Gamification 201: Winning with Gamification, a Guide to Success The top companies in the world understand the potential of game mechanics to drive measurable business value and user behavior, but are still learning how to properly implement them. - Why are so many companies looking to gamification and digital motivation systems? - Please join a panel discussion featuring SolarWinds and - - Hitachi Data Systems to gain valuable insight into their successful implementation of gamification within their online communities. The panel will be hosted by 7Summits, Bunchball, and Jive Software. In this presentation you will learn: - Core elements needed to achieve the desired business and program objectives - How to plan missions, rewards and recognition to guide user behavior - Design principles to consider during implementation Real world examples and results from Solar Winds and Hitachi Data System - How to factor gamification into your activation and adoption plans

1. Gamification 201:
Winning with
Gamification, a Guide to
Success
Hosted by: 7Summits, Bunchball & Jive Software
Panelists: Hitachi Data Systems, SolarWinds

2. Gamification 201: Agenda
• Introductions
• Gamification Best Practices within Jive
• Hitachi Overview
• SolarWinds Overview
• Panelist Question/Answer Session

3. Introductions

4. Speakers
James Davidson,
Partner & Vice President of Digital Strategy
7Summits
@jdavidson
Michael Torok,
Director of Community,
SolarWinds
@micktorok
Donna Garber,
External Community Manager,
Hitachi Data Systems
@dgarberhds
Nick Gable,
Community Manager
Hitachi Data Systems

5. Gamification Best Practices – 7Summits

6. Confidential & Proprietary
2009 70+
FOUNDED TEAM OUR MISSION CLIENTS SERVED
90+
Creating online communities
that transform business and
enhance people’s lives
Strategy
Experience
Technology
+
+
+
PARTNERED WITH SOCIAL
INDUSTRY LEADERS
COMPREHENSIVE CAPABILITIES
Milwaukee, WI
Schaumburg, IL
National Client
Reach
OFFICE LOCATIONSFOCUS ON SOCIAL BUSINESS
AWARDS / RECOGNITIONS
Jive
2012
MVP
7Summits Introduction
6

7. Source: Gartner
Consider this…
“More than 70% of the world’s largest 2,000 companies
are expected to have deployed at least one gamified
application by year-end 2014”
Yet…
“Gartner predicts that by 2014, 80% of current
gamified applications will fail to meet business
objectives”
Gartner

8. Confidential & Proprietary
Commons Criticisms of Gamification
■ It creates an artificial sense of achievement
– Meaningless badges - “Who cares if I am the emperor?”
■ It’s not fun or engaging
– “This is too hard” or “I am bored.”
■ Encourages unintended, and unwanted behaviors
– “I know how to game this.”
■ Just a simple reward system that lacks impact (and value)
for my business
– “Will this badge REALLY get me to eat better?
1
2
3
4
A lack of alignment between your community strategy and
gamification are often to blame for poor engagement or results

9. Confidential & Proprietary
When do I plan for gamification?
TWO TYPES OF COMMUNITY BUILDING
2. POST-LAUNCH1. PRE-LAUNCH
Common Focus and Questions :
• How do we align with business
processes
• Which Jive features should be enabled
• How do we simplify the user experience
• Which community metrics are
important?
• How do I drive adoption at launch?
Common Questions:
• How do I get user to engage within the
community?
• Is there an easy was to identify and
incent my community advocates?
• How do I keep user coming back?
• How do I measure community vitality?

10. Gamification should be a key part of your
community strategy and implementation.
It should NOT be an after thought and
needs to be planned, managed, measured
and adjusted as your community matures.

11. Confidential & Proprietary
Aligning gamification with your strategy
WHY: Review Business Objectives and Goals
WHO: Identify Participants & Value Statements
HOW: Plan for your Bunchball implementation
and measurement pre and post launch
WHAT: Define & Prioritize Gamification Uses

