can have a negative impact on the members who are engaging with your content authentically. For example, if you award points for commenting on your community forums, some might spam short, irrelevant messages that don’t contribute to conversations but do help them rack up points. 

Additionally, ensure that your gamification tools are always up to date. Explore new software platforms and trends in gamification to find features that might appeal to your audience. You might have a few select, long-term members pilot a new system before rolling it out to your entire association community to ensure it will have the intended impact on your audience. 

94% of association members already know their association’s online community offers a lot of value. The key is to make sure they’re regularly logging in to experience that value. Gamification is a tool that helps them bridge the gap between knowing your content is valuable and finding the time and motivation to take advantage of it. 

Start improving your members’ participation in your community by implementing a gamified system that really helps your valuable content shine, whether it’s progress bars that encourage members to earn credentials or leaderboards that get them interested in their fellow members. 

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