Promotional Tools
Online Sweepstakes Are Gaining Popularity
By Matt McAllister
Somewhere along the continuum that is man’s great history,
at some point in between the world’s first Olympics and the
first flea market, a funny thing happened. Somebody had the idea
to turn our love of games and contests into a promotional tool,
a way of attracting attention for their goods or services, and
since then the world of marketing has never been the same.
Today contests and sweepstakes are used to sell everything from
magazine subscriptions and airline tickets to gym memberships
and software packages. As a consumer, you can hardly open your
mailbox or stroll through your local shopping mall without being
presented some sort of offer … Enter for your chance to
collect $1 million! … Win an all-expenses-paid vacation to
Tahiti! … Earn a chance to meet your favorite celebrity! …
The tactic has even found its way to the Internet, where
consumer mind share is a hot commodity and incentive-offering is
a near necessity in the acquisition of new customers.
Take a glance through the Media Metrix Top 500. Here, nestled
among the Web’s most visited properties, you will find sites
with gamely sounding names like LuckySurf, iWon, EasyWinning,
JackPot, PrizeCrazy, WebStakes, and others—all quite obviously
alluding to the fact that some sort of contest or sweepstakes
can be found inside. According to a report issued by Jupiter
Media Metrix in February of this year, eight of the top 22 most
successful Web sites launched in 2000 were sweepstakes sites.
Although these sites and others like them are in fact an
evolution of the sweepstakes-as-promotion model, entering into
the realm of sweepstakes-as-product instead, their success only
validates the use of contests and sweepstakes in online
marketing campaigns.
“There’s so much noise being made on the Internet these days
that companies are having to offer some sort of incentive to
lure visitors to their sites,” says Mike Reilly, president and
general manager of SweepstakesOnline. Reilly’s company has
been telling consumers where to find valuable sweepstakes,
freebies, raffles, lotteries and other games since 1995 through
its Web site and newsletter.
Seizing the opportunity, SweepstakesOnline began offering
sweepstakes promotion and development services to other
companies on the Internet looking for a little marketing jolt.
To date, the company’s Sweepstakes Builder unit has conducted
sweepstakes promotions for companies such as CBS MarketWatch,
Alamo Rent-A-Car, Buy.com, Bacardi Rum, Blockbuster Video, and a
long list of others.
“Sweepstakes are appealing to marketers because they can meet
just about any objective they might have,” says Reilly. “If
you want to launch a new product, sweepstakes can do that. If
you want to increase your registrations, get more sales leads,
or improve your company’s branding, sweepstakes can accomplish
any of those goals as well.”
To wit, when compared to other customer acquisition methods,
sweepstakes make for particularly versatile promotions. Perhaps
that’s because they adhere to the old adage that you must give
something of value in order to get something of value, and
therefore they allow for a deeper level of interaction between a
merchant and its customers.
“The Web is an entirely new kind of advertising medium,”
explains Christopher McCarthy, vice president of marketing and
strategic services at IQ Commerce, Inc., a digital marketing
service provider that offers end-to-end sweepstakes solutions
including all aspects of integration, deployment and
fulfillment. “It’s about bringing together the brand
experience with the knowledge, tools and techniques of
promotional marketing or direct marketing,” he says.
Traditionally, the techniques that allow marketers to promote
their brand image—such as TV and radio ads, or online
banners—have been unsuccessful in eliciting a direct consumer
response, while the techniques that do illicit a direct consumer
response—direct mail, for example, or catalogue
marketing—have typically failed to promote the company’s
brand. Online sweepstakes, according to McCarthy, are a perfect
example of the blending of these two visions.
Like most Internet promotions, it’s of critical importance to
track and analyze the results of an online sweepstakes, and both
IQ Commerce and Sweepstakes Builder allow clients to do just
that. IQ actually takes it a step further, enabling clients to
peak in on results in real time and make appropriate adjustments
on the fly. But the real strength of IQ’s sweepstakes
offering, to hear Mr. McCarthy tell it, is what the company does
after the participants sign up.
“Follow up is one of the most important aspects of a
sweepstakes promotion,” he says. “Too many companies don’t
do anything with the e-mails they collect. We’re able to
garner much better results by following up with a coupon offer
or a brief survey.”
According to research conducted by Michael May, a senior analyst
with Jupiter Media Metrix, 53 percent of marketers do nothing
with the participants in their promotions who do not immediately
become customers, while only 16 percent follow up with at least
one or two e-mails. That sort of divide is what keeps most
sweepstakes from maximizing their potential.
Regardless, May and other pundits recommend sweepstakes and
giveaways above many other online promotions—including
coupons, discounts or free shipping—as the most effective
method of customer acquisition and prospecting.
With the explosion of sweepstakes around the Web, apparently
people are listening.
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