12. Confidential & Proprietary
Purpose Communications User Experience Motivators
MembershipOperations
NEEDS & EXPECTATIONS
VALUE DRIVERS
LAUNCH / WELCOME
USER-GENERATED
TRIGGERED
CAMPAIGN-BASED
CONTENT (BRAND- AND USER-
GENERATED)
“WEB 2.0” EFFECTS
CONNECTIONS
RELEVANCY
UTILITY & EFFICIENCY
RECOGNITION & REWARDS
ROLE OF COMMUNITY
GOVERNANCE
INTEGRATION
KPIs & MEASUREMENT
RECRUITMENT
NURTURING
MODERATION & SUPPORT
REACTIVATION
FEATURES & FUNCTIONALITY
CONTENT PRODUCTION &
CURATION
RESPONSIVENESS
HELP & SUPPORT
MOVING FROM “VISITOR” TO
“MEMBER” TO “ENGAGED”
IDENTIFYING & ENLISTING
INFLUENCERS
REWARDS AND RECOGNITION
REASON(S) FOR
ENGAGING
MESSAGE
CONSUMPTION
SATISFACTION
DRIVERS
ENGAGEMENT
DRIVERS
ROLE OF THE
COMMUNITY &
INTEGRATION
MESSAGING
STRATEGY
DESIGN, CONTENT,
& UTILITY
ADVOCACY &
LOYALTY
Gamification Considerations

13. Confidential & Proprietary
Gamification Planning
What We Want What They Want What the Tool Does Strategy
Business &
Community
Objectives
Members’ Needs
& Motivations
Missions
Badges
Concepting
Planning
(Content,
Administrative)
Implementation
Evaluation &
Refinement

14. Confidential & Proprietary
Bunchball + Jive Best Practices
■ Benchmark community metrics prior to adding gamification
■ The greatest rewards should be the ones that provide the greatest business
value – don’t incent the wrong things
■ Makes sure there is a combination of easy- and difficult-to-get rewards – and
avoid “maxing out” too quickly
■ Consider “unexpected” badges – for the surprise and delight factor
■ Let the community know gamification is coming before “flipping the switch”
■ Create content that guides members through the gamification features – and
be prepared to respond to feedback
■ Consider how existing Jive points and status levels should be applied to
gamification – because they will become invisible
■ Review default gamification settings and test – all active missions will be
visible when it’s turned on

15. Confidential & Proprietary
Key Takeaways
1. Aligning Bunchball with your community strategy is the key to success
2. Ensure gamification statistics are mapped and included within your
measurement plan and reporting to guide activation / adoption efforts
3. Continually monitor and modify your Bunchball configuration based
audience behavior, number and types of activity and content in the
community (don’t set it and forget it)
4. Frequency of action is also a factor you'll need to take into consideration
- if an activity can happen frequently or repeatedly it's important not to
reward too heavily, to avoid rapid accumulation of points
5. Set rate limits and/or daily challenge limits for all rewards - having a cap
on earning is a must in having control on earning potential
6. Commenting is a unique use case that requires care in how you incent
volume of commenting - focus on quality rather than quantity – reward
helpful or insightful comments over just general feedback

16. Hitachi Implementation Overview

17.  HDS, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd.,
helps our customers convert
huge stores of data into
information they can use to
innovate.
 For more than 100 years,
Hitachi has believed that
business innovation helps
society.
Hitachi Data Systems

18.  External facing, Peer to peer technical
information sharing
‒ Support call deflection
 Enable members to collaborate,
network and learn from other
professionals
 Listen and learn from our customers
 Access to experts and HDS thought
leadership
HDS Community Overview

19.  Share our propriety services content with our Services
Specialization Partners in a secret space
 Build relationships with customers, partners and prospects
 Demonstrate innovation and thought leadership
 Leverage and amplify our partners’ expertise to share important
product information
 Change the perception that HDS culture is secretive
‒ “Open the kimono!”
Community Objectives

20.  Tailored missions and criteria
based on community objectives
- about 50% were changed from
defaults
 Revised points and rewards
based on anticipated user
activity and to incent behavior
‒ Ask / Answer a Question
‒ Marking content as correct or
helpful
 Customized Bunchball images
based on revisited missions and
to fit Hitachi branding (examples
on the right)
Bunchball Highlights

21.  Employee at Strategic
Technology Partner awarded
the HDS Most Valued
Professional award
 Handpicked community
advocates were promoted as
a “Featured user” on
community welcome page
 MVP’s would get special
access to HDS resources
Success: MVP Program
“The HDS Community is
from my view a success
platform for best technical
discussions, share ideas
and make connections.”
– Head of Storage & Backup
Engineering, Major International
Corporation

22. Lessons Learned
Orientation Reputation Self-Help Global Accounts HDS-Related Special Awards
Level 1
1-3 days
10-25 points
Level 2
2-4 weeks
25-100 points
Level 3
2-6 months
100-250 points
Level 4
6+ months
250-1,000 points

