Are you running a sweepstakes to build your email list? If you’re wondering how to do a sweepstakes for email signups the right way, the best place to start is with detailed planning to ensure that your sweepstakes targets buyers, and not sweepers.

Here are a few tips to help you get started with using a sweepstakes or contest to build your customer email list.

Let Entrants Know They Will Be Subscribing Via Your Official Rules

In your sweepstakes official rules, you are required by law to explain exactly how you plan to use the personal information that you collect on entry. As a result, you should make sure to let entrants know that you plan to contact them via email when they enter your sweepstakes. This will give you the confirmed opt-in that you need in order to start sending emails to entrants during and after your sweepstakes.

Now that you have permission to use their personal details to send email marketing messages, make sure to make good use of it by personalizing your emails with their first name and other details where appropriate.

Consider Extra Entries in Exchange for an Email Address

Some entrants may be reluctant to give you their email address since only a phone is required to enter a sweepstakes or contest. You can incentivize them and increase the number of emails that you collect by offering extra contest entries in exchange for providing their email address.

However, if your sweepstakes or contest will permit more than one entry per entrant, you must state in your official rules that the additional entries do not change the odds of a sweepstakes entry being selected as a winner.

Also Read: The Pros and Cons of Accepting One Entry Vs Multiple Entries in Your Sweepstakes

Use a Sweepstakes or Contest and Email Automation Together

You can use a sweepstakes or contest to bring in new customers. However, if you want to speed up the time it takes to put a customer through your buyer funnel, send your sweepstakes entrants discounts and coupons for your products and services after the sweepstakes has ended.

This will make non-winners feel like entering your sweepstakes or contest was worth the effort even if the coupon is just for a few bucks off your normal pricing. From experience as a sweepstakes company, for the best results, send your sweepstakes entrants an offer that would make any potential customer take action.

Sweepstakes to Email Marketing: 3 Customer Retention Strategies

Here are a few different ways that you can use a sweepstakes or contest along with email marketing to improve customer retention:

• Use a sweepstakes survey question on your sweepstakes entry form to ask customers about the type of content (and frequency) they want to receive from your brand. Use these insights to optimize your email content.
• Use a sweepstakes or contest to reactivate dormant customer accounts. If you have customers who terminated their accounts or have not purchased in a while, you can use a sweepstakes to bring their accounts back to life. Then follow up with emails about the updates that they’ve missed since you’ve last connected with them.
• Use a sweepstakes to fight cart abandonment. Target customers who have previously left your site without making a purchase to bring them back to your website. You can then send followup emails that directly address the sales objections that led to the cart abandonment.

Final Thoughts

Running a sweepstakes to build your email list requires a carefully planned campaign that involves identifying your target customers and tailoring the sweepstakes to their interests. Before you launch your email list sweepstakes, request a Sweeppea sweepstakes review first to ensure that your sweepstakes is properly designed to help you build an email list and turn subscribers into customers on virtually autopilot.

Need help with sweepstakes or contest management? Call 305-505-5393 or email us with your questions.

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When it comes to judging a contest, you need a reliable way to pick a contest winner. However, there is a right way and a wrong way. Here’s what you should know about selecting a contest winner by voting on submissions.

Who Should Choose a Contest Winner?

The first question you should ask in order to decide whether to allow voting on submissions is “Who is allowed to select a winner?” There are several requirements that a contest judge must meet in order to be eligible to choose a winner for a contest:

Define the Contest Judging Criteria

Firstly, a contest judge should have clear criteria upon which to rate a winning entry as defined per the contest official rules. The judge also needs to be able to provide a final decision on the contest winner entry by a set deadline so that the contest winner can be notified in a timely fashion.

No Affiliation With the Company or Its Sponsors

Furthermore, a judge should not be affiliated with the company hosting the contest or any of its sponsors to ensure that they can provide impartial feedback on the contest entries without any conflict of interest.

Given that a judge needs to at least meet these minimum criteria, it’s best to hand-select a judge for your contest so that you’ll be able to thoroughly interview them first to see if they can meet these and any other requirements you have for a position as a contest judge.

