Dreamforce 2012 is right around the corner, and that means that a lot of Salesforce users from around the world will convene in San Francisco Sept. 18–21 with three things on the brain:

1. Adoption
2. Adoption
3. Adoption

You can hardly blame them. The management world overwhelmingly recognizes user adoption to be the most crucial factor for deriving value from enterprise platforms like Salesforce, according to a survey conducted by Sand Hill Group and Neochange. If people don’t use it, you won’t see the ROI you want.

But as thousands of Salesforce customers will tell you, there’s a proven way to engage users in Salesforce, and keep them engaged. Gamification – applying game mechanics to non-game environments – is fast becoming a standard and valued weapon in the battle for employee mindshare.

Here at Bunchball, we’ve helped companies engage and motivate legions of Salesforce users by integrating those mechanics directly into the Salesforce environment. What users see are missions, levels, points, badges, progress bars, profiles and leaderboards – you may recognize these because of Bunchball’s collaboration with Bluewolf to gamify Bluewolf’s #GoingSocial offering. 

Gamification works by addressing innate human desires for competition, goal-setting, achievement, recognition and community. When you can leverage these elemental forces, you can drive the behaviors you want – like motivating people to make deeper and more meaningful use of Salesforce.

If you’re thinking about using gamification to increase adoption, here are four tips to keep in mind:

1. At my signal, unleash Chatter. Adoption is in large part a social experience because peer-to-peer influences are among the most powerful. That makes Chatter, the enterprise social network within Salesforce, crucial to any adoption initiative. In a Salesforce environment gamified with Bunchball’s Nitro for Salesforce™ solution, you can identify, track and reward Chatter activity, such as making posts, updating status, and commenting on, liking or sharing posts made by others – all behaviors that help drive adoption.
2. Challenge them, but aim them first. Missions and challenges speak to people’s desire to compete – a desire that’s especially strong in sales teams – but be sure to deploy challenges in ways that drive behaviors that will support your business goals. If adoption is your goal, create a challenge that urges employees to Chatter every day for a month. 
3. Teams, glorious teams. Competition works best when it occurs at two levels – individually and within teams. Everyone loves to be No. 1, and applying a team dynamic to challenges gives more participants a shot at sharing No. 1 status.
4. Get in their faces. Use progress bars, levels and leaderboards – which are integrated right into the Salesforce interface – to keep users moving toward a state of continuous use.

Want to learn more? Visit us at Dreamforce 2012 in Bunchball’s booth #1409 and Bluewolf ‘s booth #801. If you do, there’s a good chance that next year, the only thing you’ll be worried about adopting is the confident swagger that comes from having a widely used Salesforce implementation.