23.  Plan key actions and missions around central business objectives early
in development
 Space-specific missions to engage a targeted audience
 Attendee mission to drive real-world actions at live events
Lessons Learned
Activity Importance Point Value
Liking a piece of content Low 10
Following a space Med 25
Posting an answer marked
as correct
High 50

24. Evolution:
 Communications & awareness strategy around tougher missions
 Monthly featured missions with real world prizes
Challenges:
 Slotting in time each week to consistently evolve the program
 Working with MarCom on badge images
Moving forward…

25. SolarWinds Implementation Overview

26. 26
SolarWinds –
No we are not a ‘green’ energy company
» We’re an IT generalist software company
 We have over 29 licensed products and another 30 free tools
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
26
150kcustomers
180countries
450of the F500

27. 27
What is thwack?
» An evolution of our original, non-Jive, support forum
» A major component of SolarWinds’ Community strategy
 Our blog platform
 Our announcement platform
 Our idea/feature request platform
 Our main social platform, and a self-help support platform
 The only support channel for the free tools we offer
» A series of topical places for customers, resellers, employees
and ‘visitors’ (read-only access) to connect, share, and learn
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
27

28. 28
What’s the point? Why does SWI care?
» It’s the hub - customers at the center
 Customers Connecting with one another – provide creative synergy around
content and uses and recognize us as thought leaders
» Support, products, dev, marketing & sales teams
are the spokes
 Support sees call deflection value
 Products and dev team gets ideas & product
innovation
 Marketing has two-way dialog with our install base
and potential customers while also leveraging it for
brand awareness and thought leadership
 Sales uses the existence of thwack as a selling point
but they also use our reviews to help with sales friction
» We are at the center of customer marketing, charged with engaging and
retaining customer membership and giving prospects a view into the
customer experience.
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
28

29. 29
Gamification – Some of Our Points and Missions
» Dealt with a points migration
(needed to avoid point inflation)
» Mission Goals
 Incent more customer champions
 Educate our current and potential
customers
 Started with the out-of-the box
missions to intro people to the new
platform
 Created our own set of incented
actions
 Most proud of: understanding our
biggest customer draws and created a
future-proof mission to highlight them.
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
29
• Create an account
• Check out the content exchange (download
an extension)
• Vote on a feature request (feedback on the
product)
• Get support by browsing the forum (like a
thread)
• Bookmark our roadmap post (know what’s
coming)
• Read 2 blogs (learn)

30. 30
Goal = Support Call Deflection
Support - the original purpose of the SolarWinds forums
» We still associate a large amount of our traffic with the product-specific
forums
» We incent good info and showing appreciation for good info
 We give you points for liking/rating and marking
posts helpful and correct.
 We give you even more points when your content is
marked correct.
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
Action Value
Get your content rated or liked 5
Mark an answer as Helpful 5
Mark an answer as Correct 10
Get your post marked Helpful 5
Get your post marked Correct 25

31. 31
Behavior and Education Gamed
» Our monthly missions are focused mainly on educating users or
incenting behavior.
 Mark 5 helpful and 5 correct, earn 500 pts. Extra: Like 25 replies that are helpful and
earn 250 pts
 It works. In most cases the halo is also powerful.
» We added the ‘liking’ useful and correct answers instead along
with the marking of correct/helpful answers. We drove users to
like those threads they felt were answered.
 180% increase in Helpful answers marked
 240% increase in Correct answers marked
 170% increase in Likes
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
31

32. 32
Rating Gamed
» In February, we drove “rating” with a monthly mission for
extra points. Again, for only 500pts.
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
32
Jan February Mar
Ratings 20 789 129

33. 33
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
FSM Challenge
» For a number of months we have had product-centric
monthly missions. We have been using gamification to
educate.
 May was take the Firewall Security Manager Challenge – this was 10
question quiz with each question worth 400 pts. Questions were both
prod specific and general firewall knowledge. (SurveyGizmo)
 184 completed the challenge
 29 joined thwack to complete the challenge.
 4900 views of the challenge announcement and 69 comments
33

34. 34
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
Customer to Customer
Interaction
34

