Snipp’s Guide to an Effective and Engaging Digital Sweepstakes Campaign

An estimated 55 million[1] Americans enter sweepstakes and contests each year, making them an essential element of a marketer’s toolbox. And as brands increase investments in digital engagement channels – be it websites, social media pages, and mobile apps – the lure of potential prize-winnings can invite high levels of user traffic.

PwC’s Annual Global Retail Survey in 2014 found that 23% of respondents who visit brand social media sites did so for the opportunity to compete in various brand-sponsored contests – up from 16% the previous year[2].

These promotions can deliver the most valuable kind of payoff in the hypercompetitive bid for online eyeballs: voluntary, validated, and visible customer profiles. But simply giving something away for free will not necessarily generate these results. To make sense of what really works in this evolving, increasingly populated space, we’ve put together Snipp’s Guide to an Effective and Engaging Digital Sweepstakes Campaign.

• Make it Defined – Trying to increase web traffic? App downloads? Build your CRM database? Every aspect of the promotion should be informed by the goals defined at the outset
• Make it Easy to Enter – too many barriers to entry can put off the average person – no matter how amazing the prize is. We’ve found that a simple text to an offer code, triggering auto-entry into a sweepstakes promotion, is extremely effective. Technology platforms, like our own SnippCheck, allow brands to effortlessly optimize and scale such campaigns for the web and mobile.
• Make it Omni-Channel – increase participants by allowing entry via social media, text-to-win and web (either the brand website or a micro-site for the promotion). Everyone has their go-to method for participation, leave no one behind!
• Make it Viral – participants should be able to earn more entries by sharing the sweepstakes with their friends
• Make it Time-Bound – Promotions shouldn’t outlive customer interest and attention spans – innovative contests even match their lifespan to a TV-show, revealing winners within 60 minutes.
• Make it Legal – Triple check state and federal regulations for your promotion – and be careful with hash-tagging
• Make it Scalable – Platforms like SnippCheck enable early results from promotions to inform their overall scale, quickly adapting to the customer response, and being ultimately more cost-effective for the sponsor
• Make it Insightful – Never forget that the contest or sweepstake should help you measure and gain actionable intelligence on customer behavior
• Make it Valuable – Put that data you’ve collected to good use – surprise and delight customers with more personalized future interactions, in order to build true brand loyalty
• Work with the right partner: Make sure your sweepstakes vendors are experienced and understand sweepstakes laws

To learn more, see how Snipp helps you with Sweepstakes Management & Administration!

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/retail-consumer/assets/achieving-total-retail.pdf