Online Contest Advice

This month in the "Making the Most of Digital" feature, DMNews promised that they'd tell us how to Navigate the Online Contest Trend. Trend? Sweepstakes and contests online have been around for a years. Granted, they've generally become more truly interactive with time, but 'trend' is a stretch. Okay, okay, the trade mags need to pump up the article...

The article was interesting enough, but didn't really provide much help with 'how to', so I'll provide some guidelines based on implementing six or eight over the past four years.

Things you should know:

1. Contests take much much more time and resources than you would imagine. You'll need a program manager, creative staff, site builders, legal advisors, an online 'prize' agency, and maybe a fulfillment house. Oh, and prizes too. You'll need to start 4 - 6 months before launch, and then you'll be fulfilling for months afterward.

2. You need a specialty agency because they have built fool-proof algorithms to ensure that the prizes are being awarded correctly according to the rules. And they also have researched the rules to make sure they're fully legit in all states. They'll also indemnify your organization against any issues, which your legal staff will appreciate. All of this does not come cheap.

3. Make sure to involve your counsel / legal department the very first week you begin discussing a sweepstakes or contest. There are an incredible number of legalities to these things, and this being a litigious society... well let's just say that if you don't get them in really early it could be very unpleasant.

4. Generally a 'sweepstakes' is much easier to get through legal as they're based on random luck and chance, while a 'contest' implies that you are somehow selecting the 'best' something. That selection process can be the subject of litigation.

5. When you total up all the costs and explain that to the CMO and she explains it to the CFO, you'll want to have a very firm determination of the expected return. Realistically, you can see a good number of new emails for your house file, your current customers will probably 'tell a friend', and you may be able to get more visibility for a new product or offering. (CPG manufacturers always sell more product at retail when the packaging mentions a sweepstakes. I do not know why.) That said, I've had clients spend up to $15 per new-to-file address, which seemed steep. Keep in mind that there are numerous sites online that will pass your program around and there are people who participate in endless sweepstakes, so many of your new addresses aren't all that valuable.

6. Unless there is an amazing brand linkage to complicated or expensive grand prizes, you'll probably get just as much action from free product or gift cards. And your ROI becomes much more viable.

Hope this helps. Please tell me if you have more tips, or radically disagree!