One valuable use of running a giveaway or promotion on your website is the option to collect demographic and contact information from your users. When it comes to marketing and developing a product or website the more you know about your users, the better you can tailor it to their needs. Within a PromoSimple giveaway you can include a variety of fields that allow entrants to provide you with information about themselves.

First name Address
Last name City
Gender State
Date of birth Zip code
Phone number Country

You may now be asking ‘what do I actually do with this information after I’ve collected it’? Here are a few common uses that can help you learn more about your users and become more attractive to giveaway sponsors.

Wrapping up your giveaway & sending prizes
Rather than trying to track down your winners to find out their mailing addresses to send prizes, you already have everything you need to finish up those details when the giveaway has ended.

Impress your sponsors with detailed reporting
By including demographics for your campaign’s entrants to your sponsor at the end of the campaign you can really catch their attention. This type of information is extremely valuable to a brand that is trying to reach a certain audience with their message.

Use real data for your website information
There are many sources available that allow you to access aggregate, estimated data for the visitors that reach your website. Free tools like Google AdPlan or paid subscriptions to sources like comScore and Hitwise can provide general insights into your audience, but being able to collect data from actual users that are entering your giveaways allows you to more accurately pinpoint your users’ demographic ranges.

Cross system utilization of data
If you use one of many email services, like MailChimp, or customer relation management systems, like SalesForce or HighRise, you can import this data into these systems to watch how different demographics interact with your website and emails. You can now answer questions like ‘Do people between the ages of 35 and 55 have a higher open rate on my emails than those over 55’?

The options here are limitless with how you use the data that you collect. As a general rule, the more information you require with any giveaway or sign up form the lower your entry rate will be. Because of this, do be conscious of what fields and how many you are asking your entrants to complete as, although it may increase your volume and depth of data, it may also decrease the total participation in your promotion.