From The Contest Queen

Last Saturday evening Wendy held an appreciate BBQ for the sponsors of the contest she won her new house from. (You remember how Helene & I helped her win the house?)

Friends and family were also invited. We got there around 6pm. Just in time to get pictures of the house before we lost the light.

What a beautiful home! Wendy and her husband worked hard the past month as it looked like they had lived there for years. All the walls were painted, pictures were up and not a moving box in sight.

We had a wonderful time and I felt lucky to be her friend.

TIP: Gratitude is one of the cornerstones of being lucky. When you are thankful about every win, yes, including that bottle of soda pop, you will notice how much luckier you are.

I want to give you an example of a sweepstakes that could have gone off the rails, but because the sponsor understood the value of customer service, even in situation that was unprofitable (from a financial perspective) they went above and beyond the call-of-duty resulting in a customer for life and a very vocal advocate.

So what happened?

Well, I entered a contest to win an organic top donated to Feisty, Frugal & Fabulous (@FeistyFrugal) by Green is Black (@thegreenisblack) and I was the lucky winner.  I was very excited.  The top was gorgeous and was happy to now own more than one piece of organic clothing.  My contact information was then forwarded to Green is Black by Feisty, Frugal & Fabulous for prize fulfillment.

The next day I received an email from Green is Black outlining their sizing chart, requesting my sizing so they could send me the best fitting top.  As it turns out they only had an extra small or large in stock and for the best fit I would have needed a small.  So, instead of just sending me a large, that I would either wear big or give to a friend, they suggested I perusse their website and select anything I wished at the same price point.  WOW!  What a wonderful offer!

I had a hard time picking as they have so many beautiful items.  I managed to narrow it doen to two items.  I sent the following request to Green is Black:

All is well.  I was not meant to have the Hope top…
Here are my two choices… I like both, so you pick.
The Awnee jacket is $248 regular price, but it’s on sale, so I am not sure if that counts…
The Nyan jacket is regular $98 regular price, and it’s on sale too…
Let me know if either item works for you.  If not, I will select again.
Thank you so much.

To my surprise they picked the Awnee jacket.  My win turned into a windfall!

If more companies did such outstanding back-end marketing, all their promotional efforts would return far greater results than they are receiving now.  So, check out  Green is Black and experience their extraordinary customer service today.

The reason you never hear about sweepstakes success stories is because companies don’t do back-end marketing.  Interesting that it’s that same reason some sweepstakes fall apart.

One of the reasons people tell me the don’t enter sweepstakes is, “No one every really wins those things, do they?”  If companies followed through on the clause usually found in the rules;

Participation in the contest constitutes permission to XYZ COMPANY and the sponsors and their agencies to use the name, photograph and/or likeness of the winner (and his/her guest) purposes of promotion, advertising, and trade without further compensation.

then more people would see real people win the thousands of promotions, sweepstakes and giveaway prizes awarded every day.

It’s a wonderful marketing cycle when done right.  When companies begin to showcase their happy winners, more people will begin to enter their sweepstakes, therefore increasing their marketing ROI (return-on-investment).  The sponsors become happier as they see their marketing dollars making a larger impact and engage in an exciting manner with their prospects and customers.  The entrants become happier when they have more opportunities to win and engage in exciting manner with the sponsors.

It’s a win-win when companies do back-end marketing, especially when their sweepstakes goes well.

I get asked to help people with “sweepstakes that have gone bad”.  The sponsor or the contest management company has not done the back-end marketing for the promotion and dropped the ball.  More often than not, it non-delivery of prizes within a timely manner.  (The rule of thumb for prize delivery is; 4-8 weeks after you submit your release forms and affidavits.)  My advice is always the same.  Start at the top, as poop rolls downhill and and be very nice, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.

So, who should you contact?  I recommend the President of the sponsoring company and/or the Vice President of Marketing.  How do you find the name and contact information for these executives?  Google, of course.  Every major corporation has all their executive bios and corporate information online. Remember, you are looking for the corporate website, not the one for the sweepstakes or their products/services.

