Deschutes Brewery Archives - American Sweepstakes

Deschutes Brewery has success with text-to-win sweepstakes

One of our clients through our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes Services, has been utilizing text-to-win sweepstakes now for the past three years. Deschutes Brewery is a craft beer company headquartered in Oregon and their beer is available in 29 states throughout the U.S. and in D.C. They have been run these text-to-win sweepstakes during the past two years which they have had great success with. So they plan to run more of them this year. Here are a few of them that have launched so far.

They kicked off the year on February 1 with their Camping Chairs Sweepstakes. This will run for nine months until the end of October and award 10 winners each month who will each receive a Deschutes Brewery branded Camping Chair worth about $50. All they have to do is text the word “CampChair” to the shortcode 65047 which we provide through the mobile platform that we have partnered with call Sweeppea. Upon receipt of the text message, the entrant receives a response message confirming the proper keyword and providing a link to the mobile Sweepstakes entry form which they have to enter their name, mailing address, phone number, date of birth, and e-mail address. People can also go straight to the online form to enter as well. Each completed entry form generates an entry and people can enter once a day. So they have several months to possibly become a winner.

The next sweepstakes was launched on March 1 for their Stand Up Paddle Board Giveaway. This will run for just four months until the end of June when the final drawing will take place shortly after that. Five Grand Prize winners will each receive a custom Deschutes Brewery inflatable stand up paddleboard from Stand On Liquid which has a value of $700. Plus 30 second prize winners will each receive an Outdoor Research Dry Isolation Pack valued at $50. The total prize pool value of this sweepstakes is $5,000. People can enter similar to the Champing Chairs Sweepstakes but in this case, they must use the keyword “SUP” when they text in.

The third sweepstakes that the Brewery currently has going is the Grizzly Cooler Sweepstakes. This just launched on May 15 and runs till July 15, so only two months for this one. Entrants text the word “Grizzly” to enter for a chance to win a Deschutes Brewery branded Grizzly Cooler valued at $800 that can hold 160 cans of beer along with some ice. Or they could be one of the 20 second prize winners that could win a smaller, soft-sided Grizzly cooler that has a $50 value. People can also enter directly on the Deschutes Brewery website.

So as you can tell by these prize selections, Deschutes Brewery seems to really know their customers and has defined them as outdoor enthusiasts. With these sweepstakes Deschutes Brewery not only collects the entrant’s mobile phone number, but their name, email address and mailing address, which makes it easy to ship out the prizes directly to the winners. Since this sweepstakes is for an alcohol beverage brand we need to make sure that entrants are 21 years of age or older as well so that is why we ask for their date of birth.

One of the main objective of these text-to-win sweepstakes is for the brands to receive extra awareness at retail and bar locations. Many alcohol beverage brands are now utilizing text to win and other types of sweepstakes promotions in order to gain the extra display at point of sale that promote the sweepstakes. Deschutes Brewery has a couple more of these types of sweepstakes scheduled further in the year which I’ll keep you posted on.

Text-to-win sweepstakes have been successful for Deschutes Brewery

Text-to-win sweepstakes promotions are now being utilized by more and more companies in their marketing mix. It’s an easy way for consumers to enter, especially when they are at an event or at a store location. When they do this you gain their mobile phone number and they are then automatically subscribed to your text messaging list (which they can opt-out at any time).

One of our clients that has been using this promotional method is Deschutes Brewery, a craft beer company headquartered in Oregon. Their beer is available in 29 states throughout the U.S. and in D.C. They had different text-to-win sweepstakes running for 11 months last year, and that is the plan for this year as well.

The way these sweepstakes work is that the participant texts a different keyword for each sweepstakes to the shortcode that we provide. They then receive a message back with a link to a brief, mobile-friendly entry form that they need to fill out and submit to receive an entry into the sweepstakes. So in the case, Deschutes Brewery not only collects their mobile phone number, but their name and email address, and in some cases their mailing address, which makes it easy to ship out the prizes directly to the winners.

We helped them kick off the Stanley Sweepstakes in February that will be running till the end of the year. Participants text “stanley” to the shortcode 65047 for a chance to win one of the 10 Stanley camping kits that they are giving away each month. The camping kit includes a steel growler pack and is valued at $60. Each month we draw the 10 winners for them and participants are welcome to come back and enter daily, although they can only win once.

Now this month we helped them launch the Hobo Hammock Sweepstakes that runs now till the end of August. Participants text “hammock” to 65047 for a chance to win one of 10 Hobo Hammocks each month. We will also draw the 10 winners at the end of each month for this sweepstakes and, as in the Stanley Sweepstakes, participants can enter daily.

Besides the ease of entry for consumers, Deschutes Brewery receives extra awareness at the retail and bar locations. In fact many alcohol beverage brands are now utilizing text to win and other types of sweepstakes promotions in order to gain the extra display and point of sale that promote the sweepstakes. I wrote this post last week about a couple of sweepstakes we helped Rutherford Ranch run that has gained them this extra awareness for two of their brands. We have a few spirit brands that we’re also assisting them with that will be running during the next few months.

Here’s a couple of new sweepstakes that target Millennials

Playing games is not one of my favorite pastimes, but it is big with some of my younger friends and family members, and they’re part of a huge market. The global gaming market is predicted to hit $93 billion by 2019 and should continue growing at least for the rest of the decade. That’s the latest assessment from PricewaterhouseCoopers from in it’s Global and Entertainment Media Outlook 2015-2019 report.

I mention this because we recently signed a 6-month contract to handle the administration of some sweepstakes giveaways and contests for BANDI NAMCO Entertainment America for their Anime Games. BANDI NAMCO Entertainment specializes in the production and sales of home and portable video games on all platforms. They also offer free games across the web and social media as well as mobile.

The promotions that we will be administering will be promoted on the company’s Play Anime Games Facebook page. The first sweepstakes started on Monday and will be running till end of Sunday, March 13. The giveaway is for a chance to win the ULTIMATE Digimon DVD box set Giveaway which features 4 seasons of Digital Monsters, 32 DVD’s! The agency that we are working with is utilizing the Woobox platform to collect the entries. So may the best Digi-Fan win. There will be more to come!

A client from our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes, that they are continuing to work with on 2016 promotions is Deschutes Brewery, a craft beer company located in Oregon. They again are running another text-to-win sweepstakes promotion and just kicked off a new one in February. To enter the DrinkTanks Juggernaut Sweepstakes consumers are first invited to text the keyword “Juggernaut” to the shortcode 65047. They will then receive a text message back with a link to the sweepstakes entry page located on the Sponsor’s website.

People are allowed to enter once a day. There will be 10 monthly winners drawn each month for 5 months who will each win a Deschutes Brewery Juggernaut growler. The mobile provider is Momares that is utilizing their Solark platform that enables us to offer this service to our clients. I featured this post that Marcos Menendez , one of the co-founders of Momares, wrote that speaks to the benefits of utilizing text messaging.

Both of these promotions that I featured today are a great example of how to market to Millennials, those 18-34. They prefer to use text messaging over emails and they like games. Millennials are now the largest population in the U.S. at 77 million. So we marketers should all be planning on how to best reach them, not just beer and game companies!