Prize promotions is a fairly specialist segment of sales promotions/promotional marketing, which in itself is a fairly specialist segment of marketing, so I thought I’d start 2020 with a new series of posts about various different aspects of prize promotions. I’m often asked what I do and I certainly don’t find it hard to talk about that at great length, but I have sufficient self-awareness to realise that for most people – often including those who are employed by major brands – the prize promotions world is something of a mystery. My aim, therefore, is to attempt to demystify prize promotions. That’s my intention anyway and I’m going to start, for no particular reason, with winner management.
What is winner management?
At a basic level winner management is about how you look after your winners. It starts the moment your prize draw or competition entrants become winners, so it includes the way in which you notify them that they have indeed won. Needless to say, you should do this promptly, within the timeframe described in the terms and conditions, and clearly you should congratulate the winners.
It’s fantastic that they’ve won and they’re going to be excited, but you also need to manage their expectations. Be clear when they will receive the prize (that’s prize fulfilment, which I’ll deal with another time) and again make sure it marries up with the description in your terms and conditions, give them any other relevant information and assure them that should they have any queries you will be on hand to answer them.
Why is winner management important?
You’ve almost certainly invested quite a lot of time, effort and budget in your prize promotion, so surely you want to complete the campaign properly? However, it’s not about being completist for the sake of it. You’d be surprised at how many brands abandon winners at this point seeing the prize promotion itself as the only purpose.
The reason that you’ve put in this investment is because you want to engage consumers and improve perceptions of your brand, or at least reward customer loyalty. You want everything to go smoothly, because how you manage your winners determines how successfully you achieve those objectives.
What happens if winner management isn’t in place?
I’m not going to regale you with horror stories, although I’ve heard a few, but you want winners to be ambassadors for your brand. You want them out in the world eulogising about how great your products are and how wonderful your company is.
What you don’t want is them taking to Twitter to moan that their games console didn’t arrived on time or at all or that it did, but wasn’t packaged properly and broke in the post. You don’t want them complaining to the papers that the holiday they won as a prize in your promotion was sub-standard. You don’t even want them sounding off to their family and friends that they were disappointed they received a blue handbag when they were expecting a green one. And you certainly don’t want your winners complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Winner management is one of the services that Prizeology offers and we always go the extra mile to make sure all our clients’ winners are very happy. If you’d like to discuss how we can help with your winner management, do give us a call on 020 7856 0402 or drop us an email.
Sophie Robertson is Prizeology’s Senior Project manager.
