Mobile apps Archives - American Sweepstakes

Here’s another sweepstakes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that continues to promote their NewsSlide App

A new promotion for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette kicked off last week that we are again assisting them with. Last year we helped them run several sweepstakes promotions to coincided with the launch of their NewsSlide app in order to encourage downloads. These were all instant win games in which they awarded a total of $45,500 in prizes. Their new promotion, Where Is NewsSlide Sweepstakes, is to continue the goal of increasing awareness and downloads of the app.

This promotion is a bit different than those that ran last year. They still have to first download the app, which is free. Instead of just filling out an entry form located within the app, participants need to search throughout it to find the photo that was partly pictured in that week’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ad. These will all be images of iconic places around Pittsburgh.

Once they find the photo, they will be taken to the Sweepstakes landing page in the app where they will need to answer a multiple-choice question to correctly identify the physical location of the photo. If the Entrant answers the question correctly, they will receive an entry into that week’s random drawing to determine the week’s winner. Entrants can play the game once per week during the Sweepstakes period which runs till June 9.

Each weekly winner will receive a $500 Amazon ecard for a total of $4,000 for 8 weeks. We’ve been working with PG’s agency, Garrison Hughes, who is also based in Pittsburgh and sends us the files of all the entrants each week so that we can do the weekly drawings. The PG NewsSlide app contains new technology that attempts to take the daily newspaper audience beyond what is possible with the print edition by providing a deeper, more immersive relationship that includes text, video, animation, photographs and interactive elements including charts, graphs and maps. The platform runs on both iPhone and Android mobile devices including tablets and can be downloaded for free from the iTunes or Google Play Store.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette received just over 600 entries into the Sweepstakes during week one and one lucky winner has been notified. So we’ll see how many new downloads of the app this promotion generates for them.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Slide into a Grand Sweepstakes encourages download’s of their new NewsSlide app

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently launched a new app that allows it’s readers to experience the news through a new digital communications medium the company has developed called PG NewsSlide. The company executives believe this new technology will reinvent the business model for newspapers. They claim that NewsSlide will take the daily newspaper audience beyond what is possible with the print edition by providing a deeper, more immersive relationship that includes text, video, animation, photographs and interactive elements including charts, graphs and maps.

The platform runs on both iPhone or Android mobile devices including tablets and can be downloaded for free from the iTunes or Google Play Store. The app is described as a platform that delivers a visually powerful, immersive experience. NewsSlide goes beyond words and pictures. It’s a completely reimagined multimedia experience delivering award-winning coverage of Pittsburgh sports and news with a depth and breadth second to none.

To encourage their readers to download the app and give it a try the Post-Gazette launched a sweepstakes called the “Slide Into a Grand” Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes is awarding one person a week $1,000 for a total of 6 weeks. Entrants must first download the Post-Gazette NewsSlide app to their personal mobile device. Once they have the app they need to navigate to the sweepstakes entry form within the app to register for the sweepstakes by filling out and submitting the required fields to gain an entry into the sweepstakes. They also need to be a resident of Pennsylvania to be eligible.

Like the print newspaper that arrives each morning, an electronic edition of NewsSlide will be sent each morning by 5 a.m. to users’ tablets, and mobile devices. “The future for the newspaper industry is digital,” said Allan Block, chairman of Toledo, Ohio-based Block Communications, which owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That doesn’t mean we won’t continue to print for a while. But digital is the future. NewsSlide is an attempt to break out of the current business model and create a new business model for the future.”

NewsSlide is also expected to be a game-changer for advertisers. Allan Block stated that it would “engage users at a new level.” He described NewsSlide as ”a sales platform to facilitate e-commerce,” adding “We envision a brick-and-mortar business will utilize NewsSlide to improve the e-commerce experience. An ad in this medium can lead customers to a seamless transition to an e-commerce transaction.”

We’ve been working with one of the Post-Gazette’s agencies, Garrison Hughes, who is based in Pittsburgh. They sent us the sweepstakes entries for the first week which was almost 400 people who downloaded the app and entered. The first winner of $1,000 has been notified who is Joseph Schmotze from Pittsburgh. We have five more lucky winners of $1,000 each to still award.

Check in to Club CITGO for a chance to win free gas for a year

We’re all hoping that the cost of gas remains holding pretty steady for the rest of this year. But who wouldn’t want to win free gas for a year? We’re working again with the team at CITGO to assist with their Club CITGO Free Gas for a Year Sweepstakes. This promotion will be running all year with one lucky winner per quarter. They way it works is through the Club CITGO App.

Participants in 26 eastern states, plus D.C., are invited to download the app and set up a personal Club CITGO account. They will each receive a Free Gas for a Year Sweepstakes notification altering them each quarter that the sweepstakes is open for entries. Those users can obtain daily entries via the app Check-Ins. A Check- In is measured by the entrant’s mobile device being within 400ft of the tracking hardware installed at a participating CITGO location.The tracking hardware uses GPS and the entrant must have GPS/Location Services enabled. If an entrant is within the 400ft distance, they can obtain one entry by clicking the ‘Check-In’ button in the app sidebar. The sweepstakes rules do allow for an alternative means of entry by mail for those participants that may not want to use their data or have a mobile phone.

Entrants are allowed to Check-In daily for multiple chances to win. At the end of each quarterly sweepstakes period one lucky grand prize winner will receive $2,500 worth of CITGO gas cards, which should be enough for a year’s worth of driving. Besides the sweepstakes, participants can check-in every day to earn extra perks and rewards to save on in-store items such as their favorite snacks, drinks as well as gasoline.

We’ve also been working with CITGO on various text-to-win sweepstakes that invite participants to enter by just texting a keyword to gain an entry. We recently wrapped up the Win a Hockey Game Night Experience Package Sweepstakes in which participants entered for a chance to win tickets to a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game. Two winners received four 100 level seat tickets and two winners received four penthouse suite tickets. All winners also received a ride on the ice resurfacer.

So we are seeing more and more sweepstakes using mobile as a means of entry. Most lawyers will still tell you that using data to enter a sweepstakes may be construed as consideration (purchase) and you should include another method of entry without purchase. However, no claims or lawsuits have yet to be filed. So it is all according to what level of risk that your company is comfortable with. As more and more mobile providers offer unlimited data plans we’ll see if that will change anytime soon.

PaybyPhone app offers Summer Sweepstakes with chances to win free parking

A trend that we’ve seen this year is implementing sweepstakes into mobile apps. More and more apps have been developed and are being downloaded. So by incorporating a sweepstakes into an app it provides an added incentive for the person to download the app and start using it.

Yahoo’s Flurry anaytics recently showed that 90% of users time on mobile is spent on apps vs. browsers. Of course Facebook and other social media sites take up most of that time, however 10% is on “others”.

One of those “others” is the PaybyPhone App that lets consumers use Apple Pay to pay for parking. We’ve been working with the PaybyPhone Technologies team who are based out of Vancouver, Canada to help them launch the PaybyPhone Summer Sweepstakes. It kicked off on June 23 and will end soon, September 1.

Consumers within the U.S. who use Apple Pay to pay for parking with the PayByPhone app, where available, receive an automatic entry for a chance to win a month of free parking. There is a limit of five entries per day. We also included a mail-in option to enter without purchasing parking.

There were 10 total drawings, with two left, one of August 29 and the last one on September 5. Two winners per drawing will each receive one month of free parking, up to $250, towards their next month’s usage.

In the Apple App Store I searched for parking apps and many options did come up, so there definitely is some competition here. Several are specific to a location such as ParkBoston and ParkDetroit. These apps are just another way that we never need to carry any cash, or change in this case, anymore.