Evolution of email gamification: How it moved from one-off campaigns to a real strategy

Not long ago, gamified emails were the holiday sweaters of marketing: seasonal, fun, and mostly seen during Black Friday or Christmas. This approach feels limited today. So where does email gamification stand currently, and how has it moved from a novelty to a necessity?

Key takeaways

1. Email gamification has evolved from one-off holiday campaigns into a full-funnel layer that can support customer awareness, education, onboarding, re-engagement, and loyalty.
2. Well-designed games reduce friction and replace heavy forms with a clear value exchange, thereby helping brands collect better data from customers while maintaining their trust.
3. Although the email marketing space and email tech possibilities are growing fast, 63% of email marketers have never used games, which means there is a high chance to stand out from the competition even through games with simple mechanics.

Before we look at how gamification moved across the funnel, it helps to understand what was technically possible at different points in time. 

A short technical timeline of email gamification

1. 2012 — early stages. Brands started using simple interactive ideas to stand out. Scratch cards and spin-the-wheel mechanics were common, but most games lived behind a click and opened on a website. Email acted as a teaser, not the playground.
2. 2014–2015 — richer interactions. More complex quizzes and story-based games appeared. Some brands experimented with Halloween-style narratives and missions, showing that email could support more than just a single click.
3. By 2016 — HTML and CSS unlock mini-games. Thanks to better use of HTML and CSS animations, emails could host puzzles, reveals, and simple logic without forcing recipients to leave the inbox. Gamification started feeling native.
4. 2019 — AMP changes expectations. AMP for Email allowed real interactions inside the message: voting, forms, carousels, and dynamic states. Support across email clients and ESPs grew gradually, but building these experiences required strong coding skills.
5. Around this time, teams learned a crucial lesson: no single technology could reach everyone. Gmail supported AMP. Apple Mail handled HTML5 and CSS3 well. Outlook supported neither. To make games work at scale, brands began designing layered experiences — AMP for Gmail, HTML5 or kinetic content for Apple Mail, and static but meaningful fallbacks for Outlook and other limited clients. It all required advanced coding skills.
6. 2022 — no-code becomes real. The technical barrier dropped. Marketers could build games that included AMP, kinetic content, and smart fallbacks through visual interfaces. For the first time, one interactive email could work for almost everyone, everywhere.

Email gamification didn’t evolve because marketers suddenly became more playful. It evolved because email finally became capable of supporting real interaction at scale, and once the technology caught up, marketers had the freedom to be playful on purpose.

When email gamification was an experiment: What we learned from it

When gamification first appeared in email, it felt experimental. Brands didn’t yet know how subscribers would react to gamification, and there were no clear patterns for using games beyond promotions. Holidays became the safest place to try the strategy. Seasonal campaigns already allowed for a playful tone, and as expectations were low, games felt like a bonus, not a risk.

Technical limits reinforced this approach. Many games couldn’t run directly inside emails, so brands’ emails linked to web versions of the game instead. 

Early gamified emails showed clear signals that they were worth the effort, even given their relatively simple setups:

• open rates increased by up to 50% when brands added game mechanics to email content;
• gamification elements boosted user engagement by nearly 50% over non-gamified emails;
• several campaigns were shared and discussed on social media as good examples of email gamification, showing that subscribers were open to receiving playful interactions in their inboxes.

Together, these signs helped marketers see that games were not just fun extras but tools that could improve performance.

(Source: Email from Uplers)

Early results indicate that games effectively increase conversion and make promotions significantly more attractive. This impact is further backed by direct feedback, with polls and surveys revealing that a large share of customers, around 60%, explicitly stated they would like to see games in emails more often.

From fun extra to full-funnel strategy

As the novelty wore off, brands realized gamification shouldn’t be a once-a-year event.

Stage 1. Growth inside holiday newsletters

While games evolved inside holiday promos themselves, they soon moved beyond them:

• e​​arly on, holidays were used to wow and entertain: brands added simple games to their emails just to surprise subscribers and make seasonal newsletters feel different — playful animations, light interactions, and fun copy without any real stakes;
• then, games grew into a way to share discounts and run sales: as confidence grew, games became the way to deliver offers through spin-to-win wheels, scratch cards, box reveals, or hidden codes players could uncover with a click.