Here’s Why You Should Not Let Participants Choose the Contest Winner

With all of the additional work needed to select judges for your contest, why not let participants select a contest winner online by voting on submissions? This is a bad idea for several reasons, namely:

1. Mob Rule – Your participants may select the contest entrant that’s most popular rather than the one that deserves to win. Expect that your brand will be attacked by angry participants if you don’t go with their pick.
2. Your Contest Turns Into a Popularity Contest – Influencers who have entered your contest will try to use their influence to sway the participants to select them as a winner. This could derail your marketing efforts and attract the wrong crowd.
3. Your Contest Looks Rigged – Most entrants will automatically assume that they have little to no chance of winning if they know they need to be popular to be considered.

How to Stay in Control of Your Contest

By selecting impartial judges for your contest and letting participants know upfront who will judge their entries, you’ll be able to better control the outcome of your contest and ensure that it goes smoothly.

State upfront in your contest rules that any behaviors from participants (and their friends) that are designed to game the contest or promote their favorite entry will not be permitted including:

• Any actions that violate the social media platform’s rules (bullying, falsely reporting posts)
• Excessive likes, commenting, spamming
• Providing incentives to other people to boost contest entries

and more. Any of these actions, if identified, should immediately void a participant’s contest entry. You should also make sure to mention in your contest rules that you have the right to investigate any contest entries before announcing a winner.

Need help with sweepstakes or contest management? Call 305-505-5393 or email us with your questions.

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Sweepstakes, contests, games, raffles, giveaways. These are all words that people use to describe an event where prizes are given away to a winner chosen for skills displayed via an entry or at random. But what are the differences between these types of promotions?

Legally, what matters most in promotion is how one or several winners are selected or drawn. Here is what you need to know about sweepstakes, contests, giveaways, raffles, and more.

What Is a Game?

A game is any promotion in which a winner is selected as the outcome. It can be a game of skill or a game of chance. For example, a contest is a game of skill while a sweepstakes is a game of chance. However, a giveaway and a raffle can also be categorized as games.

Many courts use what is called the “Dominant Factor Test” in order to determine if a promotion in question is in a game of chance or skill. This allows the courts to determine whether luck or skill is the most important aspect in the selection of a winner.

What Is a Sweepstakes?

So, let’s define sweepstakes.

A sweepstakes is a promotional drawing in which prizes are given away to participants. There is no purchase required to enter and the sweepstakes winners are selected at random from a pool of all the eligible entrants.

Contest vs Sweepstakes

A contest is also a promotional drawing in which prizes are given away. However, there is one major difference: skill. Participants in contests are judged by their entries according to a predefined set of criteria.

How to run a contest? From the pool of participants, the “best” entry is selected to win and is awarded a prize including cash, cars, and more. The criteria upon which an entry could be judged include a skill, such as proficiency at writing or drawing, or arbitrary opinion such as the popularity of an entry among fans.

Check out: Ready to Run a Contest? Laws and What to Include in Your Official Rules

Raffle vs Lottery

A raffle is a type of promotion where participants buy tickets in exchange for the chance to win a prize, which is normally cash prizes. The main difference between raffles and such a lottery is that there will always be a winner with a winning ticket number since all of the purchased tickets are entered into the raffle draw (aside from the free raffle draw).

Raffles may also be considered a form of gambling by regulators given that entrants make a payment of some form in exchange for a chance to win. This is why raffles are limited to non-profit organizations where allowed. As a result, raffles must comply with state and local raffle laws which are different from sweepstakes laws. Furthermore, certain states also prohibit online raffles.

Since regulations for raffles and sweepstakes vary widely across the U.S., it’s essential to review the sweepstakes laws and rules by state to ensure compliance with local requirements.

Compared to a giveaway sweepstake, raffles are not as good for brand visibility as participants might lose all the stakes they invested to the game, but they can help promote your product or service. Some of the benefits hosting a raffle can bring to your company are:

Build a brand from scratch

You can organize a raffle featuring your product as the prize. Giving your product as a prize is a great way to advertise, even on a small community scale. Normally, the prize consists of products of the brand sponsoring the raffle.

Winning Loyal Customers

A themed raffle during popular holidays has the potential to keep customers interested and can turn an occasional customer into a loyal one.

Giveaway vs Sweepstakes

Giveaways’ meaning is simple. A giveaway is a promotion where everyone who enters wins a prize.

