5 Creative Ways to Promote Your Sweepstakes to Existing Customers

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Few things get your existing customers as excited as a sweepstakes. As with any sweepstakes or contest, the success of your promotion doesn’t only depend on attracting new sweepstakes participants. It also depends on marketing it to your existing customers. These are the people who are most likely to make a purchase from your brand during your sweepstakes.

If the goal of your sweepstakes or contest is to boost sales or increase customer loyalty, then you need to make sure that your promotion appeals especially to your core audience. Furthermore, targeting also helps you to identify buyer persona characteristics among new participants. Then you can send these participants directly to sales funnels that are designed for warm traffic and qualified prospects.

Want to get some creative inspiration for your next sweepstakes? Read on to learn more about how to design your sweepstakes marketing so that it appeals to existing customers. Following these tips to also help your sweepstakes promotion attract a highly targeted audience of sweepstakes participants and new customers.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

• How do you grow sales with existing customers and a sweepstakes?
• How do you use sweepstakes in a loyalty program for existing customers?
• What is the importance of social listening for sweepstakes?

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1. Reactivate Old Existing Customer Lists With a Sweepstakes

Make sure that your sweepstakes marketing email list or SMS subscriber list undergoes cleaning and verification in order to ensure that any outdated, bounced, or unsubscribed emails or mobile phone numbers are removed. Then you can send a reactivation message to those existing customers to invite them to participate in the sweepstakes.

Since they are existing customers, you can also encourage them to complete multiple entries which will help you to gain more followers on your social media channels. This will also help with your sweepstakes going viral as it will tap into an existing pool of highly targeted buyers.

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2. Design Sweepstakes Marketing Creatives for Your Influencer Customers

Influencers and brand ambassadors make up a portion of your customer base and are also likely to refer people to your brand. Make sure that your sweepstakes marketing creatives appeal to these influencer brands. If you have entered into formal agreements for them to promote your sweepstakes, you should consider designing custom creative sets that match their brand (and also make clear the relationship with your brand).

By making it as easy as possible to promote your sweepstakes, you can expect it to attract more fans increasing the chances that it will go viral. If you can reach out to brand ambassadors and influencers directly, you should also consider providing them with updates on when your sweepstakes goes live.

By working with a sweepstakes platform, you’ll be able to integrate their features with your email and SMS marketing so that you can provide real-time updates regarding the launch date of your sweepstakes. A countdown to the launch date of the sweepstakes will make things even more exciting for your fans and give them another opportunity to create content around your sweepstakes marketing.

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3. Highlight Existing Customers from the Entries

If your sweepstakes rules permit the use of user-generated content (UGC) during your sweepstakes, then you should make sure that you use UGC to maximize the entrant pool. Existing customers should be notified in advance and their permission obtained after they are deemed eligible to participate and have entered your sweepstakes.

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Additionally, you should make sure that you include elements about the customer that demonstrate trust and that they are a real participant. The success of your sweepstakes depends on getting people to sign up in as high numbers as possible.

Some tips on targeting your sweepstakes to existing customers:

• Personalize. Make use of your previous relationship with your existing customers. Remind them of the past and invite them personally to enter for a chance to win in your sweepstakes.
• Ask for Referrals. They are already loyal customers of your brand. Why not ask them to recommend their friends and family to enter your sweepstakes? This is a natural extension of the word of mouth (WOM) marketing that occurs as a result of a sweepstakes being shared across social media.
• Buyer Incentives. If you want to encourage them to buy, provide some buyer incentives during your sweepstakes such as a discount or coupon. Don’t ask that they buy something in the same communications as your sweepstakes email marketing content. Else it will simply appear as a poor attempt to get them to spend more money with your company. As a reminder your Official Rules must state that your sweepstakes is free to enter and you must offer a free Alternate Method of Entry (AMOE) to participants, typically mail-in entry.
• Relevant Sweepstakes Prize. Don’t use a sweepstakes or contest prize to offload old inventory. Unless your product or service increases in value with time, your sweepstakes participants will notice the lack of effort on your part when it comes to the design of your promotion.

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4. Use Social Listening With Existing Customers

Your existing customers are likely to be the “loudest” on social media when it comes to testimonials, feedback, and reviews. By using social listening to tap into their concerns followed by data analysis to identify customer sentiment, you’ll be able to uncover the exact emotions that you can use to help your existing customers connect with your brand so that they can participate your sweepstakes.

What are the benefits of social listening for sweepstakes? Why would you focus on your existing customers when it comes to social listening for a sweepstakes? What you’re likely looking to use social listening for is to gain insights on how to increase brand awareness and attract new customers to your sweepstakes and brand.

With brand monitoring, you’ll be able to analyze customer sentiment about your brand in real-time. This will allow you to optimize your sweepstakes promotion to ensure that it always appeals most to your core audience, existing customers.

Whether you want to use your sweepstakes to test new buyer personas or appeal to existing customers, the data and insights that you gain from social listening make it possible to personalize your campaigns in an unparalleled manner. Your customer experience will deliver maximum ROI for your sweepstakes participants, which if done with careful planning and design will delight your audience.

5. Create a Sweepstakes Marketing Action Plan for Existing Customers

Every brand wants to have maximum participation from all of their existing customers. However, you can’t just expect for them to sign up on their own (and you shouldn’t wait for them to either).

Instead, make sure that as a part of your timeline and measurable goals as you create sweepstakes KPIs to track existing customers. Integrating a sweepstakes platform with your existing martech stack with allow you to develop a strategic approach that delivers actionable data.

Your customers will appreciate the increased personalization that your sweepstakes offers. There should be strategy involved in every aspect of your sweepstakes marketing so that it delivers an exceptional customer experience for existing customers

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Next Steps: Use Your Sweepstakes to Deliver an Amazing Customer Experience

Sweepstakes marketing can be highly effective for boosting sales when you put your existing customers first. Existing customers have higher expectations and need you to understand their needs and circumstances in the delivery of your product or service. This also extends to your sweepstakes marketing.

To protect your brand’s reputation among your loyal customers, you need to ensure that your sweepstakes is designed to deliver the best possible customer experience. Work with a sweepstakes marketing company or sweepstakes platform to get assistance with designing a sweepstakes that attracts existing customers, new participants, and may even reactivate customers.

Looking for a sweepstakes company to help you with your next promotion? Sweepsify helps you find top sweepstakes companies in seconds. Create your free Premium account now to get started.

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