In Google, type in the title, president, and the company name, XYZ Company.  You may have to poke around a bit on various corporate links to get the full contact name and job title.  Once you have that, click on Contact Us.  They will usually list the company address.  You want the head office location.  If it’s not there, try the media or press contact to find a mailing address and/or phone number.  At that point you can either write a letter or call.  I do not recommend emailing the company.  Emails are too easy to delete or ignore.  It’s much harder to ignore a paper letter or someone on the phone.

If you call, you will not get the Vice President or President directly.  You will get their assistant.  Make sure to have pen and paper handy to jot down their name and number.  Explain your problem in a clear friendly manner and ask for help getting the situation resolved.  You will be amazed at how quickly problems will be resolved.

If you are dealing with a contest management company that has dropped the ball, you will notice I suggested you contact the sponsor.  I recommend that course of action because the sponsor has paid the management company to execute the promotion.  They will not be very impressed with the complacency of the firm they have hired.  They will usually be swift to get the problem resolved.

If the problem has not been resolved to your satisfaction, at that point, your next step is to file a formal complaint with the Competition Bureau.  However, it is a government agency and you will not be informed of the result.  The other option is to contact the media, someone such as Dale Goldhawk (@dalegoldhawk) to bring attention to the issue.

Thankfully, the majority of promotions are handled in professional manner.  (That’s why we don’t hear about them.  They went smoothly from beginning to end.)

Nicole of Clemsford ON recently called me.  (Do you remember Nicole? I helped her win a car.)  She was very excited.  Her husband was selected to Boot For Loot.  It was a contest sponsored by the OLG (@olglotteries) to garner attention and sales for it’s Daily KENO lottery game.  The selected contestant would be flown to Toronto and during half-time during a Toronto FC game, they would get the opportunity to kick soccer balls to try to win up to $250,000.  I wasn’t able to watch the half-time show to see how they made out.  Then I got this email from Nicole:

Hi Carolyn,
I had to tell you what happened last Saturday at the “Boot for Loot” contest at the Toronto FC game.  My husband only got the 1st ball in and won $1,000.  He was rushed by the announcer plus he could not see the clock behind him while he was kicking – only had 30 seconds for 4 balls.  Oh well … at least we got to see part of the game and won $1,000.

This contest was not arranged properly at all!  The promoter from MLS (@MLS_Insider) wanted us to stay in a locker room for 3 hours and not even let us see the first half of the game.  Thanks to the OLG representative, she convinced him to let us have a tour of the stadium and see the first 20 minutes of the game.  They didn’t even arrange for us to have designated seats.  They sent two taxis, non-air conditioned, to come and get us at 12:30 from our hotel where the OLG representative met us.  Taxi drivers did not even know quite where they were going.

To get us to Toronto, they were cheap about it as well.  We were suppose to fly over 150 km and we’re in Sudbury almost 450 km, they didn’t really want us to fly, so they gave us $500 in lieu. Airline tickets would have been almost $3,000.  Then they didn’t want to pay for parking our vehicle at the hotel, we also had to pay.

What an experience, with OLG promoting this, well they made it really difficult for anybody to get a soccer ball in a hockey net with a board at the bottom.  We have to say the Boot for Loot promotion really sucked!   I will send a letter out to OLG and MLS next week.
Nicole

I was flabbergasted.  Thankfully Nicole is an experienced contestor and would not let a poorly run promotion stop her from becoming a winner again.  However, this is a classic example of two companies that did no back-end promotional marketing.  The front-end marketing to get entrant and exposure and sales is run flawlessly, then it comes time to execute the prizing component and the ball is dropped.  Had Nicole been a first time entrant, I bet she would either stop entering all together or be very gun-shy when she did enter.

Marketers ask me all the time how do they get “regular” people (not contestors) to enter their contests.  One big myth marketers have to overcome is; the perception by the general public that contests are scams.  When they do not do back-end marketing and treat the winners poorly, they are only perpetuating their own myth, making it 1) harder to attract entrants to their next promotion and 2) harder for all their fellow marketers (who may be doing it right!).

Sadly, the MLS and the OLG are not the only companies dropping the ball:

Contest Glitch Puts Future Shop on Hot Seat

On Give-aways and Sponsors and Winners…

When I began my online radio back in April 2008 I wanted to have a start-up theme song.  I was even thinking of hosting a contest for suggestions.  Well, ask and it is given.

