Comprehensive List of 90+ Gamification Examples & Cases with ROI Stats (2024)

It’s all about the Gamification Examples & Case Studies

Below is a list of gamification examples and cases with ROI (Return On Investment) stats and figures, with many links to the case studies, so you can see for yourself the tremendous impact it is having on businesses.

I want this list to focus on cases that can confidently be measured as ROI.

The current gamification market size is estimated between $3 billion and $12 billion, depending on sources.

The Octalysis Group: Yu-kai Chou’s Case Studies

• A 712% uplift in sales for a well-known hotel chain, through our human-focused designs that boost product attractiveness and market performance.
• A loyalty program for a Major Airline with a 175% performance enhancement through a well-crafted reward system.
• An employee engagement platform for sales staff led to 28.5% more revenue and 59% higher KPIs.

Read the case studies done by the Octalysis Group of our clients.

The Octalysis Group has a decade-long track record of success working with clients across industry and service verticals. We specialize in creating engagement in areas where this is difficult to achieve.

Enterprise Gamification Case Stats and Figures

1) Caixa Bank (Brazil)Their initial goal of a 5% increase in annual sales (R$ 8.6 billion to R$ 9 billion) was surpassed, achieving a remarkable 49% increase in just six months. This resulted in an additional USD 1 billion in revenue for the bank.

2) SAP: The SAP Community Network gamified its already-mature reputation system, increasing usage by 400% and community feedback by 96%

3) Onmicare: introduces gamification to its IT service desk, getting a 100% participation rate from team members

4) Astra Zeneca: gamified medicine training gets 97% of their large network of agents to participate, with a 99% Completion Rate

5) CaLLogix: reduces attrition by 50% and absenteeism by 80%. The company saves $380,000 per year

6) SAP Streamwork: added gamification in brainstorming groups and grew generated ideas by 58%

7) Galderma: a pharmaceutical company, uses gamification to train their sales division regarding new products. Despite the voluntary participation, nearly 92% of targeted employees ended up playing

8) Spotify and Living Social: replaced annual reviews with a mobile, gamified solution with over 90% of employees participating voluntarily

9) Objective Logistics: the company motivates the employees through behavioral rewards and increases their profit margin by 40%

10) Inside View: gamifies their employee social media usage and increased Twitter updates by 312%

11) Keas: employment wellness program that increased employee engagement with healthy activities by 10,000% (100x)

12) Danske Statsbaner: through their “Engaged” platform, employees share their actions that support the value and strategy of the company, resulting in 92% positive ratings in content

13) Google: designed a Travel Expense System resulting in close to 100% employee compliance for travel expenses

14) Deloitte: training programs that are gamified took 50% less time to complete and massively improved long-term engagement

15) Engine Yard: increased the response rate for its customer service representatives by 40% after posting response-time leaders to all employees

16) Nextjump: uses gamification to get 67% of their employees to go to the gym

17) Bluewolf: gamified online conversations and posting increased employee community activity by 57%

18) Ford Canada: gamified its learning portal for employees and increased actions per user by 100% within 5 weeks

19) Blue Shield’s Wellivolution: Team gamified system resulted in 80% of employees participating in at least one wellness program, and 50% of employees dropped smoking behavioral

20) Idea Street: the Department of Work in the UK used game mechanics to get 120,000 people to contribute 4,000 ideas, with 63 of them implemented in the marketing department

21) EMC RAMP: with their gamification platform, the company rewarded positive behavior from employees, partners, and customers which led to a 10% increase in documentation, 40% more videos watched, and 15% more discussions

22) DirecTV: uses gamification to overcome the fear of failure

23) HCL: decrease new hire “Pre Join” dropout rate by 90%

24) T-Mobile: dials up employee engagement by 1,000 percent

25) Royal Caribbean Cruises: All-time high customer satisfaction with facial recognition.

26) Slalom Consulting: participation in the employee name recognition program increased from 5% to 90%, and recognition scores improved from 45% to 89%

 Sales Gamification Case Stats and Figures

1) Autodesk: gamified the free trial, incentivizing users to learn how to use the program and offering both in-game and real word prizes, increasing trial usage by 54%, buy clicks by 15%, and channel revenue by 29%

2) ePrize: increased the participation in their sales event by 10% by creating a participation-based point economy 

3) LiveOps: call center reduces call time by 15% and increases sales by over 8%

4) Step2: children’s retailers used PowerReviews’s social loyalty scheme to boost sales with a 300% increase in revenue from Facebook and 600% in content uploaded

5) Domino’s Pizza: created the gaming app Pizza Hero and increased sales revenue by 30% by letting customers create their pizza with an app

6) Moosejaw, a clothing company, used an innovative gamified system that saw 76% of sales revenue come from gamified activities, including 240k social media impressions, resulting in a 560% ROI from initial marketing expenditures

7) Silver Grill Cafe: received a 66% Return on Investment for having its waiters/waitresses play a cross-selling game)

8) Cisco: used gaming strategies to enhance its virtual global sales meeting and call centers to reduce call time by 15% and improve sales by around 10%

9) Popchips: uses games to personalize mobile advertising and has seen its sales rise 40% leading to $100 million in sales.

