Assisted Conversions From Giveaways and Sweepstakes ROI Explained

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Assisted conversions if you are running a sweepstakes, contest or giveaway are extremely important. To achieve maximum ROI from a sweepstakes or contest with the goal of driving brand awareness, leads, sales or other conversions, you need to learn exactly how it drives ROI.

At Sweepsify, we’re focused on helping brands to maximizing ROI from sweepstakes and contests in order to drive customer loyalty and achieve sales revenue goals. Attribution is how you show the exact paths that participants take to complete conversions.

Assisted Conversions From Giveaways and Sweepstakes ROI

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In this post, we’ll cover how sweepstakes and giveaways drive assisted conversions to help you understand what aspects of your sweepstakes participant data matters and what to do with those insights.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

• What are assisted conversions in Google Analytics?
• Why don’t last click conversions accurately track sweepstakes ROI?
• What types of content increase assisted conversions from sweepstakes?

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What Are Assisted Conversions?

An assisted conversion according Google Ads is an interaction that occurs prior to a conversion other than the attributed interaction that resulted in the conversion. Assisted conversions are the channels that help to facilitate converting sweepstakes participants to customers. They are one of the most important metrics to track if you want to maximize sweepstakes ROI.

Google Ads includes an Assisted Conversions report that shows how many sales how many sales and conversions were obtained by each media channel (media types including display ads, mobile ads, Google Search Ads 360 ads, Google Rich Media ads, and click trackers).

Some examples of metrics to track include:

• Click-through assisted conversions
• Rich Media assisted conversions
• Total conversions
• Unassisted conversions
• View-through assisted conversions
• Click-through assisted revenue
• Total assisted revenue
• Total revenue
• Unassisted revenue
• View-through assisted revenue

The “assisted conversion value” is the total value associated with these conversions. Note that assisted conversions from sweepstakes can be higher than the total conversion. Furthermore, the higher the assist value of a channel, the more important it is for turning participants into customers.

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Understanding the Value of Assisted Conversions in Sweepstakes Participation

The majority of sweepstakes companies focus on your promotion solely. Therefore to gain clear insights on assisted conversions and determine the assisted conversion value, you will need to rely on the data your marketing and sales teams have. This includes the ability to measure assisted conversions, as well as, how every aspect of your sweepstakes promotion impacts your brand in order to drive organic growth over time.

So understanding the value of your sweepstakes is a very broad way to start to examine exactly how organic traffic and sales flow to your brand. The assist value of every channel determines the impact that your giveaway campaign has on converting participants to first-time customers and ultimately loyal fans.

View-through Conversions vs Click-through Assisted Conversions in Giveaways

In fact, there are many ways that sweepstakes campaigns drive view-through assisted conversions that won’t necessarily get the credit for a sale. Namely, this occurs if a sweepstakes participant has an interaction with your brand via another channel after your giveaway campaign has ended. It’s also a reason why it’s so important to track click-through assisted conversions.

Consider also that the value of a sweepstakes promotion is not limited to that single campaign. Some participants join giveaways run by your brand multiple times before converting to customers. This means that your brand can influence sweepstakes participants to enter your buyer funnels across sweeps campaigns.

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Why Do Assisted Conversions Matter for Improving Sweepstakes ROI?

If you are running sweepstakes and giveaways with the goal of increasing the number of touchpoints and moments that your fans experience in order to nurture them to make ecommerce conversions or increase WOM for your brand, you need to factor in assisted conversions and the value of your sweepstakes.

If the main goal of your sweepstakes marketing is to attract more participants to your promotion that will also be interested in learning more about the brand along the way, then measure the assisted conversions value. It’s the best way to determine how well your brand is doing at getting the word out about your sweepstakes or giveaway.

But first, here are the top reasons why assisted conversions matter for sweepstakes ROI:

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Sweepstakes Don’t Always Convert Directly

While a certain number of participants should become instant first-time customers if your offer is good, a sweepstakes or giveaway should also be designed to educate fans about the brand. Thus, a sweepstakes is likely to attract participants to the middle and top of the funnel rather than the bottom. The average fan enters a sweepstakes, contest, or giveaways because it’s free to enter, not typically not with the goal of buying something.

Because of this, for the majority of your giveaway participants, during the sweepstakes is still too early to make a purchase decision because it doesn’t give them enough of an opportunity to evaluate your brand. It’s only with the delivery of a successful sweepstakes that you show the value of your promotion and the authority of your brand. Therefore, these fans are not likely to convert from the sweepstakes itself.

