How Gamification Could Improve My Smallcase Investing Experience?
Updated: Jul 3
If I were to suffice modern-day investing in two words, I’d say — too much. Too much information, too many investing choices, too many experts and the list goes on.
It was exactly due to factors like these that I always found the investment industry as a deep sea, surrounding an island of profits.
Since I’m adventurous (ready to risk investing) but hydrophobic (scared of drowning in loss) I’d always wait.
Wait for someone to be my boat and help me reach the island, sailing through waves of right investing knowledge and in 2021, one my friends did arrive in a boat called, Smallcase.
“Dude, just start using smallcase if spending time on choosing the right stocks to invest in, is too much for you,” he said.
And it was too much! Finding the best stocks to trade and then investing via Upstox required effort. I was looking for something simpler and that’s was I found smallcase appealing.
Why Could Smallcase Acquire Me as a Customer?
I’d heard of Mutual Funds, of course but unlike the lack of portfolio control, I could enjoy greater control in case of smallcase.
Based on the idea of investing in diversified, themed portfolios, a smallcase is a basket of stocks and ETFs that are created and managed by top Indian investment experts.
These portfolios are based on themes and strategies like EV sector, IT sector, Pharma sector etc and are best to help you get started with investing in Indian stock markets.
So like most beginners, I watched a video by Ankur Warikoo, an internet entrepreneur on how to invest in smallcase and invested in 2 smallcases in October 2021 to get started.
Fast forward to April 2023, the number of smallcases I’ve invested in remains the same with one SIP always due.
In simple words, I stopped investing in smallcases after a few months.
Why Could Smallcase Not Engage Me as a Customer?
I started investing in smallcases stocks because my friend suggested it to be a good option.
While it indeed is, this was still an external push as I wasn’t crazy about trading and had a long way to go in terms of learning.
Furthermore, when I started seeing turbulence in Global Opportunities, one of my smallcases, I became hesitant to invest more and eventually lost interest.
According to Clevertap, 73% of new fintech app users churn within 1 week and I faced this too. I lacked investing knowledge and feared losing more money.
Smallcase could have helped me overcome this fear, helping themselves in turn.
All I needed was a motivation to resume my investing activity and as someone who now understands the best way smallcase could have engaged me, I’m going to tell you all about it.
Gamifying My Smallcase Investing Experience
The goal was simple. Smallcase had to increase the investment amount through me and for this there are two straightforward ways.
Encourage me to come back to the app, complete my pending SIP instalment or invest in new smallcases
Make me bring new investments via referrals (which smallcase already does as part of smallcase refer and earn program)
Let’s discuss some investment gamification ideas for each scenario.
1a. Rewarding My Smallcase Investing Activity
Say instead of saying that you’ve an SIP in smallcase due today and complete it to stay on track with your financial goals, what if the call the action said —
“Complete your SIP payment today and win a scratch card reward up to 10% cashback on minimum investing amount?”
This could have extrinsically motivated me to at least click on their link and complete the SIP, especially if the minimum investment amount of smallcase was lower.
A cashback reward for completing monthly SIP instalments is a great way to not miss out on monthly investments from customers.
For example, if giving a cashback of up to ₹400 gets a smallcase a monthly investment of ₹4000, it’s a win-win, right?
Also, cashback is only one of the ways to reward a customer’s timely SIP payment.
As an investment tech or trading company, you can also offer virtual rewards like Points for user actions that matter to you.
In smallcase scenario, it was monthly SIP payment.
In the case of WeBull, a US-based trading platform, it is stock prediction.
WeBull Points for Paper Trading Competition
Practice trading for free by building fake portfolios and win real cash rewards up to $300. This is how WeBull gamifies users’ stock trading experience.
WeBull hosts weekly Paper Trading competitions, a simulated trading where users buy and sell securities without putting actual money at risk.
The steps are simple.
Sign up
Use virtual cash to strategise and build portfolios
Make stock predictions
Get a prize of up to $300 if return rate is higher than 0%
Now if you’re wondering what role WeBull Points have to play in this, let me clarify that.
