Loyalty programme or gamification? What works in charging and mobility apps

Every charging and mobility app gets asked for "a loyalty programme" sooner or later. Often what the team actually needs is something else: a reason to open the app between charges, a reason to come back to the same network, or a reason to charge at a different hour. Loyalty and gamification answer different questions. This is how we tell them apart.

Two different tools

• Loyalty rewards a relationship over time: points, tiers, member prices, partner rewards. It works when people come back often enough to see their progress, and when the rewards are worth something to them.
• Gamification makes a moment more engaging: a game, a challenge, a season, a streak. It works when there is a moment to fill, and when the play is light enough that nobody feels pushed.

Most good products use a little of both. The mistake is starting with the mechanism instead of the behaviour you want to change.

Start with three questions

1. How often do people come? A driver who charges twice a week sees points add up; one who charges once a month forgets them. Low frequency calls for fewer, simpler rewards, or for a reason to open the app that has nothing to do with charging.
2. Is there a moment to fill? Charging leaves drivers waiting next to the car, phone in hand. That is a natural moment for a short game or a challenge. A five-minute scooter ride isn't.
3. What does the business need? Retention, moving demand off-peak, more sessions on underused stations, or better store ratings are different goals, and each needs a different mechanic. A programme that tries to do all four usually does none.

What we've seen work

• A game in the waiting moment. We built Snake inside the Zes app. More than 700,000 drivers play it while their car charges, and seasons give them a reason to come back for the next one. It works because it fills time drivers already have, and it never stands between them and the charge.
• A programme that adapts to each person. For Super73 Crew, the e-bike brand's rider app, we built a loyalty engine that learns each rider and writes a programme for them, rather than one ladder everybody has to climb.
• Seasons instead of streaks. In Octopus Wintermode, a seasonal companion inside the Octopus app, we chose a design with no streaks at all: a season with a beginning and an end, from October to March, instead of a chain people are afraid to break.

Mechanics, and when they backfire

• Points per kWh or per session: clear and fair for frequent users. They turn into a hidden discount when the rewards are only money off, and margins pay for it.
• Tiers: strong for your best customers, demotivating for everyone else if the next level is out of reach. Protect a tier for a while instead of dropping people the moment they slow down.
• Streaks: powerful, and easy to turn into guilt. Add a freeze, and never tie a streak to something people don't control, like the weather or a broken charger.
• Challenges and seasons: good for trying a new station or charging off-peak. Keep them short and make the goal visible.
• Partner rewards: useful when charging itself is a commodity. They only work if the partners are places your drivers already go.
• Games: best in a waiting moment, in your brand, and short. A game that delays the charge or hides the stop button is a design failure, not engagement.

Measure it honestly

• Compare drivers who took part with those who didn't, over the same period, and look at before and after. Without that, a busy month looks like a successful programme.
• Track repeat sessions and retention at 30 and 90 days, not app opens. Opens are easy to inflate.
• Where revenue data is connected, look at revenue per driver. Where it isn't, say so, and don't claim it.

A few lines not to cross

• Consent for marketing messages, collected properly under KVKK and the GDPR.
• No dark patterns: no fake countdowns, no rewards that expire in ways people can't see.
• Games and rewards that work with a screen reader, or have an accessible alternative. The European Accessibility Act covers the app around them.

Where we come in

• Growth & Loyalty Sprint (€3,900, two weeks): your data and journeys reviewed, the segments that matter found, a loyalty model designed and a concept tested with real users.
• blurple eMobility OS: games, rewards, streaks, seasons and wallet cards inside your existing charging app, with the measurement built in.

We design and build loyalty and engagement for products people use every week. If you're weighing a programme, we're happy to look at the numbers with you first.