Tag: Sweepstakes-Promotions

Several sweepstakes offer free groceries for a year, $25K in home renovations and more

Winn-Dixie-Free-Groceries-fThree supermarket chains are giving away chances to win Free Groceries for a Year! We are working with Bi-Lo Holdings, the parent company of Winn-Dixie, Bi-Lo and Harvey’s Supermarkets, who are sponsoring the Great Grocery Giveaway Sweepstakes which each chain launched today.

Winn-Dixie is giving away 30 $5,000 gift cards, for a total of $150,000. Bi-Lo is giving away 15 $5,000 gift cards for a total of $75,000 and Harvey’s is giving away 5 $5,000 gift cards, for a total of $25,000. That’s a total of $250,000 in free groceries from the parent company.

Participants are invited to visit each chain’s website and register their customer rewards card in an online form to obtain one entry. Once entered, a coupon for $10 off their next $100 purchase is loaded to their card.​ If participants don’t have a card they can sign up for one as well. The overall objective of the promotion is to obtain email addresses for current shopper card holders as well as obtain new card holders. Those that don’t want to sign up for a card have the obtain to enter by mail providing they supply an email address. These sweepstakes run till June 16.

Hallmark-Renew-Sweeps-2015Another sweepstakes that we’re working on that recently launched is for the Hallmark Channel. The ReNew-It-All Sweepstakes is offering one lucky grand prize winner a chance to receive a $25,000 ultimate home renovation plus a trip for two to Los Angeles and an opportunity for the winner to appear on the Hallmark Channel’s Home and Family Show. The prize package includes $15,000 in cash along with a $5,000 Lumber Liquidators gift card and a $5,000 Mattress Firm Gift Card. The trip package includes round trip airfare for two, hotel accommodations, a rental car, one day passes to Universal Studios in Los Angeles and a $650 spending allowance for food and expenses during the trip, Total value of this grand prize is $30,000.

Hallmark-Hosts-2015All participants need to do is enter online. This sweepstakes ran last year as well with similar prize providers. It provides the Hallmark Channel an opportunity to promote their Home and Family Show, hosted by Mark Steines and Christina Ferrare, which in now running on weekdays at 9am ET/10 am CT. This sweepstakes runs till June 12.

This is just a sampling of the many sweepstakes promotions that brands are using this spring season to engage with their customers and fans. Offering prizes like these that fit with your brand and are relevant to your customers is key to a successful promotion. If you’re interested in learning more about how a sweepstakes or contest promotion may fit with your marketing objectives, please feel free to contact us.

Infographic: Study of Content Shared by Users in Online Promotions

Social Sweeps LogoI use the term Social Sweeps to describe a sweepstakes or contest promotion that integrates with social media platforms. This helps to provide participants flexibility in accessing and interacting with a promotion. By providing these various options for users to participate, you appeal to them more positively which helps to increase the participation rate. I’ve always been a big believer that by utilizing social media platforms you Share-iconsenable participants to share your promotion with their friends which allows them to get the word out for you faster and farther!

I came across a recent study that was conducted to learn more about how and why participants share the online promotions that they’ve entered on the various social platforms. The study was done by Easypromos in which they extracted data from more than 200 promotions that were running on their Premium Application from January-February, 2015, in which over 140,000 people took part.

We now get asked quite often about allowing participants to gain bonus entries for sharing which many promotions now include. For example, after a participant enters they are asked to share on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram and they gain additional entries for each share. However, if the promotion is being run on Facebook then you would be in violation of the Facebook policy if you encourage sharing to gain entries. Instead what most Facebook applications allow is for users to invite friends to enter the promotion and if that friend enters, the original user gets an extra entry.

The team at Easypromos created this infographic that displays the results of their study, so I thought I’d share it here. It does state that participants will share the promotion much more when they are offered an incentive, such as extra entries. Take a look.

Infografic-Share Online ContestsThe study did show that it was almost 50/50 between desktop vs. mobile and Facebook was the top social platform for sharing. However, on January 20th, Easypromos introduced instant messaging applications as another option for mobile users to share the promotion. In that short time WhatsApp became the second most-chosen platform for sharing promotions from a mobile device: 17.19% of shares were done through this app. So this is definitely a trend to watch.  Thanks to Easypromos for compiling and sharing the data.