The ecommerce industry can learn a lot from gaming

Chart of the Day: Exclusives, rewards and a sense of achievement drive people to purchase

Visit any ecommerce company website and you'll likely find you can sign up for a free account or a free trial of the product/tool/service, with which the company hopes to entice you enough to become a regular customer. For example, the office favourite Graze will send you your first box of goodies free, Amazon Prime offers your first 30 days free even here at Smart Insights your can sign up for a free account and access over 20 of our resources.

This freemium model has become the defacto model for most brands online. The issue? You have to try and convince your audience who use your free service how do you convert them into paying customers. This is where new research on the mobile gaming industry from Facebook could help.

The most important benefits for high-value payers in developed countries

In this research, Facebook found out what mobile gamers were willing to open their wallets for:

1. New missions and levels
2. Sense of achievement
3. Daily rewards

Now if we translate this in terms of ecommerce:

1. Offer new and exclusive products and content that is not available for free accounts or during free trials
2. Offer some sort of achievement from gamification techniques e.g. badges or email congratulations to physical rewards e.g. 5th order free
3. Daily rewards - Reward regular customers with a reward/offer each time they return to encourage loyalty.

Most important benefits for high-value payers in developing countries

The report also shows that gamers in the, what they term, 'developing countries' (BR, TR, ID, IN & TH) value Social Connections with many games having their own communities to become part of. Brands that can develop either own communities of uber-fans and advocates acheive sales success with the right management and upsell activities.

So, all in all, the freemium model in Gaming is very similar to ecommerce - Reach your audience with a free or low-cost offering and upsell, becoming a paid member through exclusives and a sense of belonging.

• Source: Better together: How high-value gamers find a community on Facebook
• Sample size: 23,927 gamers across all devices within the online population of BR, DE, ES, FR, ID, IN, KR, RU, TH, TR, UK and US
• Recommended Resource: Business marketing plan guide