The meteoric growth of Pokémon Go has presented a fertiletesting ground for financial institutions considering applyinggamification and location-based services to their memberacquisition strategy. At its core, the Pokémon Go phenomenon shouldbe viewed as an opportunity to experiment with gamification as away to support business growth by connecting with potential andexisting millennial members, influencing foot traffic at branches,improving overall financial literacy and building a future memberbase.

There has been a lot of broad discussion around the businessapplications of Pokémon Go. Here are some questions to consider asyou define your experiments at the outset:

• How does this fit into your strategy in terms of branch trafficgoals balanced with moving members to digital channels?
• Will you bring in meaningful traffic?
• What are the security concerns related to people coming intothe branch and snapping photos?

This is the time for exploration – a time for developing a fewhypotheses and setting up experiments that will help informdecisions down the road. As you’re defining what you want to testand why, it’s important to establish metrics that will help youcalibrate whether they’re likely to be effective in attaining yourgoals.

Pokémon Go Crash Course

For the uninitiated, Pokémon is an augmented reality,mobile-exploration game, and the object of the game is to captureas many types of Pokémon characters as possible. These characterscan be found in many places like public parks, national monuments,bus stations and of course, at bank and credit union branches. PokéBalls, the mechanism in which these creatures are captured, areacquired at physical locations – known as PokéStops – that arefound on an in-game map reflecting users’ physical surroundings.The GPS on users’ mobile phones detect when they are near aPokéStop. Users can also purchase Lures, a module that “plugs in”to a PokéStop to attract Pokémon. Any user who is nearby can thencapture the Pokémon.

How Financial Institutions Can Get Started

As an augmented reality game, Pokémon Go combines the physicaland the digital world in a fun, approachable environment. If yourbranch is near a designated PokéStop, using Lures to attractPokémon, and thus users, is an easy first step to potentially bringin new members. Lures are inexpensive but only last 30 minutes, sotiming is key. Credit unions should consider employing Lures duringoff-peak hours or during branch events, making sure to alertmembers via their social media platforms or at branch location tobuild anticipation.

Here is a breakdown of how to combine the use of Lures withother methods of engagement for the biggest benefit:

• Post on social media if you’re near a PokéStopor Gym. Use hashtags like #pokemon and #pokemongo to reach beyondyour followers. Ask members to share photos of Pokémon they’vecaptured around your branches.
• Create community challenges. Considerrewarding users for hatching eggs by walking. About 81% of more than 90,000 surveyed said they are walkingmore than normal to hatch eggs. Set goals and create teams,competitions and rewards for eggs hatched. Give users a map ofsmall business clients within walking distance where they can pickup promotions for hatched eggs.

• Pick a team. If you’re near a Gym, keep score,or simply pick a team color and identify a potential reward.
• Do giveaways. Consider Pokémon giveawayseither to bring people to a specific community event or to thebranch.

• Create a teaching tool. Help visitors huntPokémon while teaching them how to use different services in thebranch.
• Utilize Yelp reviews. Yelp recently added afilter for PokéStop locations. Check your Yelp reviews and build upyour reputation.

Putting baseline metrics in place will help determine if this issomething to continue. Possible metrics include in-branch traffic,engagement, new product or member sign-ups, member satisfaction,positive brand recognition or incremental sales at your smallbusiness clients’ locations. Ideally, this sparks other ideas formember engagement.

Coming Soon

Niantic plans to continue evolving the game and has promised todeliver additional features that could bring greater impact to yourPokémon Go strategy, including the ability to trade Pokémon withother users to potentially increase their value. As a financialinstitution, offering free in-branch trading is one way to get inthe game. Niantic may also allow businesses to become sponsoredlocations, which would allow branches to pay to become aPokéStop.

The Potential Role of Gaming in Your Credit Union’sFuture

Pokémon Go is a great way to get initiated into gaming andaugmented reality as a member relationship tool. With Facebook’sOculus, Samsung Gear, Google’s Magic Leap and countless otherproducts in market or on the horizon, these technologies willtransform how users see and connect with the world. It’s worthexploring how both gaming and augmented/virtual reality might cometo the fore as a way to engage members. Imagine:

• Bringing your own characters to life, like your financialinstitution’s mascot. Create your own PokéStops at small businessclient locations or a teaching tool for kids.
• Putting your financial institution into an existing immersiveenvironment like the game Second Life, where people can visit avirtual branch and be exposed to virtual advertisements.
• Combining augmented reality and geolocation to guide visitorsinto your branch.

Pokémon also incorporates many gaming concepts that you canconsider applying to loyalty programs or use to help create healthyfinancial habits. Some of the sticky behaviors Pokémon taps intoare about collecting, competition, variable ratio/interval (i.e. arare Pokémon showing up unexpectedly), status, loss aversion andsocial feedback loops through add-ons like GoChat.

There is a lot of potential on the horizon to explore if usagecontinues to grow as the game matures. This is a great opportunityto jump in, experiment and learn your way into the world ofgamification, interactive mobile experiences and augmented realityto take your members’ experiences beyond mobile banking. Have fun,and keep those metrics in mind.

Jose Resendiz is vice president and general manager forDigital Insight, an NCR Company. He can be reachedat 800-225-5627 or [email protected].