What Are Best Practices when Planning a Sweepstakes? How Do Sweepstakes Work?

Sweepstakes are games of chance. This means that the winner is selected at random. This selection is made from the total pool of eligible entries earned across all users throughout the entry period as defined within the official rules.

Including sweepstakes as a part of your marketing mix is a great way to provide customers an opportunity to engage with your brand directly, driving excitement across owned and earned media channels.

When planning your sweepstakes, there are four (4) core pillars to keep in mind:

1. The Type of Promotion – In this case a sweepstakes
2. The Method of Entry – How and where do you want people to enter your promotion? Does this reflect your marketing goals?
3. The Prizes – What is the incentive you are leading with? What prizes do want to award?
4. The Rules and Legal Compliance Requirements – We can help you with complete and legally-compliant rules, make sure your promotion is bonded and registered, if necessary, and that all legal best practices are followed.

Keeping these in mind, you can craft a sweepstakes designed to drive success across your marketing goals, such as:

• Creating buzz around new product launches
• Driving purchases
• Re-engaging lapsed customers
• Encouraging ratings, reviews, and referrals
• Collecting actionable first-party data from consumers

To summarize, all sweepstakes include three (3) core milestones:

1. Call to entry/registration period – The active window in which consumers are called upon to enter the promotion for a chance to win a prize! As defined within the program rules, people complete the steps listed to earn entries for a chance to win

2. Random winner selection – Winners are randomly selected for the prizes offered within the rules.

3. Winner notification and fulfillment – Notify winners, collect any paperwork, and then fulfill prizes.

Working with Realtime Media allows you to take advantage of our full team for support across all phases of your promotion, exactly how and where you need it.

Read more about the Realtime Media difference here, or take a closer look at sweepstakes microsites, legal administration, or prize fulfillment.