What is the best way to learn? Many think through interactive activities and games. In fact, some of the most memorable lessons we learn are through games. Gamification is a way to apply gaming elements - fun and competition - to a non-gaming activity. You are basically telling your customers that your brand can be fun, different, and creative while retaining all of its qualitative characteristics. So we decided to use gamification method to change users’ behaviour and encourage them to try more tools and features within our software thus to increase users' retention. What we have seen was a huge success and great outcomes for both our users and our brand. After all, our Easter Egg Hunt game was among the nominees for the UK Social Media Communications Awards as the Best Use of Twitter and for the DADI Awards in “B2B sector website, app or campaign” category. To give you a basic idea of what we did, we will sketch out the game our team came up with. During the Easter season, we released a game, directly built into our interface - an Easter Egg Hunt. We challenged our users to find 15 Easter eggs, hidden anywhere within our platform. To collect the egg, a user had to set up a project, create a report, or basically perform any action that showed off the functionality of our diverse tools.

1. Gamification Case by
SEMrush:
an effective way to improve customers
retention

2. Anna Lebedeva
Head of Media at SEMrush
@digitalanya
a.lebedeva@semrush.com
2

3. ❖ Zero investment with incredible ROI
Why this campaign?
❖ Simple but viral idea
❖ Education + Traffic generation
3

4. 4

5. What was the business
case?

7. FROM SEO SUITE TO
ALL-IN-ONE
MARKETING TOOLKIT
7

8. Rapid development
● we doubled the number of tools within 2016
● 107 updates were released in 2017
● new features were added to existing tools weekly
● 3 new tools have been released each quarter
8

9. Sounds impressive but…
We faced marketing challenge
9

10. Users couldn’t follow the
fast development pace
1

11. “ Retention is the number one
strategy for profitability and
growth.
11

12. Retention is less expensive
than acquisition (5-25x)
❖ It decreases churn
1 % difference in churn - can have 12 % impact on company
valuations in 5 years
❖ Existing customers is where big speding happens
60-70% chance to sell to existing customers
5-20% chance to sell to new customers
12

13. When they’re just not
getting enough value
from it - they churn
13

14. “ An educated customer is a
capable customer. A capable
customer will churn less likely,
eventually staying longer with
you.
14

15. “ The time is the biggest obstacle.
The faster user learns how to use
your product to the full capacity,
the faster they can experience its
full value.
15

16. Customer education in SAAS
16
Customer
Success
Content
Marketing

17. Customer
success
17
USER
ONBOARDING
WITH TUTORIALS
emails
knowledge
base
live
support
one-one
demo

18. Content
marketing
18
social
blog
case
studies
white
papers
webinar

19. 19

20. Communications
channels are cluttered
2
❖ Especially on over saturated markets

21. YOU SHOULD FIND
CREATIVE WAYS TO
STAND OUT
21

22. Any
campaign
should be
22
Creative
Easy
Engaging

23. Gamification
was a perfect
solution
23
Creative
Easy
EngagingGAMES

24. Increase current users’ awareness about
various tools of SEMrush
The campaign
goals
24

25. Find the Easter
eggs &
discover new
SEMrush tools
25

26. 26

27. GAME TOUR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=93&v=q34hgfIk6
V8

28. 28
We encourage user to Tweet when
they found the egg

29. Massive tweeting by users
29

30. 9,300
participated in the campaign (in 2 weeks)
15,000
actions in SEMrush
30

31. 8,575,612
Impressions of tweets with #semrushegghunt
31
2,330,802
unique users who were shown at least one tweet with the
campaign hashtag

32. Campaign Virality
32
Worth
spreading
Provoke
the desire
to spread

33. 33
97%
actions came from existing users
16%
users had over 1000 followers

34. 34
Loads of clients reported discovering
new tools

35. +3 toolsthe players started using on monthly basis
35

36. What we learnt?
❖ Successful campaigns don’t mean complicated
campaigns
❖ Oftenly the best things are done inhouse
❖ Social media is where magic happens - connect
with your clients in the most informal way possible
36

37. 37
THINK CREATIVELY
BE ANALYTICAL
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

38. “ First you need to build an army of
loyal and passionate users. The
brand will come naturally.
38

39. 39
Good luck!
Any questions?
You can find me a.lebedeva@semrush.com