How Gameball is Gamifying Growth Marketing in MENA

Entrepreneurship isn’t new to Ahmed Khairy. An engineer-turned-entrepreneur, Khairy’s first foray into entrepreneurship began in 2009 with the edtech company Kite Automation, later Coaching. He closed his entrepreneurial ventures in 2014, only to get back in the game in 2019 and co-found Gameball with Ahmed El Assy and Omar Alfar.

Gameball, a customer engagement platform that gamifies customer relationship management (CRM), allows merchants to funnel all customer interactions across platforms into one place.

In February 2023, Gameball raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by 500 Global, Seedra Ventures, Propeller, Core Vision, Arzan Ventures, Launch Africa, and P1 Ventures, along with other angel investors.

“Our solution combines gamification, loyalty management, and omnichannel communication into one integrated workflow, empowering digital-first businesses to launch comprehensive user engagement campaigns without extensive technical work or expensive setups,” explains Khairy in a conversation with Inc Arabia.

In doing this, Gameball makes it easier for merchants to learn about and analyze customer behavior, helps them to retain customers, run more effective marketing campaigns, and ultimately, make more money. 

Currently, the team is building Gameball as a Shopify-like app. Businesses can carry out multi-channel marketing campaigns, run loyalty programs, build customer profiles for targeted promotions, and offer rewards for increased engagement. All of the interaction points and channels that connect users to businesses are streamlined through a single dashboard, giving merchants visibility on consumer behavior and insights and allowing them to use the data to run their marketing campaigns.

There has been a significant uptake of customer relationship marketing (CRM) tools globally. According to a report by Fortune Business Insights, the market will exceed $145.79 billion in six years. ^[1]   This is primarily because of an uptake of online tools by merchants to increase profits, boost sales, and gain a competitive advantage after the pandemic.

CRM solutions allow businesses to piece together customer engagement from different sources and integrate multiple tools and platforms, saving time and technical expertise. What sets Gameball apart, according to Khairy, is its ability to streamline all customer engagement tools into one platform, providing businesses with a unified system to manage customer relationships.

“We have always had a passion for consumer behavior and behavioral economics. We believe that, through leveraging data and achieving hyper-personalization, brands can unlock significant untapped revenue potential while keeping customers happy,” explains Khairy.

How Does it Work?

To use Gameball, clients connect their backend with Gameball using different Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Software Development Kits (SDKs), and plugins. Through this, they can track customer events, enroll their customers in engagement programs, and run behavioral analytics.

Businesses can integrate Gameball’s ready-made widgets (customer interfaces) with their mobile apps and websites, which allows them to control interface branding. “Clients get access to a comprehensive dashboard where they configure their different loyalty programs and run targeted and dynamic engagement campaigns,” added Khairy.

The platform charges recurring subscriptions for the use of its products, in addition to service setup fees for clients who need them.

Gameball is currently focused on moving upmarket and serving more enterprises. Khairy tells us that the team is exploring new transactional revenue models that would allow them to take cuts from generated revenue.

Gameball, which has operations in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the US, helps its growth teams engage with a consumer base of over 60 million individuals. It has facilitated over $1 billion worth of transactions as of 2023 and helped businesses generate $140 million in extra revenues, according to Khairy.