People use the word “giveaway” as a blanket term for contests, sweepstakes, raffles, and lotteries, as all of them give participants the chance to win a prize. The term does not clarify whether the giveaway is a game of skill or chance so the “Dominant Factor Test” must still be applied to determine the type of promotion.

Although all of these terms are used interchangeably by the general public, there are clear differences in the eyes of the law.

On the other hand, giveaways and sweepstakes offer similar benefits to the companies or brands that host them. A lot of people thinks that sweepstakes is just another word for giveaway.

One example is door prize games. Normally, these only require participants to answer door prize giveaway questions in order to qualify or enter the giveaway or sweepstakes.

Some of the benefits of hosting giveaways and sweepstakes are:

Lead Generation

Giveaways and Sweepstakes are key marketing tools for companies when it comes to lead generation. This is because of the data the client provides when signing up for the sweepstakes or giveaway. Usually, clients provide information such as name, address, and email in exchange for a chance to win.

For more information on lead generation using sweepstakes check out:  Purchase-to-Enter Sweepstakes: How to Use Receipt Validation for Sweepstakes

Increase Brand Awareness and Good Reputation

Advertising your giveaway or sweepstakes on social media can help grow your visibility. Resulting in more visibility with potential new customers.

Sweepstakes, contests, or games? Which is more popular?

Sweepstakes by far are the most popular promotional tool. Out of 385 promotions, Sweepstakes represent 80% of all prize promotions.

Need help with sweepstakes or contest management? Call 305-505-5393 or email us with your questions.

The post What’s the Difference Between a Sweepstakes, Contest, Game, Raffle and Giveaways and Which is More Popular? appeared first on Sweeppea Blog.

Avoiding legal trouble when running a sweepstakes or contest can be tricky as there are federal, state and even local laws that your promotion must comply with. The key to running a successful sweepstakes promotion is to make sure that you have all of these concerns covered!

Before your sweepstakes launches, make sure to review the following:

Official Rules and Abbreviated Rules

The official rules and abbreviated rules will define the rules of your promotion. Make sure that you have covered everything that is required to run a sweepstakes in every jurisdiction where your promotion will be valid. Make sure to also mention where your promotion is void (e.g. “void where prohibited”).

Also watch:

As Sweepstakes Administrators we can help create Official Rules for your promotion.

See hundreds of examples (right here) of Official Rules at our Official Rules Center.

Registration and Bonding

If you plan to offer high-value prizes (worth more than $5,000), namely in the states of New York, Florida, and Rhode Island, you may be required to register and bond your promotion before your sweepstakes launches.

As Sweepstakes Administrators we can help provide the services needed to bond and register your sweepstakes.

Winner Affidavit and Liability Releases

These are the documents that your winners will have to complete that confirm their eligibility to win the prizes. Furthermore, they also release your company from liability in regards to liability resulting from sweepstakes participation, prize claims or prize use or misuse.

Compliance With State Alcohol Boards

If your promotion is sponsored by an alcohol brand, you are required to register your promotion and ensure compliance with 7 state alcohol boards.

Alabama (AL), Indiana (IN), Maine (ME), Maryland (MD), North Carolina (NC), Vermont (VT) and West Virginia (WV) are the 7 states that require sweepstakes approval if printed ads will be placed in stores.

Who Needs Abbreviated Rules for Their Text-to-Win Sweepstakes? Alcohol Companies and Others

Industry Compliance

There may also be additional industry compliance concerns if the sponsor of your promotion is in an industry with significant regulation including the finance, medical, tobacco or firearms industries.

Indemnification and Insurance

It may be necessary to obtain insurance for your promotion in order to protect your business against lawsuits from sweepstakes entrants and other parties.

Compliance With Social Media Terms of Service

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, all have their own rules when it comes to sweepstakes and contests advertised on their platforms. You’ll need to make sure that your sweepstakes complies with their rules to avoid having your promotion shut down.

• What Are Instagram Contest Rules & Best Practices?
• Facebook Contest Rules and Ideas
• Guidelines for Running a TikTok Contest

Request Your Sweepstakes Legal Review to Avoid Legal Trouble

A full-service sweepstakes management company will provide the services that you need to ensure that your sweepstakes is ready to launch. All legal compliance matters, including filing of the required paperwork for registration and bonding, will be handled as required by law.

Need help with sweepstakes or contest management? Call 305-505-5393 or email us with your questions.

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