The 21+ best gamification rewards for your community

Photo of Arina Kharlamova
Arina KharlamovaContent Marketer at Circle
Sep 09, 20249 min read
Blog post cover image

Q: How can you encourage your community members to participate—actively and intentionally—in building that thriving community you’ve dreamed of?

To find the answer, we might just have to go back to school:

  • M&Ms on the next chapter of the book you need to study.
  • Stars on your chart if you raise your hand in class.

We now know, thanks to folks like Pavlov and other scientists, that motivation and reward systems are intricately linked—and that it’s very possible to train our brains that ‘good things happen when I do X’.

For example, your body starts to crave the endorphin release after a good workout.

Gamifying your community is an easy and automated way to reward your active members, celebrate their contributions, and build a culture of fun and friendly competition.

But how do you reward them in order to encourage the right actions?

Lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of 20+ reward ideas to fuel your community gamification strategy.

The benefits of gamification

Apart from the pure reason that anything gamified is made more fun, gamification is also fantastic for showing appreciation for those who add the most value to your community.

Plus, their contributions and status becomes visible for everyone on your leaderboard (if you want)!

The automated appreciation that’s built-in to gamification strategies is also fantastic for retention, engagement, and even acquisition KPIs. Because participating in active communities is more fun and useful for everyone—not just the contributors.

Gamification can also help you scale your authentic engagement with members—whether you have 10, or 10,000 folks in your community.

This helps you stay in control of the quality of your community while scaling.

For creators? It’s a no-brainer.

How does gamification motivate people?

There are about 5,023,671 theories about motivation in psychology. Even more when you think about the psychological reasons we bond, congregate, befriend, learn, set, and complete goals.

Gamification combines all those internal and external motivations, and a bag of chips, and turns it into a process you can use to motivate your customers and members to do things that help the community.

Note: some communities may not be a good fit for gamification due to this—think addiction and abuse groups, anonymous communities, etc. And that’s totally okay!

21 Gamification rewards to thank your most engaged members

Over here at Circle HQ, we still believe there’s still huge power in personal touch when it comes to building communities. Many of these reward ideas focus on making folks who engage feel special for doing so—by being personal, intentional, and exclusive.

1. Congratulate members on reaching a new level

Feel free to do the “boring” thing and personally reach out with a short “hurrah and thank you”, or even record a short video congratulating them! For example, here’s one for you, Dear Reader.

2. Share exclusive discount codes for premium offerings

Any members who naturally help the community are prime candidates for any of your premium offers. Help them level up (and go deeper into your ecosystem as a result) by offering discounts on your higher tiers—like memberships, VIP programs, masterminds, or premium courses.

3. Schedule a 1:1 coaching session

If your business includes coaching, offering a 1:1 session helps folks feel seen and appreciated—which goes a long way towards fostering long-term loyalty.

It also creates a clear link between just how much you value their contributions (since, chances are, your coaching prices are some of your higher-end offerings.)

4. Unlock direct messaging capabilities

Some community leads prefer to limit direct messaging to prevent spam. But direct messaging is a powerful tool—built only for the worthy, in some spaces. Reward those who have shown good faith with their membership.

5. Give top members access to a private chat or small-group mentorship space

Dave Gerhardt only created a community because of his students’ feedback, which was: we don’t just want to learn from you, we also want to learn from each other.

Joining a space where the most impressive folks from your community hang out? Hell of a reward.

6. Invite them private events, like intimate VIP roundtables or fireside chats

Sometimes, the best reward is rubbing elbows with people you’ve always wanted to meet.

Creating intimate communities—especially of your highly engaged members—can act like a powder keg for your business, and catnip for that top tier.

7. Award members with branded swag

Tech companies do it. Musicians do it. TikTok creators do it. Birds and bees do it. (Ok, fine, they don’t.)

All that to say, there’s nothing like saying thank you in the language of gift-giving to make your members feel like part of the crew.