35. 35
Engage and Retain
» To engage and retain our membership, we can’t always be
mired in the technical, nor can we always be looking for the
sale or an overt business objective.
» You need to be able to have fun.
» You need the latitude to have fun.
» Yes, that is my desk. My
Gummi-bear-laden Pessimist
mug and the point of
this slide
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
35

36. 36
Know thy customer. Know their fun
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
We were born of 3 Network Admins who wanted simple tools to do their jobs… we’re
geeks. Our customers tend to be… geeks. We embraced our inner Sci-Fi geek…
Each level of the
bracket was image-
mapped and hot
linked to a gamified
poll, allowing you to
vote for a winner
and state your
reason why they
should win.
We’re doing it again
this year… very soon,
stay tuned for the
theme. We’ve
changed it up.

37. 37
Bracket numbers…
» The bracket battle was a new space, so these are broken out by
date for the individual rounds of the bracket.
» Total views driven into the new space in < 1 month: 58,702
» Continued 4 month viewing halo yielding ~15,000 more views.
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
37
Round Date Bracket page views Poll views Total views during round
Prequel 03/08 - 03/11 2537 1712 4249
Sector I 03/12 - 03/15 15062 19298 34360
Intermission 03/16 - 03/17 861 374 1235
Fleet 16 03/18 - 03/20 3768 3926 7694
Super 8 03/21 - 03/25 3303 2436 5739
Death Quad 03/26 - 03/27 1565 801 2366
Judgment Day 03/28 - 04/02 1936 1123 3059
Round Date Avg. votes/poll Total Votes Number of Polls in play
Prequel 03/08 - 03/11 93 93 1
Sector I 03/12 - 03/15 248.266 3724 15
Intermission 03/16 - 03/17 N/A
Fleet 16 03/18 - 03/20 138.875 1111 8
Super 8 03/21 - 03/25 146 584 4
Death Quad 03/26 - 03/27 86 172 2
Judgment Day 03/28 - 04/02 115 115 1

38. 38
Crowd Sourcing – Front and Center
» Ideas/Feature Requests are front and center and sub-
spaces/forums are available for every product.
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
38
A year and ¾ after implementing ideation
and gamification, we have 2423 ideas with
15532 votes.
121 of those ideas were implemented in
products.
45 more were in the process of being
implemented.
That means customers drove 166 new ideas
from the crowd into our products. The
power to run a report and say, “You asked
and we listened.”
Ideas are 25 pts and then voting also gains
you 5 pts (whether you vote up or down).

39. 39
Spread the Word
» Our Spread the Word forum eases sales friction
 When we hit friction, sales can send prospects to thwack.
» We know that people want to hear from others using the
products.
» We always encourage posts in Spread the Word with points
» Adding gamification revitalized an important part of our
strategy. We once again saw 5-6 posts a month in a forum
that was not seeing activity.
THWACK – WHAT IT IS AND HOW WE GAMED IT
39
Action Points
Posting in Spread the Word
1,200 + custom badge for
your profile
After posting in Spread the Word, link us to 3rd party sites where
you've mentioned us
300 per link
Post a link in Spread the Word to where you've blogged about us or
reviewed us
1,500

40. 40
Points are More than Leaderboard Position –
They are Currency
THWACK – WHAT IT IS AND HOW WE GAMED IT

41. 41
Gamification = Results
» Millions in support cost savings
» 150+ new ideas that customers drove
» 6x more ‘customer champions’ – MVPs
» 100+ testimonials for Solarwinds “saving
our customers’ bacon”
THWACK – WINS IN GAMIFICATION
41

42. Q&A

43. Q&A Panelists
James Davidson,
Partner & Vice President of Digital Strategy
7Summits
@jdavidson
Michael Torok,
Director of Community,
SolarWinds
@MickTorok
Donna Garber,
External Community Manager,
Hitachi Data Systems
@dgarberhds
Nick Gable,
Community Manager
Hitachi Data Systems

44. Next

45. Register today for our free
webcast series on Gamification.
Gamification 301 - 5 Ways Gamification is
Essential to a Social Business featuring
Kim Celestre.
Gamification Webcast Series

46. Questions
Thank you for joining us today! If you have any
remaining questions, please feel free to email us or
tweet us at:
james.davidson@7summitsagency.com / @jdavidson
michael.ledesma@jivesoftware.com / @jivesoftware

47. Web
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facebook.com/7SummitsAgency
@7SummitsAgency
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