(Source: Email from Stripo)

It is worth mentioning that such games in holiday newsletters increased conversion by up to 2 times.

Stage 2. Going from holidays to everyday occasions

Once marketers realized how successful gamified Christmas and Black Friday campaigns could be, they realized that gamification shouldn’t be a once-a-year event. They began looking for other special moments in a customer’s life to apply these mechanics.

• personal milestones: Birthdays and subscription anniversaries became prime real estate for mystery gifts or scratch-off discounts;
• event-driven play: Major events or seasonal changes (like the first day of summer) provided a low-risk environment to test more complex mechanics;
• re-engagement triggers: Instead of we-miss-you text emails, brands sent spin-the-wheel games to win a reason to come back.

(Source: Email from Stripo)

Stage 3. From winning to learning: Gamification in educational content

Once brands became comfortable with the use of games for holidays and special days, they started to test gamification in a different type of campaign: educational emails.

The idea was simple: If a game could make a discount more attractive, then maybe it could also simplify complex topics. Marketers replaced long explanations with short tasks, questions, and small interactive elements to keep people engaged from email to email.

In educational campaigns, gamification helped:

• break down complex topics into small, digestible pieces;
• keep attention across a series, not just in a single send;
• make learning feel less like reading a manual and more like exploring;
• share company news and ask recipients to choose the right answer; and
• spread industrial information.

(Source: Email from HubSpot) 

Stage 4. The competition factor: The rise of the scoreboard

While HubSpot and other companies used games to teach, some brands discovered a different psychological lever: competition. This was the next evolutionary stage of educational gamification and marked a shift from users playing the game once to beating their own scores every week. This approach moved gamification away from being a temporary event and turned it into a persistent habit.

Grammarly’s Weekly Insights is a prime example of this shift. Instead of simply sending a summary of how the tool was used, Grammarly created a scoreboard that motivates users through status and milestones:

• the streak mechanic: Shows users how many weeks in a row they’ve been active, making them hesitant to break the chain;
• scoreboard: Comparing the user’s productivity or vocabulary against the rest of the Grammarly community;
• badges and achievements: Visual rewards for reaching milestones such as having 1,000,000 words checked.

(Source: Email from Grammarly)

By turning user data into a game, Grammarly moved the interaction from a simple service email to an emotional experience.

This scoreboard model proved that spinning wheels aren’t needed to gamify an email; sometimes, the user’s own progress is the most addictive game of all.

Stage 5. Solving the cold start problem: Gamification in onboarding

After holidays, everyday occasions, and educational campaigns, the next big step in gamification was onboarding.

Many SaaS brands noticed the same problem: new users signed up, opened the first email, and then… did nothing. Classic welcome emails often attempted to explain everything at once through long paragraphs, a high number of links, many features, and very few actions.

Gamification offered a different way to make initial contact with potential customers. Instead of saying “here is everything you can do with us,” onboarding emails gradually shifted to “let’s do one small thing together.”

In onboarding, brands started to use game-like mechanics to:

• turn setup into a simple mission: checklist-style emails where subscribers are invited to complete 2–3 tasks, like “create your profile,” “set your first goal,” or “try one core feature;”
• reward actions with something concrete: access to more tips, templates, bonus content, or small perks after a key action is completed;
• collect useful data without heavy forms: short interactive questions (for example, “What are you here to do?” and “What best describes you?”) that feel like part of a mission, not like a survey, but still give marketers clear signals for segmentation and personalization;
  
  

  
  (Source: Email from Stripo)

• show progress instead of just instructions: progress bars, steps, or levels that move as the user completes actions, helping them see how far they’ve come and what is left;
• let recipients “check themselves” with a quick test: a short quiz or a block that says “Have you done the basics?” to help subscribers see what they’ve already set up, what they’ve missed, and what they should do next.
  
  

  
  (Source: Email from Stripo)

When onboarding is gamified effectively, the first few emails sent feel less like documentation and more like a guided path. The subscriber is nudged to act, sees feedback, and feels that they are moving forward instead of just reading.

