We all know that rewards programs are one of the great keys to opening up a mobile payments program.
A new development from Nintendo, part of its move to seemingly diversify from the video game market, known as Miitomo may pose an exciting concept for not only gamers, but for those who offer rewards programs.
Miitomo was released just days ago, and it’s already brought over a million users to the table so far.
With Miitomo, the app will question its user about various events in their life—things they did over the weekend, foods most enjoyed, and so on—and then the answers are presented to friends.
Sounds like nothing particularly different from any other social media operation, until a new point emerges.
While you tell the app about yourself, and that information gets relayed to others, you too can receive information from Miitomo.
The more information you provide, and the more information you seek out about your friends, the more reward points—in Silver, Gold and Platinum varieties—users accrue.
As the points mount up, users will be able to redeem said points for goods and services.
Naturally, this isn’t the first time that a social network has tried to get data from its users.
A program like Miitomo makes it different, in that it’s not just expecting users to provide the data to “tell their friends” about things.
No, Miitomo seems to be making social media information provision more palatable by adding a rewards program and a kind of gaming component with it. That’s a ball a lot of companies could take and run with.
Instead of hoping that people talk about favorite foods on social media and use that information to alter menus and stocking plans, businesses could offer rewards points for spilling the beans about such things and then take that data and run with it.
Businesses need data. With that data, businesses can change hours of operation, store layouts, stock, and even prices to some degree to better accommodate customers’ tastes and desires.
Businesses need to know just what those are first, and if a set of adorably rendered Nintendo-style Miis backed up with reward points can get that data reliably, that may well change the reward program as we know it.