10) Teleflora gamified its store with a social engagement scheme offering points for actions, increasing traffic from Facebook by 105% and conversion rates by 92%

11) America’s Army: 30% of Americans aged 16 to 24 had a more positive impression towards and recruited more people than all the other methods combined while costing a fraction of the marketing cost

12) Extraco Bank: raised customer acquisition by 700% through a gamified system

13) Lawley Insurance: with a 2-week contest, the company closed more sales than the previous 7 months combined

14) Playboy: in its Miss Social game, 85% of its users play more than once, with 50% returning a month later, resulting in a 60% increase in monthly revenue

15) Kill The Paper Invoice: increased website visits by 108.5%, and a conversion rate of 9.38% through a gamified system

16) Sneakpeeq.com: increased their conversion rate by 18% with a 3000% lift in the total number of click-per-buy

17) Ford Escape Route: with this game, Ford’s customers bought over $8 million in vehicles, with 600% increased likes on the FB page and over 100 million impressions on Twitter

18) Investorville: with a property-investing game, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank created 600 new loans

19) Hewlett Packard: launched Project Everest to give rewards like holidays and other goods to the best reseller teams and saw 56.4%.

20) Grouper.MK: A 600% increase in monthly signups.

Product Gamification Case Stats and Figures

1) Microsoft: improved its translations for Windows OS through the Language Quality game with over 900 employees completing 26,000 tasks with 170 additional errors reported

2) Leadership Academy: within three months, daily visitors increased by 46.6% with one user earning the Leadership Academy Graduate Badge, which was expected to take 12 months

3) Microsoft: obtained 16x more feedback from people through its Communicate Hope gamified system

4) EMC2: increased the amount of feedback it received by 41%

5) Dosomething.org:  got a 26% response rate from the teen audience to a scavenger hunt game

6) OpenText: implementation of a leaderboard contributed to a 250% increase in business usage and adoption

7) Volkswagen: got 33 million webpage hits and 119,000 ideas through its People’s Car Project which lets people design their “perfect car”

8) Samsung Nation: 500% increase in customer product reviews, and a 66% increase in site visits when using a gamified system

9) Beta One: Microsoft’s Testing Division got a 400% increase in participation for the pre-release testing

10) Uber: The rideshare app gets more drivers on the road using gamification.

11) Arcade City: Challenger to Uber and Lyft getting its start in Austin, TX, with smart contracts (Ethereum) and guilds to protect drivers: “Think Habitica meets Uber,” says its CEO. 

12) Audible: Audible uses badges to keep readers reading, even though they already have a strong product.

Lifestyle Gamification Case Stats and Figures

1) OPower: reduced measurable energy consumption by over $100M

2) Aetna: increased daily healthy activities by 50% with an average engagement of 14 minutes on the site

3) ClinicalAdvisor.com: embedded a social platform that improved user submission by 300%, comments by 400%, and Slideshow Visualizations by 53%

4) Bottle Bank Arcade: gamified bottle bank was used 50 times more than conventional bottle bank.

5) The World’s Deepest Bin: 132% more trash collected compared to conventional bin

6) Piano Stairs: 66% more people use the stairs if they can produce music with it

7) Speed Camera Lottery: a lottery system that causes a 22% reduction in driving speed

8) Toilette Seat: 44% increase in lifting the toilet seat when urinating

9) Nike: used gamified feedback to drive over 5,000,000 users to beat their personal fitness goals every day of the year

10) Recycle Bank grew a community of 4 million members by providing a gamified recycling platform.

11) Chevrolet Volt: uses a green/amber indicator to give drivers visual feedback of their driving style and reduces the number of people exceeding the speed limit by 53%

12) Diet DASH at Drexel University shown to reduce sugar intake, and over half the players lost 3% body weight over 2 months

Consumer Behavior Gamification Case Stats and Figures

1) MTV My Chart: lets users create their video chart based on various game dynamics, and obtained 500,000 votes and 150,000 videos viewed within 3 months

2) Joiz: a Swiss television network increased sharing by 100% and social referral traffic by 54% with social infrastructure and gamification technologies

3) Muchmusic.com: increased their music userbase by 59%

4) Marketo: layered a game platform on their community and saw a 71% lift in daily activities, a 36% increase in ideas submitted, and a 48% increase in question replies.

