Virtual Event Gamification Strategies to Boost Engagement

Event organizers often struggle to engage their audiences. This challenge is perhaps even more difficult in virtual settings, where distractions are plentiful and traditional methods of engagement fall short.

Good news: Event gamification — or incorporating game-like elements such as points, leaderboards, and rewards into events — can be a compelling solution to this challenge. 

By gamifying virtual events, you can tap into fundamental human motivators like competition, achievement, and social interaction to increase engagement and make your event more memorable. The simple act of adding activities like quizzes, scavenger hunts, and interactive challenges into your event can transform passive attendees into active participants, creating a sense of excitement and community — and setting the foundation for a successful event.

If you’re interested in increasing engagement at your next virtual event, gamification may be just what the doctor ordered. In this guide, we explore the benefits of gamification for virtual events along with gamification ideas you can use to keep your audience engaged before, during, and after the occasion. 

Why Gamify Your Virtual Event?

If you’re looking to achieve better event outcomes, virtual event gamification can help you get there. Here are some of the key reasons event teams are bringing gamification to their virtual events: 

• Increased attendee engagement. By transforming passive participation into active involvement, gamification makes events more dynamic and more enjoyable. Interactive elements like quizzes and challenges keep attendees attentive and interested throughout the event and beyond.

• Enhanced networking opportunities. Gamified activities encourage attendees to interact and collaborate with each other, increasing the chances they form meaningful connections. Leaderboards and team-based challenges create a sense of community and friendly competition, the ideal ingredients for networking.

• Improved retention of information. By making your event more engaging and interactive, gamification helps reinforce key messages and content. Since participants are more likely to remember information presented in a fun and memorable way, they’re more likely to retain the knowledge they pick up by attending your event — leaving a lasting impression.

• Enriched data collection and insights. Gamification provides valuable data on attendee behaviors, preferences, and participation through tracking points, achievements, and interactions. This data can be analyzed to gain insights into attendee engagement that can be used to improve future events.

• Boosted event satisfaction and feedback scores. A gamified event creates a more enjoyable and memorable experience for attendees, leading to higher satisfaction levels. Positive experiences result in better feedback scores, helping you build a strong reputation for future events.

Now that you have a better idea of some of the key reasons why more and more teams are gamifying their events, let’s take a look at what you can do, specifically, to gamify your next virtual event.

How to Gamify Your Virtual Event

Ready to gamify your next virtual event? Here’s how to get started.

Choose the right software

First things first: Ensure your event management software includes built-in gamification features to maximize engagement and interactivity. Elements like points, leaderboards, and challenges can enhance the attendee experience, promote active participation, and provide valuable insights — ultimately contributing to a more dynamic and successful event. 

Set clear objectives

Getting the most out of virtual event gamification starts with setting clear objectives. Kick things off by defining specific goals of what you hope to accomplish — like increasing attendee engagement, encouraging networking, or enhancing learning. 

Once you’ve defined your goals, make sure your gamification activities align with those objectives to ensure consistency and effectiveness. Also, be sure to cater to different attendee types. By offering verified gamified opportunities designed for both introverts and extroverts, you can ensure everyone is included and feels welcomed at your event.

Create a reward system

To motivate and engage attendees, create a reward system for your gamified virtual event. By designing meaningful prizes — like gift cards, exclusive content, donations to charitable organizations, or discounts on future events — you can ensure rewards align with attendee interests and event goals, thereby maximizing participation.

For example, you can offer the top 10 participants free entry to the next virtual event. You can also donate something like $500 to the charity of choice for the top three finishers. Not only do such incentives drive engagement, but they also create a memorable and rewarding experience for attendees.

Before the Event: Gamification Ideas for Virtual Events

By implementing gamified elements before your event, you can begin to build excitement and engage attendees before the big day arrives. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some ideas you can use to generate buzz ahead of your virtual event.

Virtual teaser campaigns

Kick things off by launching pre-event challenges on social media to build excitement — like asking your audience to solve riddles or puzzles. For example, you might encourage attendees to solve a riddle and post their answer on social media with your event’s hashtag along with #EventTeaser for a chance to win early access to your keynote session or other exclusive perks.

Registration incentives

While you’re at it, offer points or rewards to folks who register for your event ahead of time. You might give people who register early 100 points to kickstart their event journey and give them a little bit of a lead before your event arrives. This incentive boosts early participation and gets attendees excited about engaging with your event from the get-go.

Gamified event agenda

Including a gamified event agenda can significantly enhance attendee engagement. For example, you can incorporate live polling and quizzes during sessions to make them interactive and increase engagement. By giving attendees points for every correct answer they submit during the live poll, you can boost participation.

Additionally, you can implement breakout room challenges, organizing small group activities or competitions in breakout rooms. Attendees can work together as teams to solve challenges, earning points for participation.

