When your promotion has come to an end and you’ve chosen the giveaway winner(s) it is not always as simple as it seems to contact them and award their prize. Due to settings in some email systems, keywords in email content and the overwhelming amount of email that most us receive the congratulatory message can often be overlooked. Try these five tips from blogs like Free Book Friday and SnyMed to ensure you’re optimizing the content of your winner announcements.
Direct and Specific Subject Lines
All of those companies and bloggers who provided insights into what is most important about contacting the winner of a giveaway emphasized the importance of the subject line of the congratulatory email. This is a delicate area since going overboard on the text used here may result in your email being automatically labeled as spam or in the recipient glancing at it and deleting without reading.
Although space is limited for the subject line you should try to include your domain / business name, ‘winner’ and the prize. See the examples below for a brief and direct subject line template.
{Business Name} Winner: {Prize}
PromoSimple Winner: $100 Amazon Gift Card
Use a Business name in your Sender Email Address
Try to send your congratulatory email from an address that is associated with your brand and, ideally, contains the brand name. For instance, use an email address like info@domain.com versus sending from johndoe@yahoo.com to help prevent the winner from misinterpreting your email as spam.
Include Detail in your Email content
Within the content of your email be sure to summarize who you are, why you are contacting them and how you obtained their information. Be clear and concise on any information that they must provide in order to claim their prize. This may include providing a shipping address or specifications for the product that they are receiving. Including a link to the entry form helps users to be able to click back to the giveaway and jog their memory.
- what is the prize that they’ve won
- where did the user enter the promotion
- what steps must they take to claim their prize
- when must they respond by in order to claim the prize
Let followers know Winners were selected via social channels
When you’ve selected your winner(s) you should note this via posts on your social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. This message may be seen by the winner, who will now be reminded of the promotion and, when they see the email in their inbox will be more likely to recall having entered the contest. Lyne Proulx, founder and editor of Ottawa Mommy Club, will also send a direct message via Twitter to winners as another opportunity to notify them and ensure that they receive the message within the set time frame.
Update your promotion with a congrats message
Once you have your winner(s) and they’ve responded to your initial contact, update your blog post or entry form to congratulate them. This lets all other users see that a real, live person has won and will build their trust, increasing the likeliness that they will enter your next promotion.