Far too many brands dismiss a sweepstakes campaign that fails to meet sales goals as an ineffective promotion simply because the participants didn’t instantly become customers as identifiable by their last-click conversions.

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Sweepstakes Marketing Conversion Optimization

As you run giveaways and sweepstakes over time, there needs to be a regular re-evaluation of your marketing strategy as part of an ongoing optimization process to improve sweepstakes participation rates.

If you only pay attention to the engagements that your sweepstakes creates based on the streams of traffic that you are already receiving, then you may miss out on new opportunities for engaging new audiences.

To ensure that your sweepstakes marketing takes into consideration your ROI goals as you work to attract participants, make sure to include assisted conversions.

This will ensure that the strategy you use to optimize participation will also take assisted conversions into account.

Sweepstakes and Giveaway Strategy: Longterm Planning

Running sweepstakes using a defined sweepstakes marketing strategy multiple times each year, is the best way to avoid the trap that can be crated by assuming you know which are the best prizes and types of sweepstakes promotions to bring in customers and loyal fans who refer participants.

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How Assisted Conversions Impact Sweepstakes Strategy

Here are a few examples of assists generated by sweepstakes:

Assisted Conversions for CPG Sweepstakes

The majority of CPG sweepstakes are looking to get fans to help increase brand awareness, switch to their brand or continue to be loyal customers.

So the type of CPG sweepstakes or contest that contributes the majority of assisted conversions are sweepstakes that do the following:

• Generate high quality, evergreen user-generated (UGC)
• Compare the brand to its competitors (by demonstrating the brand’s value)
• Encourage loyal customers to refer their friends

Assisted Conversions for DTC Sweepstakes

For DTC sweepstakes and ecommerce giveaways, the goal of the promo is usually to drive sales. Some D2C companies also offer month-to-month and annual subscription services.

D2C sweepstakes can gain the most assisted conversions from:

• Encouraging sweepstakes participants to engage with branded buyer guides and comparison content
• Having participants and fans create sweepstakes UGC demonstrating use cases for the products and/or services

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What to Focus on to Improve Sweepstakes ROI From Assisted Conversions

Want to increase assisted conversions to achieve a higher assisted conversion value from your sweepstakes or giveaway? Follow these tips:

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1. Conversation Starters: ToFu Content to Accompany Your Sweepstakes Marketing

ToFu content, or top of the funnel content, is how you introduce your brand to a larger audience. By increasing the total number of participants, as your sweepstakes goes viral, it will become a conversation starter that introduces participants to your brand.

Rather than focusing on trying to sell your product or service, to increase assisted conversions from sweepstakes, your top of the funnel content needs to be attention-grabbing and better than the competitions.

This is the competitive advantage that a unique sweepstakes or giveaway can create for brands.

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2. Increase BoFu Content to Turn Sweepstakes Participants to Sales

Before your sweepstakes is live, make sure that there is plenty of bottom of the funnel content for your sweepstakes participants to review about the brand. These content items can provide the social proof that sweepstakes participants need to become first-time customers.

Bottom of the funnel (BoFu) content typically goes deep into specs of products and services by emphasizing features and use cases while also sharing reviews and pricing information.

Create the following types of BoFu content and make sure that it’s easily accessible to your sweepstakes participants:

• Use cases and customer stories
• Video testimonials
• Downloadable checklists, infographics, guides
• Customer reviews and feedback
• Pricing pages
• Comparison content (Competitor vs. content, product roundups)
• Walkthroughs and feature tutorials

This content is designed for a smaller, ready-to-buy sweepstakes participant audience, participants who just need the final push to buy. At this point, you’ll just want to get to the point and focus on the value of your brand to convert more participants to customers.

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3. Middle of the Funnel: Keep Sweepstakes Participants on Your Site With MoFu Content

Create middle of the funnel content to increase conversions similar to BoFu content. However, the main difference is that the MoFu content should focus on sweepstakes participants on your brand site. To encourage sweepstakes participants to stick around and check out your brand you should do the following:

• Use email marketing and SMS marketing to keep sweepstakes participants focused on making a purchase.
• Offer incentives such as additional entries for making a purchase (while no purchase is required to enter to win per sweepstakes laws).
• Use live customer support to assist with FAQs and sales objections

When it comes to MoFu content and sweepstakes participants, personalization will make your brand seem like the perfect fit for new customers.

Looking for a sweepstakes marketing 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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