WeBull Points are crucial in order to enter into their paper trading competition. Points can be collected by contributing to the WeBull Community via actions such as
Registering on WeBull (100 Points),
Posting (2 Points)
Commenting (1 Point)
Sharing posts (10 Points)
Correct stock prediction (1 Point)
So this is how trading companies pick the events that matter to their business goals and gamify it by either giving cash or virtual rewards.
In order to move ahead, I have to go back to the smallcase situation wherein my smallcase wasn’t profitable. This made me hesitant to complete instalments to a loss making smallcase.
Such cases may cause even a cash reward on SIP repayment not to entice me.
Does that mean smallcase can’t engage me ever? The answer lies in the next gamification strategy.
1b. Rewarding My Investment Learning
As mentioned in the beginning, I started my smallcase journey with Ankur Warikoo’s video on how to use it. Smallcase could suggest that I watch and learn from such videos on investing tips, portfolio management or best smallcases to invest in and reward me for doing so. In addition to offering rewards, say cash or points like WeBull, they could provide badges to nudge a sense of accomplishment within me.
This is one of the great ways to motivate users intrinsically and similar to WeBull, How The Market Works, a free online stock market simulation platform does the same.
How The Market Works Gamified Personal Finance
HTMW has gamified personal finance literacy for students introducing lessons and quizzes on budgeting, managing expenses, credit, stock marketing etc, managed by teachers.
This online free stock market game for classrooms has a badge system that rewards students for achieving specific milestones or completing certain tasks on the platform like,
Making their first trade
Trading 5 healthcare sector stocks
Shorting 10 stocks
Buying their first mutual fund
Completing personal finance lessons in HTMW learning centre on credit
The badge system is designed to motivate students to engage with the curriculum and learn investing and according to me, it’s a brilliant idea to add financial literacy at school level.
Since every gamification must have a purpose, HTMW has enabled it by letting students flaunt their badges on their Portfolio ranking board.
Unlike Google badges that failed due to lacking purpose, HTMW badges let students level their badges up by mastering a concept.
This way, they are motivated to improve their skills and get to show off a higher level badge in turn.
HTMW stock market gamification helps them get over 475k users every year and over 12,000 teachers used them in 2016.
2a. Rewarding Me for Referrals
Currently, smallcase runs a referral program that offers referrers with ₹300 cashback into bank account if the referee makes an investment of more than ₹4000 in smallcases. At first, I felt that giving a referrer just ₹300 against receiving an investment of ₹4000 didn’t make sense. Then I found out that the inviter or referrer also gets discount coupons which they can redeem on their subscription purchase or renewal.
While the referral rewards seem fine overall, I can’t help but get excited over the concept of a free stock as referral reward.
Robinhood, a commission-free stock trading and investing app, offers free stocks as gifts.
Robinhood Referral Program Free Stocks
For each friend that joins Robinhood referral program by linking bank accounts, both referrer and referee earn gift stock valued $5 to $200.
Upon a successful Robinhood referral, both referrer and friend get a cash value between $5 and $200. They can use their cash reward to claim a fractional share of a stock.
This is the point where Robinhood gamification gets interesting. After a referrer is eligible for a free stock, they see a surprise rewards screen where they can pick any one stock card.
Next, a scratched reward card appears and shows the stock value won.
Basically, Robinhood refer and earn program is based on surprise stocks between $5 to $200 and that’s what makes Robinhood gamification a catch!
Time for Trading Transfiguration Using Gamification
There you have it, some of the best gamification ideas for trading that smallcase could have used to engage me better as a customer.
Considering the high CAC, low retention and high churn attached with investment tech companies, it’s important that they acquire, retain and engage users in new ways and that’s why gamification jumps in.
But truth be told, building a gamified campaign is no joke especially with tech cost and bandwidth.
That’s why Flyy exists, a gamified referral and loyalty rewards platform that can help you gamify trading experience for your customers using game elements like scratch card, variable rewards, spin the wheel, stamps, daily check-in and much more.
Ready to swim in the gamification ocean? Book a demo today.
