We have recently launched ParkPlay Milestones!

It’s our brand new way of encouraging ParkPlayers to come to ParkPlay regularly and then celebrating them for doing so. 

We are now recognising when a ParkPlayer has come to their fifth, twentieth, fiftieth and one hundredth ParkPlay. 

Here are the five reasons why we are investing so much energy into making Milestones a core part of the ParkPlayer experience.

1. People making ParkPlay a habit is amazing and we want to celebrate that

People choosing to make ParkPlay part of their weekly routine is brilliant. And, people coming together regularly as a community is at the very heart of what we are trying to achieve with ParkPlay. 

Over the last three years we have not done enough to encourage and celebrate it when it happens, so this is our first step to doing that better.

2. Gamification is a great way of keeping people coming back

The brilliant PlayLeaders who create a feeling of community and friendship at their ParkPlays is of course giving ParkPlayers a reason to come back. However, since our inception we as an organisation have lacked a meaningful way to support them in that, and provide secondary reasons to keep returning. 

It is no secret that gamifying attendance and rewarding the regular returning to an event, club, game or app is a great proven way to continually motivate people to come back again and again. Milestones are our way of harnessing that power. 

3. A positive hook and a way of reminding people

Through engagement with ParkPlayers recently, we have learnt that more often than not people don’t regularly return simply because busy family life gets in the way and sometimes ParkPlay slips off the radar.

So we wanted to find a way of continually getting ParkPlay to the forefront of people’s minds and also give us a way of giving people small and regular nudges that remind them about ParkPlay in a fun way. Milestones will allow us to send people regular reminders that have a real hook to them. 

4. An incentive for people to make sure they are checked in every week

Tracking the number of people coming to ParkPlay is vital so we can monitor the impact we are having. This relies on ParkPlayers registering and then checking in each week at ParkPlay. We wanted to provide a motivation for people to want to do this and a clear benefit for doing it, which to date we have not had.

Registering and checking in will be the way people build up their attendances towards their next Milestone.

5. Merchandise that builds affinity with the ParkPlay brand 

As part of the Milestones roll out, we are creating Milestones Merchandise. We have seen at a small scale that people having ParkPlay merchandise at a ParkPlay (eg: t-shirts), can really foster a sense of belonging. We know that when people feel a sense of belonging they are more likely to shout about ParkPlay, be a champion of it and crucially invite more people to come along and play! 

So, our ambition is to create a sense of belonging to ParkPlay as a whole as well as the local ParkPlays, as a first step of building out more brand affinity and more champions spreading the word. 

To get things underway, right now we are emailing ParkPlayers who reach a Milestone with a celebration email and an exclusive digital ParkPlay Milestones certificate. In the new year, however, we will be launching four exciting new ways of working with Milestones:

• We are developing with our partners at New Edge Studio a brand new sub-brand for the Milestones.
• In partnership with Summit Crazy we will launch our brand new line of exclusive ParkPlay Milestones merchandise, which will be only available to ParkPlayers who reach each Milestone. 
• We are evolving our digital system with Plinth, so Parkplayers can see how many ParkPlays they and their family members have been to in real time
• We are also building out the functionality to send automatic prompts to ParkPlayers via email and SMS when they are getting close to a Milestone!

Find your local ParkPlay

Please visit our ParkPlay Parks page to find your local ParkPlay and come and join us for your ParkPlay session. We play every Saturday morning.