LET'S TELL A GREAT STORY!

GAMIFYING THRIFT

Safeway has Monopoly. ThredUp has Secondhand Bingo. Part game, feature education, and revenue driver, Bingo evolved from an email campaign to an interactive site and app-wide promotion. 6 years running.

THE BIG IDEA

The Marketing team wanted to hit the following goals:

Increase revenue & merch coupon usage
Increase adoption & use of site features
Increase purchases of different products

The Creative team landed on a bingo design to pack as many actions as possible while allowing users to play at their own pace.

YEAR 1: PROOF OF CONCEPT

With zero dev resources, we tested our concept as an email-only campaign. A weekly email was sent out with the customer’s personal board and progress.

My design guidelines:

Avoid information overload. Key information was at the top of the email, the rest of the rules were delegated to a blog post.

Easy to read, easy to act on. Instead of cramming everything into a board, we made a corresponding key below with links.

How did it do?

Over 50% increase in feature adoption (Saved Searches, Favoriting)
x2 email open rates compared to a sale email

One the month ended, we saw an increase in average feature usage. Once users understood what tools were for, they adapted them to their shopping habits.

Year 2-4: BUILDING ON SUCCESS

Following the huge success of bingo, we got buy-in for a bigger, better bingo on our website and app. Here’s what changed:

Everything in one place. Landing page included all rules and incentives. Additional tips were still linked out.
Intuitive interactions. All actions are displayed on the board with hover-over CTAs. Like a normal board game.
Optimize by platform. Design and content were adjusted to suit the app experience.
Tailor user journeys. Our content strategy met customers where they were throughout the month. Active players’ touchpoints reminded them of their progress, while non-active players got teasers and FOMO messaging.

App states

Landing page

YEAR 5+: LAYERING IN LOYALTY

By year 5, the annual bingo team was a well-oiled machine. In 2022, we baked in our newly launched loyalty program. Changes included:

Different boards for different folks. There were four different bingo boards depending on what loyalty tier you were in. VITs (Very Important Thrifters) and Superstars made up our most engaged customers, while Stars are comprised of new customers.
Lowering barrier to entry. Past learnings found that window shoppers and Stars needed to learn about us before converting. Their boards included more feature and brand education, less actions to purchase.
Encourage long-term loyalty use. We introduced Rewards points with every BINGO to educate highlight our new program.

App versions