8. Invite members to ask privileged questions for a Q&A

Hitting higher membership tiers can give your members a leg up to get their questions answered by the pros you bring in, or the pro you are.

9. Unlock discounts on paid summits and events

Offering discounts to must-attend-events-of-the-season is a surefire way to get in your members’ good graces—no matter whether they’re affiliate event promotions or big-name events you’re throwing yourself.

10. Grant access to a premium resource library

Beginner templates are a dime a dozen—but not everybody has access to high-level strategy docs, walkthroughs, or analysis templates. (Or whatever matters to your community members.)

11. Invite members to a join your ambassador program

Once your members reach a certain tier of being extra-awesome—turning them into a promotion partner, or ambassador is an obvious choice. Because delighted customers make for your strongest marketing.

12. Add members to a beta testers space for early access to new features

Getting to test-drive new features before everyone else is one of those rewards that always feels exclusive. Whether that’s gamification (ahem), group coaching, or a new course—your most engaged members are your best testing ground for authentic feedback, while simultaneously making them feel super special.

13. Offer a free trial of premium content

You know when Amazon or Google preview a book for you that you’ve been thinking about buying… and then it cuts off right at the moment you’re getting super into it? A little annoying, to be sure, but man does it create some forward motion (and feel like you got a peek behind the curtain).

14. Provide a direct line to community leadership via a secret chat space

There’s nothing that’ll make people feel as powerful or important as having a direct line to the King or Queen. (We’re looking at you, Lady Danbury.)

15. Assign a fun member tag which corresponds to their level

Whether your gardening group knights someone with a Green Thumb crown, or a Starter Seedling one…

Your tags are your oysters. Love them, honor them, dole them out with care.

16. Provide early access to new courses

If your community is centered, or includes, an element of education—which most do—then providing early access is something that people will really appreciate. For example, we guarantee you that Codie Sanchez beta-tested and provided early access to her just-launched Main Street Accelerator course to her top members first—before launching it publicly.

17. Set up a monthly "Expert Spotlight" event for top contributors to share insights

As your community grows, pulling the golden nuggets from the million amazing conversations becomes harder and harder. That’s why setting up a dedicated space to do so, as well as highlighting some of your top contributors and their areas of expertise works so well as a reward. Because it offers exposure, recognition, and extra cred in the community.

18. Offer super affiliate status and unlock extra commission or referral bonus opportunities for top performers

Top online marketing minds Amy Porterfield and Julie Solomon are massive supporters of affiliate marketing—for good reason. Because you want to reward your biggest spokespeople. How do you do that? Help them make more money, too.

19. Invite top members to host their own community event

Think of this as both a reward, and a partnership. Your members have their own areas of expertise, knowledge, and community—and combining forces by offering your “stage” can be incredibly beneficial as a marketing tactic, apart from just a show of gratitude.

20. Provide an all-inclusive paid trip for top contributors to meet community leadership in person.

Glo Atanmo does intimate get-togethers for her community members—and while this is a project in itself, it can be one of those “make a customer for life” events that pays for itself.

Glo Atanmo takes every Life Leap cohort on a trip as a way to reward them and celebrate their progress.

21. Give a special shout-out in the digest or monthly recap

I don’t know about you, but I’ve saved all my media, social, and publication mentions—from all time—on my “Hype Board”. It’s what you need to get you out of a funk, or when business is crawling, or when you face a setback. That’s why giving a special shout-out to your biggest cheerleaders could be just the thing that helps push through the same.

A gamification rewards program—on autopilot, with Circle

The two most important parts of setting up gamification incentives successfully?

  1. Only incentivize crucial actions—like engaging, connecting, or contributing, and
  2. Reward generously—these people have invested their time, brain, and money in you.

Without further ado—get cracking on building out the best reward system your community has ever seen.

And check out all the things you can do with Circle’s newly launched gamification features.

Subscribe to The Making Of newsletter for creator stories, playbooks, and insights, sent straight to your inbox.

Related articles

Want to build an exceptional community?

Start your 14-day free trial of Circle now.