For brick-and-mortar businesses sweepstakes have always been a powerful marketing tool used for collecting information from customers who visit the store. Many opt for a traditional ‘drop your business card in the fishbowl’ type of data collection but with today’s rampant use of smart phones and mobile access there are easier ways to gather customer information.
In the traditional format it was always up to the store’s manager or employees to collect information and then assemble it into a useful format that could be used for direct marketing and follow up with customers, an extremely time-consuming and manual process. The complications of managing this sort of promotion are exponentially increased if the business has multiple store locations or they also want to allow their online shoppers to participate. This is where PromoSimple comes in and saves the day.
Access from multiple channels
A sweepstakes that is powered by PromoSimple allows you to run the same promotion across unlimited online properties, including a hosted microsite page that is ideal for access from mobile devices. The same sweepstakes can be simultaneously running on your business’s website, Facebook page and the microsite. The data that is submitted by users entering the promotion from all channels is compiled within a single campaign in your PromoSimple account.
In-store access with QR Codes
According to ComScore, 152.5 million people in the U.S. own smartphones (a 63.8% mobile market penetration). This means that the majority of customers who walk through the door of your store have a smartphone. One simple way to give your customers access to the promotion while in your store is to provide a QR code. You can create one for free using services like Kaywa or in the Google App Store. Your QR code can point to any URL that you’d like, including your hosted microsite which is setup to make it easy for mobile users to interact with your entry form. Customers can hop on their phone and enter the promotion right then and there.
Prizes
Running multiple campaigns and manually organizing data takes time (and therefore incurs a cost). In addition to removing this aspect of the campaign, a major advantage of being able to easily combine all entries into a single campaign is that your promotion now requires only one prize. You certainly can offer multiple prizes or choose multiple winners, but it is not necessary.
Reports
All entrants and their entries are accessible within one reporting interface. If you’d like to segment users by store location or other criteria you can always require data from users by adding drop-down menus, survey questions or demographic fields including gender, date of birth, address and more. Throughout or at the end of the campaign all of the data that you’ve collected is accessible in clear and concise reports and can be downloaded in spreadsheet format.
Direct marketing
Sweepstakes have always been a powerful tool for collecting data from customers in order to target your marketing to them in the future. Allowing your customers to provide a mailing address or email gives you the ability to send them offers and information to bring them back to the store. With PromoSimple you have the option of integrating email service providers like Mad Mimi, Constant Contact and MailChimp to automatically subscribe your entrants to your email lists, removing the need for manually inputting customer contact information into your databases. Your sweepstakes therefore becomes your direct marketing platform, providing you the opportunity to reach out to customers and keep them aware of changes or promotions.
Demographics
In addition to collecting basic contact information so that you can directly contact that particular customer in the future, you can also collect information about their demographics such as gender or age. This data can provide insights for you to be able to target similar, potential customers in the future as well as crafting your next sweepstakes to attract a certain audience.
Surveys and polls
While you have customers in your store and their attention is focused on your sweepstakes you can take advantage of your captive audience by including poll and survey questions within your entry forms. This is a quick and easy method of gathering feedback from your customers. Whether you’re interested in learning about their perception of your brand, customer support or inventory, adding in a couple of simple questions lets you gain valuable insights into where you can improve and where you’re already succeeding.