This stage brings us very close to the full-funnel view: games are no longer tied to a single campaign or purpose. They can support acquisition, education, onboarding, and later stages of the customer–brand relationship.

Email gamification across the funnel today

After years of experimentation, some brands now treat games as tools that they can plug into almost any stage of the customer journey and not just into one-off campaigns. This is where everything we described (holidays, everyday moments, education, competition, onboarding) comes together as a system.

A simple view of how gamification can now support the funnel if presented below.

Awareness and list building

Goal: get noticed and bring new people into your list.

Games here are usually light and simple:

• luck and chance games on landing pages or in first-touch emails (spin-to-win, scratch cards, “open the box”);
• quizzes that promise a small reward or personalized result in exchange for an email address.

Here, gamification works because it reduces recipient’s barrier to entry: marketers don’t ask people to sign up for their newsletter; they invite people to play first.

Interest and education

Goal: turn “I’ve heard of you” into “I understand what you do.”

Games here typically include:

• mini workshops in which every email in a series contains a small task, not just a paragraph;
• stat-driven scoreboard emails such as Grammarly’s that show usage and nudge people to explore more features and not just read more tips;
• short quizzes inside emails that check knowledge and then explain the right answer.
  
  

  
  (Source: Email from FAIRWINDS)

Consideration and decision support

Goal: help people decide if the product is for them.

Here, gamification becomes a way to explore options without pressure:

• “what’s right for me?” quizzes: help people choose a product, category, or use case, for example, “find your skincare routine,” “pick your reading level,” or “choose the best tool for your role;”
• interactive try-outs: clickable lookbooks, outfits, room setups, or build-your-own bundle experiences that allow subscribers to combine items and see how they go together before buying;
  
  

  
  (Source: Email from Stripo)

Instead of reading about product specs, games allow players to try the product themselves.

Action and purchase

Goal: help people finally act when they’re close to a decision.

This is the stage closest to the original holiday games, just more deliberate:

• reveal mechanics for limited-time offers;
• use spin-to-win or pick-a-gift not only during Christmas but around key promotions or product launches.
  
  

  
  (Source: Stripo Showcase)

In this stage gamification doesn’t replace a fair offer. It just delivers the offer in a more interesting way.

Retention, loyalty, and advocacy

Goal: keep people active, build habits, and make them feel proud to stay.

This stage is where scoreboards, streaks, badges, and progress visuals come in:

• weekly or monthly insights-focused emails that show how much the recipient has done (for example, Grammarly’s emails);
• badges or milestones for long-term customers that are shown in emails as part of loyalty programs;
• challenges that run over time (for example, 7-day challenges or 30-day streaks).

While some brands use games on a daily basis, our study shows that 63% of email marketers have never added games to their emails. We hope that this number will decrease eventually.

Data collection without heavy forms

Customer data plays an important role in email marketing today.

Quizzes, polls, preference pickers, and interactive scenarios let brands collect the following:

• interests and preferences;
• intent (what someone is trying to achieve);
• feedback on content, offers, or features.

Because this data comes from light, game-like interactions instead of long forms, people are more willing to answer. At the same time, marketers get cleaner signals for segmentation, personalization, and future product decisions.

What’s next for the following 2–5 years?

It’s not very likely for us to see less gamification in emails over the next five years. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Brands already use games in popups, onboarding flows, educational series, and across the funnel, and the wider gamification market is growing fast, increasing from around 9–10 billion dollars in 2020 to a projected 95.5 billion dollars by 2030. This growth shows that gamification is no longer a side experiment — it is becoming a standard way to keep people engaged and to collect data in a softer, more user-friendly way.

Wrapping up

Gamification is no longer about the spin-to-win dopamine hit but about humanizing the digital interface. As we move toward affective marketing, our goals shift from simply motivating an action to fostering a genuine emotional connection. By transforming passive readers into active participants, brands stop bombarding and start building, turning the inbox from a place of chores into a destination for discovery. Ultimately, the future of email belongs to those who respect the subscriber’s time.