Sweepstakes and promotional contests have been around for a while now, whether run from your mail, newspaper, television, or computer. But now running a sweepstake is easier than ever by using a sweepstakes administration company.
Why do companies still run sweepstakes?
Sweepstakes are still one of the very best ways to get a huge flux of new customers to your business with a great return on your investment. This means you can get a ton of new customers without spending too much money.
In addition, these types of contests excite and entice people in a way that often does not seem forced. That means the customer does not feel like the company is directly selling to them – but rather that they are in control of their decision to try a product or brand. The idea of receiving something of value for free or nearly free, causes many customers to give their personal information which allows companies to market to them again in the future.
How do you go about running a sweepstakes contest?
The best way to run a sweepstakes contest is to hire a sweepstakes company to manage your contest. Below we identify many of the reasons why.
#1 – Legal Compliance is Important and Involved
Sweepstakes are subject to a lot of legal scrutiny depending on the region in which you are running the contest. Have you heard of legal compliance, risk management, official rules, and disclosure development? No? How about state registrations, surety bonds, and IRS filing, prize structure planning, and winner affidavit management? So you see, there is a lot involved with covering your legal bases and that is one very important reason why you should hire a sweepstakes administration company.
#2 – Online Application to Collect Entries
You will need an online portal to keep track of your contest entries. This is the best way to ensure you receive each entry and that they are properly entered into the system. If you were simply collecting email entries your email could be full of inconsistent, missing, invalid entries that would take you weeks to sort through. A proper online administration will make sure you can take care of it all in one place, including in some cases reporting.
#3 – Consulting and Guidance for the Right Offer
You may think everyone wants a specific product or service, but a professional sweepstakes administration company has the expertise to know what truly entices and engages customers in many different types of businesses.
Therefore, that guidance and consultation prior to running the contest is essential to making sure you have the most successful contest. You do not want to cost yourself the mistake of not running a good promotion.
#4 – Prize Fulfillment and Notification
You may be running an ongoing promotion or a contest that involves many tiers of prizes, and do you really want to manage all that fulfillment by yourself? A sweepstake administration will take care of the prize fulfillment, notifying the winners and making sure all proper documents are signed and taken care of.
In addition, the right company will moderate and judge the contest as well if you so choose, which can give you nearly hands off peace of mind that your contest is running smoothly. You can go about your real business of running your actual business.
#5 – Reporting and Analytics
Any marketing agency or business who understands marketing and promotion, will want to understand their numbers and know exactly how the contest fared. They will want to know the number of entries, the conversion if any of the customers went ahead and bought products or services, and they will want to know how the customer was referred to the contest, among other things. A great sweepstakes administration company will make sure the client understands their numbers by providing this important reporting and analytics.
To learn more about outsourcing your sweepstakes administration, check out our site at https://www.cfapromo.com/ for a comprehensive list of services.