Flowbird CRM Insights

How We Built A Live Automation Engine Disguised As A Mini-Game

Written by Louis Tomlinson | 03-Feb-2026 09:57:29
How We Built A Live Automation Engine Disguised As A Mini-Game

Deal Dash looked simple.
Tap a stage. Beat your score. Climb the leaderboard.

But behind that mini-game sat a live automation engine quietly handling lead capture, real-time scoring, engagement loops, CRM syncing and post-expo follow-up, all without the player ever seeing it.

And that was intentional.

Because great systems shouldn’t feel complicated.
They should just work.

Why We Built Deal Dash In The First Place

Expos are noisy.

Every stand is competing for attention. Everyone has branded pens, tote bags and well-meaning sales conversations.

We didn’t want more giveaways.

We wanted something people would actually remember.

More importantly, we wanted something that reflected what Flowbird does every day:

Build systems that feel simple on the surface, but do serious work behind the scenes.

Deal Dash started as a fun idea, a small interactive game that would bring people to our stand and give them a reason to come back.

But we quickly realised it could become much more than that.

Instead of just building a game, we decided to build a fully automated engagement system, disguised as one.

Designing For Real Behaviour (Not Just Footfall)

We weren’t just trying to get people to play once.

We intentionally designed Deal Dash to encourage:

  • Repeat engagement because people could replay from their phones
  • Competition through live leaderboard dynamics
  • Conversation starters as a natural icebreaker at the stand
  • Clean CRM capture with no messy spreadsheets or manual imports

Even the game mechanics were intentional.

“Errors” aren’t just a visual element. Ignore them and you lose your streak.

Because data quality matters.

And we couldn’t resist sneaking that lesson in.

What You Didn’t See While Playing

From the outside, Deal Dash looks like a small browser game.

Under the hood, every score submission triggers a real-time automation chain:

  • Front-end HTML sends score data via webhooks
  • Make orchestrates logic and routing
  • Data is written to secure datastores
  • Leaderboard rankings are recalculated live
  • HubSpot records are updated instantly
  • Email feedback loops fire automatically
  • Post-expo follow-up sequences are prepared

Every tap creates a ripple effect across multiple systems.

Players never see it.

And that’s exactly the point.

Why We Didn’t Build This Inside One Platform

We often get asked:

“Why not just do this all inside HubSpot?”

Because real business problems rarely live inside one system.

Flowbird isn’t a “single-platform agency”. We design solutions that use the right tools for the job.

In this case:

  • HubSpot handles CRM, segmentation and communication
  • Make handles orchestration, logic and automation routing
  • Custom front-end handles the experience layer

This is how most of our client projects work too.

We build around real-world requirements, not platform limitations.

The Hard Part Nobody Sees

The most difficult part of Deal Dash wasn’t the game interface.

It was everything behind it.

When you’re dealing with:

  • Hundreds of simultaneous players
  • Live ranking changes
  • Real-time email triggers
  • Data integrity
  • Timing dependencies

Small errors compound quickly.

During testing we saw:

  • Emails triggering at the wrong moments
  • Scores mis-aligning
  • Data not passing cleanly
  • Filters behaving “almost right”, which is often worse than broken

So we tested. Then tested again. Then broke it on purpose.

Because production systems don’t get second chances.

This is the unglamorous side of automation work, but it’s also the part that separates working systems from flashy demos.

What Surprised Us Most

The biggest surprise wasn’t technical.

It was human.

Some players came back more than 20 times.

People checked the leaderboard from their phones.

They returned to the stand to see if they’d been knocked out.

They brought colleagues over to try and beat them.

That feedback loop worked exactly how we hoped.