Sweepstakes

Overview

Sweepstakes provide an incentive for your customers to provide their information in return for a chance to win a gift from your brand. Unique to Extole is the ability for customers to easily share the sweepstakes program after entering.

Extole Sweepstakes programs provide you with the ability to:

• Host a custom sweepstakes form to capture customer emails or phone numbers
• Opt in sweepstakes entries to marketing lists
• Drive additional engagement from new and existing customers

Marketing

Email Promotion
Let existing customers, or any specified list of customers, know about your Sweepstakes program by sending them an invitation email encouraging them to participate. All copy in the email is customizable and you can set up any number of reminder promotion emails.

On-site or In-app Promotion
You can also use Extole to generate links you can place on your website or in your mobile app to promote the program. These links will take your customers directly to the nomination page, where they can begin filling out the form.

Participant Journey

Your participants either received your invitation email and clicked on the link or found out about your program through the promotions on your website. Regardless of which link they tapped, they will be taken to your sweepstakes page. This page is customized to fit your brand and will host the form customers can fill out. The option to add an opt-in checkbox to add emails to your marketing lists is available and encouraged.

Once participants fill out the form and submit it, an overlay or confirmation email can be configured to encourage your participants to share the program with their friends. You may also decide to Surprise and Delight participants with a coupon code or other reward type. This reward could be displayed in the confirmation overlay or email that confirms their form was successfully submitted.

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Best Practices

Make sharing the point of entry. This strategy is effective when you are leveraging your advocates to promote an event or non-discountable new product. Just by sharing, participants are entered to win a big prize. Programs like this have a 21% advocacy rate and 52% friend click-through rate.

Rules and Rewarding

All rules for your Sweepstakes program are customizable and can either be represented on the submission form or enforced behind the scenes. For example, you may want participants to have to confirm they are more than 18 years old by entering their birth date in the form or checking a box to confirm. You may also want to limit the number of submissions one participant can make, which can be achieved through configuration of Extole's quality rules.

In terms of reward, you are in charge of deciding what the reward is and how many participants should receive it. The type of reward you choose may influence the fields you include in your submission form. For example, if you are sending a physical gift to the winner(s), you may want to collect addresses. After the submission period closes, you can either randomly or manually select your winner(s) and an email will be sent out to all participants announcing the results.

Performance and Data

Typical Sweepstakes programs will see:

• Higher engagement with the brand measured via participation rate
• Increased entry rate
• Additional avenue to drive new customers and not just engage your existing database

Examples

Ashley Furniture and Homestore
Ashley Furniture wanted to find a way to engage their customers and grow their marketing list during the COVID-19 health crisis. This giveaway program allowed them to boost brand awareness while supporting their community.

They launched their second sweepstakes after seeing so much success with the first one in May. Once someone entered, they were asked to tell their friends to enter too. Hosting the entry form and being able to leverage Extole's sharing capabilities were a huge value-add to Ashley, and they plan on running all upcoming Sweepstakes programs this way.

Travelzoo

Travelzoo wanted a creative way to engage existing customers and appeal to new ones in a non-transactional manner. In addition to boosting brand awareness while authentically growing their prospecting list, they wanted to expand their existing refer-a-friend capability to encourage new prospects. In this program, customers could climb the leaderboard by completing certain actions, in this example, referring friends.