ST. LOUIS and REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Maritz, the leader in customer loyalty and employee motivation services, and Badgeville, the #1 gamification platform, today announced a partnership to transform the traditional customer loyalty, sales incentive and employee recognition market. With Badgeville leading the explosive growth of the gamification industry with hundreds of world-class customers across the globe, Maritz Motivation Solutions joined forces with the Silicon Valley firm to bring greater value to its new & improved gamified solutions for social loyalty, customer advocacy, and employee recognition.

"At the very core, loyalty and incentive programs are about changing behavior. We do this by providing effective program design and personally meaningful rewards," says Nicki Powers, Engagement Strategist at Maritz Motivation Solutions. "Through our work with the Maritz Institute, our extensive research has consistently proven that people are motivated by the opportunity to earn status, recognition, and reputation just as they are by the opportunity to earn rewards of economic value. Badgeville's Behavior Platform, in partnership with Maritz Motivation Solutions, is the only gamification solution on the market which enables businesses to benefit from all aspects of these behavior-driving techniques, from game mechanics to social mechanics, from reputation points to reward points and to have the sophisticated behavioral data to gain valuable insights about what drives people to interact and stay engaged with these programs across their enterprise."

Maritz Motivation Solutions has long provided robust incentive, recognition and loyalty solutions and high-quality tangible rewards for businesses seeking to improve business performance through customer and employee programs. Badgeville enables Maritz Motivation Solutions clients to track and influence user behavior across their web sites, mobile apps and enterprise applications. Additionally, Badgeville clients now have access directly to Maritz Motivation Solutions' enterprise-quality rewards and fulfillment services and solutions, enabling businesses to offer a full suite of virtual and tangible incentives for their gamification programs.

"The gap between traditional loyalty programs and modern gamified experiences is closing, thanks to the innovation by long-time global loyalty leaders such as Maritz Motivation Solutions, who understand that modern loyalty requires an update to address the digital lives of our customers and employees," said Kris Duggan, CEO, Badgeville. "We are honored to partner with a recognized leader in loyalty and redemption services, and to provide best in class gamification solutions for Maritz Motivation Solutions customers."

Maritz and Badgeville's customers can now:

• Reward all customer and employee behaviors across their web, mobile and enterprise applications
• Access a robust offering of virtual and tangible, "real-world" rewards to drive program participation
• Encourage key behaviors such as employee collaboration, social referrals, knowledge sharing, or writing reviews
• Offer instant, real-time positive feedback for customer and employee behavior
• Enable Behavior Data Analytics to gain deep insight into these high-value user behaviors

By optimizing participant engagement, companies can retain and motivate their best employees, improve the customer experience and ultimately increase revenues in this highly-competitive market.

About Badgeville
Badgeville, the #1 gamification and behavior management platform, enables companies in virtually every industry to influence and measure user behavior. World-class businesses in more than 20 countries use Badgeville's Behavior Platform, an award-winning Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution to increase customer loyalty, user engagement, and employee performance across an organization's websites, mobile apps and enterprise applications. With over 180 customers, Badgeville brings Game Mechanics, Reputation Mechanics, and Social Mechanics to industry leaders and innovators including Deloitte, EMC, Oracle, Autodesk, Bell Media, NBC, Universal Music, VMware, and more. Founded in 2010, Badgeville is based in Redwood City, Calif. and has offices in New York and Europe. (To learn more follow @Badgeville or visit www.badgeville.com.)

About Maritz Motivation Solutions
Based in St. Louis, Maritz Motivation Solutions is part of the Maritz family of companies. It offers full-service employee recognition, sales incentive and channel loyalty programs to U.S. and global companies. Maritz Motivation Solutions provides reward strategy and fulfillment for consumer loyalty programs and delivers best-in-class rewards and fulfillment services, including purposefully-chosen merchandise and experiences that excite, motivate and recognize people around the world. The people who work for Maritz Motivation Solutions are dedicated to being the best in the business, fun to work with and their clients' most valuable ally. For more information, follow @MaritzMotivates or visit www.maritzmotivation.com.

SOURCE Badgeville