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25 aug

Prize Fulfillment Solutions for Your Next Sweepstakes

By: Jennifer French | In: Best Practices, Legal and Prize Fulfillment, Marketing, Prize Fulfillment

There are a lot of factors that go into running a successful online sweepstakes or contest. One of the most important ones is the prizing you award to the winners. A lot of companies who decide to run a campaign without the help of a sweepstakes agency often find that the prize fulfillment portion of the campaign can be very time consuming and costly if not done correctly. Below I will talk about prize fulfillment solutions for your next sweepstakes or contest.

Before I go further into the prize fulfillment solutions, I think it’s necessary to first touch on the importance of prizing. You may have great online creative and a healthy marketing budget, but if your prizes aren’t compelling, you run the risk of receiving low entries. Here are a few tips on the types of prizes to offer. But what really constitutes a compelling prize to consumers? A lot of times it simply comes down to the odds of winning. The more prizes you award, the better chance the entrant has of taking home a prize. This makes consumers feel like they have a better chance to win, resulting in increased entry numbers.

Okay, great, you’ve listened to your consumers and want to award a large number of prizes. Where do you start? What does that look like? This is where prize fulfillment solutions come into the picture.

Are you awarding physical prizes? If so, there are a few things you will need to take into consideration. You will need to securely warehouse, package and ship the prizes. A benefit of using a sweepstakes agency that handles prize fulfillment is that they will do all of the work for you. And, because they ship prizing on a regular basis, you will be guaranteed to have the lowest possible rates. Plus, packing and shipping hundreds of prizes can be a very time consuming job, which will in turn costs you money. Check out a list of prize fulfillment services offered by Sync Marketing.

Are you awarding digital prizes? This is definitely a more cost-effective way to award a prize. But, do you have the manpower to follow up with hundreds or even thousands of winners to make sure they’ve received their prizing via email? Leave it to the experts who have the proper programs in place to quickly and efficiently deliver your prizing and take this daunting task off of your plate.

Another thing to consider are the steps that need to take place before prize fulfillment; winner selection, notification and verification. This can also be a very time consuming process. And, if your prizes are valued at over $600, you will need to report this to the IRS and provide a 1099 for each winner. Hiring a sweepstakes agency to oversee this portion of your campaign will take the worry out of the project for you and ensure that it is being handled correctly.

Finally, no matter what the type or quantity of prizing you chose to award to your winners, consider contacting Sync Marketing to handle your prize fulfillment solutions. We will put together a cost-effective and time saving plan for your next campaign and do the “heavy lifting” so you don’t have to.

Prize Fulfillment Solutions for your next Sweepstakes

 

 


27 oct

Sweepstakes Prizing – What to Give Away

By: Julie Link | In: Best Practices, Contests, Legal and Prize Fulfillment, Sweepstakes

It seems these days that everyone is getting in on the fun by running online sweepstakes and contests. That’s because it’s an extremely effective way of not only gathering consumer data, but rewarding consumers in return.  Today, I am going to focus on the best part; the prizing, and the most effective sweepstakes prizing recommendations for your next promotion.

  1. Money, money, money: Everyone loves cash. If you choose to award cash as your prize, make sure it’s a significant amount, as with all prizing, winners are taxed on anything over $600. If you choose to go the cash route, it is recommended to always relate the cash prizes back to your product. Take Don’t Touch My Dart: The Sweepstakes…Here, Chrysler gave away $10,000 for the winner to use as they wish, but in the creative and official rules they promoted it as money to be used towards the purchase or lease of a new Dodge Dart.
  2. The once-in-a-lifetime experience prize: Awarding your winners with a prize they cannot buy is the ultimate prize. Whether it’s to a red carpet event or a VIP back stage pass; offering prizing that is not available to the general public will allow you to receive entries from consumers who are truly interested in your prize and the exclusive experience.
  3. A trip: Pretty much everyone loves to travel, so a trip is a great way to entice consumers to enter. Just be sure to include all of the critical trip elements; airfare, hotel, transportation, and spending money/money for taxes. And, of course, relate it back to your product or service.
  4. Your product or service; Giving away an iPad is great, but if it doesn’t relate to your product or service, then you might not be getting the type of entrants you want as well as the fact that the promotion will seem disjointed. If you offer a fantastic service, give consumers the chance to win that particular service free for a year. Or, if it’s a product, why not offer gift cards or a prize pack containing your promoted items?
  5. Many prizes. It’s always important to give one larger grand prize, but if you want entrants to feel like they have a true shot at winning, consider giving away several smaller prizes. 

Most importantly, make sure that the prize-winning experience is extremely enjoyable and stress-free for your consumers. By hiring an agency like Sync Marketing to handle your sweepstakes prize fulfillment, you can rest assured that your winners will understand all of the details of their prize and will be taken care of all the way until tax season. For a full list of Sync Marketing’s prize fulfillment offerings, please take a look at our Legal and Prize Fulfillment page, here.


23 jul

Using an Agency to Handle your Sweepstakes Legal and Prize Fulfillment

By: Sync Marketing | In: Best Practices, Contests, Legal and Prize Fulfillment, Marketing, Sweepstakes

There are many benefits as to why companies, large or small, should consider hiring an outside agency, like Sync Marketing, to be their administrator for their legal and prize fulfillment needs. We’re breaking down our top five reasons as to why your company or agency can benefit from contracting sweepstake fulfillment agency, like Sync Marketing, to oversee all of your sweepstakes legal and prize fulfillment elements for your next campaign.

1. We eat, sleep and breathe promotion law. You may have an internal legal team, but typically they are there to handle a broad scope of legal work for your company. At Sync Marketing, our legal team specializes in promotion law and stays up-to-date on all of the latest legal actions and changes in the field – specific to sweepstakes and contests. They even attend all of the promotion law conferences and are quite frequently speakers at these events. Especially when it comes to running a social media sweepstakes, the sweepstakes rules change monthly, sometimes daily. If you were to hire Sync Marketing to handle your sweepstakes legal and prize fulfillment needs, we handle so much more than official rules and winner release forms, we also review all of your marketing materials and social media posts to make sure they’re legally compliant.

2. Let your legal team do what they do best. They’re there to protect and advise you. If they’re simply reviewing the legal documents for a promotion (official rules, abbreviated rules, affidavit of eligibility and release forms, and travel companion forms) that are created by Sync, they’ll have more time to focus on the promotion’s legal documents and ask questions, rather than spending valuable time creating them from scratch. We even review all of your social media posts and marketing materials to make sure they are legally compliant and are consistent with the promotion.

3. Verifying Potential Winners. This is an extremely important step that often gets overlooked. Sometimes winners are simply selected without being verified for their eligibility or compliance with the official rules. At Sync, our project managers oversee the campaign from start to finish and know the campaign better than anyone, so when it’s time to select potential winners and verify if they’re eligible, you can trust that it’s being done right.

Winner Selection

4. Prize Fulfillment. We know that you don’t have time to fulfill hundreds of prizes, so let Sync Marketing help you with that task. We can handle procuring your prize and can fulfill everything from gift cards to booking travel; just let us know what you need and we can help.

5. Sometimes time is of the essence. You’re busy, we know that, and that’s why if you come to us when you’re in a jam and need Official Rules turned around ASAP, we are ready to jump in and start immediately. Plus, we won’t charge you rush fees to do so.

If you need help, or simply have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us today. You can either call us at 323.596.7962 or email info@syncmarketing.net.