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ORLANDO, FL -- (Marketwire) -- 03/20/13 -- Loyalty Expo -- Today at Loyalty Expo, gamification pioneer and leader Bunchball announced that Eloqua, a leading provider of cloud-based modern marketing applications and a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle, is using Bunchball's proven game mechanics to create an engaged social community. Eloqua has reported a 55 percent increase in engagement, a measurable drop in support costs, improvements in retention rates, and a decrease in the time needed to administer its online user community after deploying Jive's Advanced Gamification Module powered by Bunchball Nitro™.

Eloqua is building loyalty with customers of its marketing automation software by applying game mechanics to its Topliners community, which uses the Jive social business platform for increased collaboration. Eloqua engages community members with newsfeeds, points, badges, challenges and leaderboards to encourage them to share best practices, post problems and solutions, improve their Eloqua expertise and knowledge, and develop social connections between users.

Various missions challenge Topliners members to participate and contribute to the community. As they earn points, they "level up" through the ranks to ultimately become a Topliners Rock Star. Members earn the most points by completing "master's certification" at Eloqua University, the online tutorials component of Topliners. And to encourage Topliners to attend its annual user conference, Eloqua awards special badges to attendees, as well as to finalists and winners of coveted Markie awards.

"Our experience with the Bunchball-powered Jive Advanced Gamification Module has exceeded my expectations," said Heather Foeh, director of customer culture at Eloqua. "I've been blown away by how much people have gotten into it. We have people following and helping others more, engaged in day-to-day conversation, posting status updates to celebrate the progress they're making, and noting how points and badges fuel their Topliners addiction. All this has resulted in a more engaged, loyal and active user community -- and we're seeing benefits in everything from reduced support calls to increased subscription renewals."

A Measurable Return from Gamification
Since gamifying Topliners in July 2012, Eloqua has realized a return on investment (ROI) in several areas:

• Engagement soars. Member participation has increased so much that Eloqua had to add a new top level called "Rock Star" because so many people reached the previous top level, "Ninja."
• Support agents reduced field calls by 40 percent. A more active and responsive community also helps drive down support costs. Eloqua's support organization estimates that for every 100 conversations started in the Topliners Do It section, they save 40 phone calls into the company's support line. Because the Do It section sees an average of 300 new conversations every month, that translates to approximately 120 support calls saved monthly.
• Gamification helps drive renewal. Eloqua sees gamification as a key contributor to increasing subscription renewals. Topliners members have a much higher renewal rate; 82 percent of renewing customers have at least one user on Topliners, while Topliners participation is far lower among non-renewing customers. And in surveys, customers cite their ability to belong to Topliners as a major reason for renewing their Eloqua subscription.
• Eloqua's engaged community is a factor in software sales. Sales prospects regularly cite Topliners as a reason for choosing Eloqua; they find it reassuring that such an active community is available to them as a resource.
• Topliners is easier to administer. As Topliners have become more engaged, they have also become more self-moderating and mutually helpful, which means community managers can spend less time monitoring and moderating discussions and answering questions.
• Gamification has created a more cohesive community. Topliners have become so engaged online that they arrange real-world meet-ups at industry events.

"Nothing drives new business like a happy and loyal customer, and Eloqua's experience with Bunchball-powered gamification shows that the right motivators can create a fertile environment for establishing loyalty and engagement within a customer community," said Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer at Bunchball and author of Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification, a new book from McGraw-Hill. "What's outstanding about the gamified Topliners community is how it delivers business benefits not just in terms of creating a visceral connection with customers, but also in reducing support costs and helping to drive sales and renewals. Eloqua's experience with building loyalty through gamification is about realizing ROI -- from the top line to the bottom line."

"Topliners offers a powerful case study for the potent combination of social collaboration and gamification," said Curtis Gross, senior technical marketing manager at Jive Software. "With Jive and Bunchball, Eloqua has created a community that embraces collaboration to solve real business problems which, ultimately engages new and existing customers. Eloqua's Topliners community is a fantastic example of a company deriving real business value from a social business platform."

Bunchball at Loyalty Expo, March 20-22 in Orlando
Bunchball will demonstrate how its gamification engine helps enterprises build loyalty, engage customers and employees, and encourage social collaboration in Booth #505. In addition, Bunchball's Barry Kirk, senior director of digital strategy, and Joseph Cole, senior digital strategist, will host a workshop from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 20, titled, "Loyalty 3.0: Avoiding the Engagement Cliff and Driving Sustained Engagement through Gamification."

About Bunchball:
Bunchball is the market leader and visionary in gamification. Bunchball enables organizations to improve business performance throughout their ecosystem by creating highly active and loyal customers, employees, and partners. Bunchball's comprehensive suite of innovative cloud-based solutions empowers companies to engage and motivate, leading to improved employee productivity, customer loyalty, audience engagement, and ROI. Bunchball's world-class customers include Adobe, HP, Cisco, MTV, Comcast, LiveOps, VMware and Hasbro. Based in Silicon Valley, Bunchball's investors include Granite Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, Northport Investments, and Correlation Ventures. For more information, visit www.bunchball.com, our blog at www.gamification.com, or follow @bunchball.