Altogether, these interactive elements keep participants actively involved with your event, fostering collaboration while adding a fun, competitive edge.

During the Event: Gamification Ideas for Virtual Events

The big day has finally arrived — hooray! Now, it’s time to take your gamification efforts to the next level. Here’s how:

Networking games

Since event attendees are keen on networking with other folks, be sure to offer virtual networking games that meet expectations and increase engagement. Here are some ideas to get you thinking in the right direction:

• Virtual networking bingo. Provide digital bingo cards with networking prompts, like “Connect with someone for a different industry” or “Find a first-time attendee.” When folks complete their bingo cards, they win a prize.
  
• Speed networking with gamification. Plan timed networking sessions where attendees earn points for each new connection made, adding a gamified element to the mix to encourage participation. By awarding points for each connection during a speed networking session, you can promote networking while encouraging engagement — a win-win.

Leaderboards and real-time updates

Motivate attendees by displaying real-time leaderboards, using visual and audio notifications to announce top scorers and reward progress. Throughout the event, you can encourage folks to check the leaderboard to see where they stand and remind them that they can reach the top by participating in more activities.

Interactive exhibitor booths

You can further drive engagement at your next virtual event by offering interactive exhibitor booths:

• Virtual scavenger hunts. Encourage attendees to visit all exhibitor booths to collect codes and complete a virtual scavenger hunt, earning a special reward afterward.

• Product demo challenges. You can also incentivize participation with product demo challenges where attendees earn points by attending demos and completing related quizzes.

Not only does this interactive approach drive booth traffic for sponsors, it also encourages deeper engagement and interaction between attendees and exhibitors. 

Social media integration

Since your attendees are already hanging out on social media, use the medium to further enhance virtual event engagement:

• Hashtag challenges. Encourage attendees to share their experiences about your event with a specific hashtag (e.g., #EventName2024). Award participants points for each post they make, extending your event’s reach and impact.

• Photo and video contests. Increase engagement even more by asking attendees to share event-related photos and videos online for a chance to win prizes, like exclusive swag or discounts to future events. This strategy not only increases visibility, it also encourages active participation and community-building across social platforms during and after the event.

After the Event: Gamification Ideas for Virtual Events

Speaking about post-event: Just because your event is over doesn’t mean the party has to stop. Use the following elements to extend the shelf life of your event and build a 365-day event community:

Feedback and surveys

After the event, gamify the feedback process by offering points for completing surveys. For example, tell folks that if they complete your survey, they can earn points toward a grand prize drawing. This can help incentivize participation and ensure your team collects the valuable insights they need to continuously improve your event strategy.

Follow-up challenges

Keep the engagement alive post-event by offering follow-up challenges, like a post-event quiz. By encouraging folks to participate in post-event quizzes to stay engaged with the event community and earn additional rewards, you can extend attendee interaction beyond the event, captivating your audience and building more connections within your community.

Gamify Your Next Virtual Event with Bizzabo!

As an end-to-end event management platform, Bizzabo offers a number of gamification options for virtual events delivered through our partnerships with Captello and Incentli. If you’re looking for the easiest way to incorporate gamification into your next virtual event, Bizzabo can help.

Captello gamification details

Captello is a gamification and lead capture partner that integrates with the Bizzabo platform. By incorporating Captello’s solutions into your event strategy, you can elevate the attendee experience at both in-person and virtual events by embedding games into your event website, agenda, and virtual venue experience.

Captello offers a variety of games you can add to your virtual events, including casino-style card games, virtual air hockey, treasure hunts, and trivia. You can assign different point values for playing any of these games and display progress on a leaderboard that can aggregate points for a number of activities, including Captello games and Bizzabo activities like session attendance. 

Event teams also have the option of attaching questions to a lead capture form in each gamified component, helping collect more data on attendees while helping sponsors generate more leads.

Incentli gamification details

The Bizzabo-Incentli integration enables attendees to engage and gain points for raffles or purchases by registering for events, referring friends, attending sessions, networking, engaging with exhibitors, and more. Incentli’s technology is embedded directly inside The Venue, making it a true game-changer for virtual events and webinars.

Gamify your next virtual event!

Virtual event gamification is an easy way to increase engagement across digital experiences. By incorporating gamified elements into your next virtual event and measuring their impact, you can figure out what’s working and what isn’t and continue experimenting with new strategies until you figure out what resonates with your audience on the deepest level.

Whenever you incorporate new elements into your event strategy, you may encounter speed bumps along the way. By partnering with an experienced events leader like Bizzabo, you can ensure a seamless transition to gamification and deliver exceptional event experiences.

To learn more about how you can gamify your next virtual event and achieve better outcomes, check out our on-demand webinar: Level up: Unlocking the power of gamification to boost event ROI.