Walk through most shopping centres today and the marketing looks the same. Seasonal signage. A social media contest. Maybe a gift card giveaway.
Shoppers scroll past it. Tenants barely notice it. And ownership asks the same question they always ask: what did it actually drive?
There's a better way. And it doesn't require a bigger budget. It requires a smarter mechanic.
Gamification, done right, is one of the most effective tools a retail property has to change shopper behaviour in real time, build genuine loyalty, and collect the kind of first-party customer data most properties are desperately short on. In a market where consumers are watching every dollar and ownership is scrutinizing every line item, that combination matters more than ever.
Here's what it actually looks like in practice.
What Gamification Really Means in a Shopping Centre
Forget the carnival game association. The mechanic is straightforward.
A shopper is inside your property. They see signage, a digital display, or get a push notification inviting them to participate in an instant-win experience. They pull out their phone, scan a QR code, and within 60 seconds they're playing a simple digital game. If they win, they redeem a prize at a specific store or tenant in the mall, that day, before they leave.
That's the loop. And inside that loop, three things happen simultaneously that are very hard to achieve with any other single tactic.
1. You drive measurable foot traffic to specific tenants
The redemption mechanic is the critical piece. The prize has to be redeemed inside the building. That means you've taken someone already in your property and given them a specific, time-sensitive reason to walk into a store they might not have visited that day. The tenant gets a warm, motivated customer. The property gets data on where that traffic went. It's a direct line between marketing activity and tenant visit, which is exactly what ownership wants to see.
2. You capture real first-party data
To enter, the shopper provides basic information: email, phone, maybe a postal code. Voluntarily, because there's something in it for them. That opt-in is the foundation of a direct relationship between the property and the shopper. Not a cookie. Not an inferred audience segment from a third-party platform. An actual person who has consented to hear from you.
That matters enormously right now. Cookies are gone. Digital ad targeting is getting harder and more expensive every year. The properties building their own shopper databases today, through direct engagement, will have a structural advantage in a few years that simply can't be bought.
3. You create a reason to come back
The most valuable outcome of a well-designed gamification program isn't the visit where the shopper plays. It's the next visit. And the one after that.
When people associate your property with a positive, personalized, slightly surprising experience, visit frequency goes up. Gamified loyalty programs drive a 22% increase in customer retention, and AI-enabled gamification achieves a 47% increase in user interaction frequency (AmplifAI, 2026). Those are not small numbers in a sector where incremental foot traffic moves the needle on tenant sales and lease renewals.
Why This Approach Fits the Market Right Now
Canadian consumers are being careful. Spending is selective. They're choosing destinations, not just defaulting to the nearest mall.
In that environment, a generic "shop and save" campaign doesn't cut through. But an experience that surprises them, rewards them, and sends them to a specific store with a reason to buy? That changes behaviour. And it does it without discounting your way to a margin problem.
As Talon.One noted earlier this year, rewarding customers only for spending is now the bare minimum. The new standard is rewarding engagement. Gamification is one of the most direct ways to do that at the property level.
The Numbers Make the Case
The data is consistent across documented implementations:
- Gamified campaigns see opt-in rates around 25%, versus standard form fills at 2 to 4%
- Conversion rates from gamified experiences run 5 to 20%, versus traditional retail promotion conversion at 1 to 3%
- The gamification market hit $19.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $92.5 billion by 2030 (Visu Network, 2026)
This is mainstream commercial strategy. The retail sector accounted for 28.5% of total gamification market revenue as recently as 2023 (Open Loyalty). The question is no longer whether gamification works. It's whether your property is using it.
How We Approach It at DRH
The activations we build are designed around three outcomes: tenant traffic, data capture, and repeat visits. The mechanics vary based on season, campaign goal, and tenant mix. What doesn't change is the measurement approach.
We track opt-ins, redemptions, and where possible, sales lift data from participating tenants. Because if you can't connect the activation to a real business outcome, you're just running a fun event.
Gamification should be working harder than that. And when it's set up properly, it does.
Interested in exploring what a gamification program could look like at your property?
