Let’s have a little bit of an imagine spot here. You are a business and you have a product that you want to sell to the masses. How would you get your product into their hands?
There’s a standard answer—marketing, advertising, basically getting the word out.
How else would you get the general public to try your product? If you said discounts, you’re probably not alone.
There are deals platform for almost everything under the sun, from food to travel to even electronics. It can’t be denied that we Malaysians love a good bargain.
However, the team at CheQQme consider using discounts to sell products as “lazy man marketing” and they’re not afraid to say it.
“We’re not focusing on the discount way,” said Wei Chee, the founder. “At the end of the day, if you keep slashing prices, no one benefits. Users will never be satisfied with whatever prices, and retailers lose out too.”
Instead, CheQQme believes in adding value to the products or services to draw users in. It’s not that they discount discounts (geddit?), but they definitely don’t think it should be the main focus.
“There’s a reason why merchants don’t particularly like deals platforms. Often, it eats into their revenue and they might even end up making a loss. User conversion and repeat customers are also low, because the users end up being loyal to the deals, not the brand.”
And that’s why the CheQQme team has decided to take a bit of a different approach with their mobile marketing platform.
Bringing The Online To Real Life
CheQQme is a marketing channel that transforms online engagements into human traffic for brick-and-mortar businesses. They’ve observed that retailers often spend huge amounts on digital marketing but are still unable to convert online traffic to offline sales.
This is the gap that CheQQme intends to bridge by directing online traffic to the merchants’ physical stores.
How they do it is multi-pronged, but it boils down to their gamification concept on top of a loyalty based system.
Gamification is the process of using game-like elements into business and marketing strategies. According to Gamification by Design co-author Gabe Zichermann, “gamification is 75 percent psychology and 25 percent technology”.
One of the simplest forms of gamification is getting a stamp every time you buy a cup of coffee. You’d then get a free drink after collecting ten stamps upon every visit. It’s like completing a level and getting a reward.
On online platforms, it could be the use of gaming elements like leaderboards, progress bars, and loyalty points. These tricks tap into our natural instincts such as competition, exploration and curiosity.
The CheQQme team has a vision of their platform bringing surprises on a daily basis to users, making it fun.
With the CheQQme app, users can redeem physical rewards after earning a certain amount of ‘Crowns’ (which is CheQQme’s currency) through different types of campaigns like stamp cards, completion of surveys and mini-games. Crowns can be exchanged for coupons, action cameras and even gadgets.
This way, the app is able to amplify the merchants’ brand by helping the customers get to know the brand a bit better, instead of just relying purely on discounts to draw customers in. There’s also a higher chance of repeat visits, which allows the brand more chances to engage with and convert the customer to a loyal fan.
An example of a campaign run on CheQQme would be for users to spot Arem, their digital mascot, as he hides in various places within the timeline in app. Users obtain a bonus of 4k Crowns upon reaching the first milestone of 10k Crowns to motivate users to push forward.
As Arem can only be caught once a day, CheQQme is aiming to add on more ways to gain more Crowns like:
- Engaging in third party campaigns (available from time to time)
- Referring a friend
- Completing your profile
- Occasional quests that will be rolled out from time to time
Once users reach the minimum of 50k Crowns, they are able to redeem things like:
To keep users continuously engaged, CheQQme also has a Treasure Trove, where users may enter to win random gifts on a daily basis.
Because Crown-collecting takes time, we wondered how would CheQQme ensure that the value of the reward meets the time and effort spent in the quest. For example, RM1 off a fast food menu wouldn’t really be worth even a few hours of effort spent on the app.
Wei Chee explained that the game mechanics’ framework ensures that a user’s reward path matches the time and effort spent. After all, it is in their best interests to keep the users engaged and returning to the app.
CheQQme monetises on the premium features that their merchants use, as well as on the results when users bring themselves to the merchant’s premises.
For example, should a merchant use CheQQme’s stamp card campaign feature, they would be charged for using CheQQme’s services, not the revenue gained by the merchant.
Besides that, CheQQme also offers post-marketing data for analysis. Because of the nature of the app, merchants are immediately able to see exactly who saw their campaign on the app and then made the decision to head to the offline store for purchase. They can also tell which campaigns are more effective and know exactly what sort of customers found their marketing appealing.
The Future Comes Calling
Excited to deliver levels of immersive experiences for CheQQme’s customers, Wei Chee emphasised on plans to expand on the digital front.
Hoping to be a part of the wave combining digital commerce and retail businesses, CheQQme may be considering a few types of technology to enhance their services. They are, but not limited to, in-app gameplay, holography, virtual reality, and immersive audio.
The concept of gamification isn’t new, and there’re more market players taking advantage of it.
So CheQQme’s move to create a multi-dimensional gamification experience is proof that they want to stay ahead of the game.
You can find CheQQme on the Apple App store or the Google Play store.
Feature Image Credit: CheQQme
