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Is Wordle the Next Word in Loyalty Gamification? Ask Ulta.

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By: Jenn McMillen |

Posted on July 30, 2024

Ulta’s Gamification Test Reveals the Power of Wordle Loyalty

Ulta recently tested a gamification feature similar to Wordle. Based on the New York Times’ own data from its Wordle players, the results could spell opportunity for loyalty.

What’s a five-letter word for “rewarding” in the beauty category? Ulta Beauty just finished testing a gamification program that might reveal the answer.

The program, called GlamXplorer, is an activity platform that involves games such as “21 Questions” and a “Word of the Day” challenge similar to Wordle, the popular New York Times game. In 2023, Ulta invited 1,000 of its top-spending Ulta Beauty Rewards (formerly Ultamate Rewards) customers into the pilot, according to a report in Glossy.

The test apparently ended over the summer, based on Reddit conversations, and Ulta’s GlamXplorer site is asking players to “stay tuned” for what’s next— including whether the platform will roll out to all 40 million members of its recently relaunched Ulta Beauty Rewards program.

But according to Glossy, GlamXplorer’s word games were a success. Of the members who participated in the pilot’s mini-games, 86% returned in the following week, Glossy reported. On average, users played the games six times a week, at a median of 11 minutes per session.

In any retail category, that spells “opportunity.”

Wordle Can Be a Gateway to Loyalty Marketing

Reward programs have long incorporated gamification as an engagement strategy, for easy-to-follow reasons. Adding word games makes sense. Here’s why:

  • Games, contests and quests tend to keep members logged into a program longer, enabling the program to gather deeper and more accurate data for relevant engagement.
  • Companies with gamified reward programs recorded a 22% increase in customer loyalty, or retention, in 2023.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of people now play Wordle, which challenges users to guess a five-letter word in six tries or less. In a March document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Times included a chart revealing that by October 2023, its subscribers were using its gaming app more than any other, including its news app.

The rules of the GlamXplorer’s “Word of the Day” game were notably familiar to Wordle: players got three shots to correctly guess a beauty-related word (not necessarily five letters). When players won, they received “stars” they could redeem for perks or virtual “Loot Boxes” containing randomized prizes.

What The New York Times’ Analysis of Wordle Reveals

Whether or not Ulta adopts GlamXplorer as a permanent part of its rewards program, it most certainly can use the insights gathered from its players. Just consider what the New York Times has learned.

In January, the Times published a piece highlighting its data findings when comparing 515 million Wordle games played by users against those by its puzzle-solving assistant, WordleBot. Most of the reveals involve the strategies players used to win, but the players’ approaches can be helpful to retail and marketing strategies.

Among the NYT’s findings:

  • Human logic is more complex than robot brains. The most popular opening word by human Wordle players is “adieu.” WordleBot prefers “slate” and “crane.” And, as reason might suggest, players who started with the word “slate” solved the puzzle faster and more frequently. Still, the word choices reveal problem-solving tendencies. “Adieu” players might be less competitive and less eager to solve the puzzle in fewer tries. They probably like shortcuts: get the vowels figured out first and it’ll be easier to guess the other letters. The same thinking can apply to comparison shopping: casual gamers as shoppers may be more likely to buy something with a clearly displayed performance rating. Amazon’s comparison tables, displayed when a customer opens a product page, come to mind.
  • Players find ways to outsmart the game. The Times has determined that more players solve Wordle in one guess than chance should allow: about one time in 250. It concludes that some players likely open a second game window or use a different device so they can continue playing if they fail to guess the clue in their first game window. Or they just look the solution up somewhere. Some might call this strategy, while others might call it cheating. The point is that gaming brains are nimble at generating workarounds. In retail, this inherent adaptability might apply to “limited-time-only” deals; gaming minds might calculate that items that don’t clear out will remain at sale price (or better). This theory also applies to the casual gamers referenced in the previous point; they might be less likely to get swept up in FOMO buying.
  • Games reveal effective marketing language. Players like festive words, the Times has learned, and this is especially evident around holidays. The top opening word that rose in popularity on Christmas was “merry.” On Halloween, it was “ghost.” Some of these choices (“super” on Super Bowl Sunday) are predictable; they reveal what’s on the player’s mind. But these word choices also can suggest other words and phrases that are top of mind and might grab shopper attention at different moments. The Times found, for example, that the word “party” enjoys a little bump on the weekends. Word games can support a reward program’s marketing automation tools by feeding them these terms.
  • WordleBot is learning from its humans. The Times is using its player data to sharpen WordleBot’s gaming strategy, specifically incorporating the insights from player guesses so it can be “more deliberate about which words the bot recommends.” The Times has culled certain words from the bot’s list, for instance, and replaced them with new words. Front-end preparation likely made this possible: While updating its reporting tables to handle the influx of Wordle game players, the Times changed the standards of how it takes in and manages the new data to ensure its pipeline is consistent and adaptable. That adaptability is evident in these updated word lists and should make it easier to turnkey new games. Such front-end planning would benefit any loyalty platform, with or without games.

Word Games Can Test Loyalty, So Let’s Test More Word Games!

The New York Times has not revealed how often “loyal” is used as a Wordle solution, but ideally, Ulta incorporated it in its GlamXplorer test. If Ulta did, its players might have started feeling more loyal to the brand themselves, just as people tend to think of “party” around the weekend. Heck, the word “loyal“ could be just as effective for selling products as “blush” or “lashes.”

There is a kind of analytic beauty in that.

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This article originally appeared in Forbes.

Forbes.com retail contributor Jenn McMillen is nationally renowned as the architect of GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards, and is Founder and Chief Accelerant of Incendio, a firm that builds and fixes marketing, consumer engagement, loyalty and CRM programs. Incendio provides a nimble, flexible and technology-agnostic approach without the big-agency cost structure and is a trusted partner of some of the biggest brands in the U.S.