On a family road trip, we were listening to XM Kids on our satellite radio.  A song called Luck by Secret Agent 23 Skidoo played.  That’s it!  I used the chorus as my theme song.  It makes me smile everytime I hear it.  Listen to it online and sing along.  Here are the lyrics:

LUCK

Chorus:

Luck is kinda a funny thing

if you believe it you can have it

There’s no stopping what luck can bring

there’s no rules everything is magic

If you believe in Luck

life is easy enough

We talking bout good luck and why is it funny

you can’t pick it up

you can’t buy it with money

It makes life easy

and it makes days sunny

I got it and nobody can take it away from me

And if you don’t have it

then you get stuck

so I always grab pennies when they’re heads up

And I always wish on stars when I see’em

shootin stars and the first star of the evening

But for real my luck comes down to one reason

I’m never done believing until I’m done breathing

So when I’m speaking

I believe in what I’m saying

and when I’m making music I believe in what I’m playing

and its amazing

how things keep working out

life is changing

but one thing I be sure about

is whoever knew what they wanted

and stood up

for it probably got it

and that’s good luck

yup

Chorus

P.S. If you have kids, his whole album Easy is great.  I highly recommend it.)

ENJOY, GOOD LUCK & HAVE FUN!

It turns out the fact I am “invisible” on Twitter, has nothing to do with what I tweet.  It appears to be a much larger problem also experienced by many other people.  Twitter has created a support issue called Missing From Find People Search.  To see if you are invisible, go to Find People on Twitter and try searching for both your real name and Twitter name.  If you are not found in either search, leave a comment on the support page.  Now, let’s see how long it takes for this issue to be resolved.

Twitter recently announced new Terms of Service.  In their blog post, Twitter’s New Terms of Service (September 10, 2009) they address four key areas: advertising, ownership, APIs, and SPAM.  The one that interested me the most, of course, was SPAM.

SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we’ve been operating under for some time.

Twitter talks about many points, but here is what they have to say about SPAM:

*Spam: You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. What constitutes “spamming” will evolve as we respond to new tricks and tactics by spammers. Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming are:

• If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;
• If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn);
• If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;
• If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following;
• If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;
• If a large number of people are blocking you;
• The number of spam complaints that have been filed against you;
• If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account
• If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #
• If you post multiple unrelated updates to a trending or popular topic
• If you send large numbers of duplicate @replies
• If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies in an attempt to spam a service or link
• If you repost other user’s content without attribution.
• If you have attempted to “sell” followers, particularly through tactics considered aggressive following or follower churn.

Your account may be suspended for Terms of Service violations if any of the above is true; accounts created to replace suspended accounts will be permanently suspended.

As I stated in my first post, Twitter Thinks Contests Are Spam, most of my tweets have links, and so do most of the people I follow.  Will all of our accounts be suspended because we are breaking the 5th point?

I took the time and wrote Biz Stone (@biz) a letter, yes a real on paper, addressed, stamped letter addressing my concerns and how Twitter must find a balance between people marketing their business, having fun on Twitter entering contests and weeding out the rotten apples.  (I felt a real letter would get more attention in this electronic world than an email or a tweet.)  I am waiting to here how my letter and points will be addressed.  I will post any news or updates I receive.

I found a great blog post by Jonathan Ezor (@ProfJonathan) titled, Twitter-based Prize Promotions: Tweeting For Trouble that I thought you may enjoy, since it ties in so well with this topic.

ENJOY, GOOD LUCK & HAVE FUN!

My first full day seminar How To Win Cash, Cars, Trips & More! is only two weeks away!  The winner of my blog contest is, drum roll please…

CONGRATULATIONS to Shirley of Montreal, QC! She is the lucky winner who will attend the seminar for FREE, and get a Contestor Starter Kit which includes an autographed copy of my book, You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter.

If you were not lucky enough to win your way into How To Win Cash, Cars, Trips and More! seating is limited, so get your tickets now.

I will be on Canada AM (@CTVCanadaAM) on Friday September 25th and in the Saturday September 26th issue of The Ottawa Citizen (@OttawaCitizen).  Any tickets left at that time, will be sold.  I do not want you to miss this opportunity to take your hobby to the next level.

So, buy your tickets, grab a contest buddy and I’ll see you in Ottawa!