5) Interscope Records: the company obtained a 650% increase in engagement and interaction with the website

6) Verizon: users spend over 30% more time on-site with social login games versus a regular site login

7) Allkpop: during the week-long promotion of game mechanics, the online news site experienced a 104% increase in shares, 36% in comments, and 24% in pageviews

8) SessionM: offers mobile publishers a platform for adding game mechanics into apps, increasing 35% retention and reducing bounce rate by 25%, all while seeing a 40x increase in engagement rate in social activities

9) Buffalo Wild Wings: the campaign generated more than 100 million social impressions on SN, as well as a 500% increase in participation rate

10) Green Giant: generated 420,000 likes on Facebook through their gamified system

11) NickTV: introduces a game-based role-playing platform as heroes and within 2 months obtained 750,000 page views (200% the amount of the usual traffic for the entire nickel. it website), over 50,000 users, and over 4,000,000 sessions on the website, with an increase in time spent on site by 25%

12) More than a Game: The interviewer changed the formulation of surveys, obtaining a 98% response rate and an 87.5% in descriptive words within answers

13) BlurbIQ: introduced Interactive Video Interruptions and within two weeks obtained 915% more interaction, 1400% increase in click-through rate, and 95% increase in recollection

14) Bell Media: increased customer retention by 33% by incorporating “social loyalty” rewards on its website

15) Club Psych USA: saw a 130% jump in page views and a 40% increase in return visits to the game 

16) American Express: the company has gotten over 2 million likes on Facebook through their Nextpedition gamified system

17) Boyd Game: the casino gets over 700,000 visits each month by introducing gamification on its website

18) Verizon Wireless: more than 50% of the site’s users participate in this gamified environment and spend 30% more time on the site

19) Topliners: introducing gamification in the community lifted active users by 55%

20) SAP ERP: introducing game mechanics improved user participation with telepresence increasing by 29.75%

21) GetGlue: Has built a community of 2 million users around a gamified TV. feedback platform, 20% of all social media posts to dedicated TV. show pages during primetime come through GetGlue. (Link in Italian)

22) Ask.com uses game mechanics to increase user engagement through real-time notifications and activity streams, increasing answered questions by 23% and votes by 58%

23) MuchMusic.com implemented a social loyalty program, rewarding users with tangible gifts such as concert tickets which led to a weekly activity increase of 59%

24) Badgeville & Kendall-Jackson: increase customer engagement by 65%

25) Patient Partner: uses gamification to improve medication adherence

Education Gamification Case Stats and Figures

1) Beat the GMAT: students increase their time spent on site by 370% through a gamified system

2) OTT, an e-learning provider, increased by 65% user engagement, with some users peaking at over 300%, by adding a reward system

3) Deloitte Leadership Academy, an executive training program, increased by 46.6% the number of users that returned daily to their platform by embedding gamification mechanics into it

4) Stray Boots & A.L.Penenberg: the professor taught journalism through gamification and saw student grades increase by more than a letter grade

5) Devhub: a place for Web developers, added gaming feedback and watched in awe as the percentage of users who finished their sites shot up from 10% to 80%

6) Foldit: gamers have solved a 15-year AIDS Virus Protein problem within 10 days

7) Duoling: Grew to 300 million users and 10 minutes per day per user.

Scientific research related to the effect of Gamification

1) Research findings support the impact of levels, badges, and a (dummy) feedback system connected to a study course, results were significant, with 18.5% higher average grades for students enrolled in the gamified course

2) Research findings support the impact of levels, points, leaderboards, streaking, and visual storytelling to improve participation in crowdsourced assessments. Results were significant with an increase of 347% of participants returning for recurrent participation. (compared to the control group)

3) Research findings support the impact of point-based levels (Status titles) and leaderboards on IBM’s internal social network service. Short-term impact showed a 92% increase in comments posted, within this research long-term engagement was also measured and a rise of 299% more comments posted was found compared to the control group

4) Subsequent research in the same social network service above showed the effects of removing the point-based levels, status titles, and leaderboards. The removal of the game mechanics showed a significant result as across-the-board activities on the social network service dropped by 52%. 

5) Research findings support the impact of narratives, leaderboards, and countdown timers on online training. Results were significant with a 61% increase in participation in online training.

6) Research findings support the impact of narrative, levels, quests, countdown timers, immediate feedback, guidance systems, visual storytelling, surprise events, and flow (matching ability and difficulty) to an online tutorial. Results were significant with users learning via the gamified tutorial showing increased ability by finishing tasks 135% faster than the control group. Additionally, the users expressed much higher satisfaction in regards to using the system.

The Octalysis Group: Case Study Collection

• A 712% uplift in sales for a well-known hotel chain, through our human-focused designs that boost product attractiveness and market performance.
• A loyalty program for a Major Airline with a 175% performance enhancement through a well-crafted reward system.
• An employee engagement platform for sales staff led to 28.5% more revenue and 59% higher KPIs.

Read the case studies done by the Octalysis Group of our clients.

The Octalysis Group has a decade-long track record of success working with clients across industry and service verticals. We specialize in creating engagement in areas where this is difficult to achieve.

Updated by Howie Ju: Oct. 10, 2023