From The Contest Queen

I was only back from Texas one day and I went on a road trip with my contesting buddy Rick.  So on Wednesday Rick and I drove down to Rochester NY to meet Donna DeClemente of DDC Marketing and then attend a Lucky Lilacs club meeting.

We meet Donna at Northfield and had a very interesting conversation about sweeping from both sides of the hobby.  (I’ll be doing a guest blog posting for Donna shortly.  I’ll keep you posted.)  The time passed too quickly and we had to be off to our next meeting.  The conversation had been so interesting that we wished we could have continued and had dinner with her.  Maybe next time.

The Lucky Lilacs meet on a Wednesday evening once per month.  I thought they always met at their local Wegmans, but apparently, the past two meeting were held at local bars.  Each of those meetings moved location because each time a member had won a fantastic prize and they celebrated.

Nine members attended the meeting that evening.  Similar to the DFWinners, they began their meeting with a Roll Call announcing all their winnings since the previous meeting.  What they did differently was, they also pass around a lucky green candle.  When it was their turn, if a member had a win bigger then $500, they blew out the candle and absorbed the winning energy while all the other club members clapped and cheered.  What fun!

We then had draws for: decorated envelopes, regular stamps, postcard stamps, lottery tickets, blank 3×5s and at the end, all the losing tickets were put in to a bin and a name was draw for a Better-Than-Nothing gift bag.  I won the decorated envelopes, WOO HOO!, and since we don’t mail-in much in Canada anymore, I gave them to the member who had the least amount of wins for the past month.  I guess good karma came back around because I then won the Better-Than-Nothing prize.

What a fun night we had!

Rick and I then drove home in the first big snow fall of the year.  I finally crawled into bed at 3am.  The next time I go back, it will definitely be in warmer weather!

If you currently not a member of a sweeping or contesting club, I highly recommend it.  There is no words to describe the energy one receives from being around other winners.  The friends I have made in this hobby far outweigh any wins I have ever had.

Last Sunday I was lucky enough to attend the monthly club meeting of the DFWinners with Helene in tow.  (See if you can spot her in any of the pictures.)  It is held at the Spring Creek BBQ restaurant in Irving TX.  I found their club to be so different from the one I belong to.

My club, The Winner’s Circle, only has 12 members.  We meet once per month at a local restaurant.  We have lunch, chat generally about the hobby and have a scratch lottery ticket trade.

Their club had 29 people in attendance.  I am not sure how many members they have.  They have a formal meeting format.  Before the meeting starts, people line up to participate in the draws: stamped postcards, decorated envelopes, scratch tickets, 50/50 and Better Then Nothing.  The meeting began with a Roll Call.  Each person introduced  themselves and what they had won since the last meeting.  Lots of cheering for each other.  Even if someone’s win were low the past month there were many words of encouragement. They even have a wins board to track how many big wins they have had as a club.

Then I got up and spoke a bit about the hobby and answered questions about how the hobby is so different between Canada and the US. The short list of the differenaces are: the lingo (contestor vs sweeper), the taxes (in Canada we do not pay income tax on winnings of any kind), there are virtually no mail-in contests left in Canada and the number of local contests where participation is required is far greater.

I discovered later that the part of the meeting I spoke was their Educational Session, where they learn something new to increase their odds of winning.  The previous month they had made shaving cream envelopes.

Then they had their draws.  I won the 50/50. WOO HOO!  (I bought my daughter pink cowgirl boots with my winnings.)

After all the winning was done, they discussed club business.  (The business section was very similar to the business section of my Toastmasters club meetings.)  Since it was November they talked about the Christmas party/meeting and the new executive for the following year.  I then realized the four women sitting at the front were the President, Webmaster, Secretary and Treasurer.

At the very end, Helene stood up and offered to host a few members as guests in her home one Sunday in the new year and teach them first hand about attracting in the wins they really want.  They will have a draw for the 5 winners in January.  Everyone was very excited at the prospect of being lucky enough to win an afternoon with Helene!

The two hours went by so fast.  Helene and I had so much fun!!

Helene had told me she stopped entering sweepstakes years ago because she won everything she every wanted.  My winning energy is so contagious that by the time I left we were in the process of winning her a new computer. (I seem to have that effect on people!)  So we agreed once she won, we would all (Craig, Nicole & I) would come down for a visit and Craig would get her all setup.  I plan to ensure our trip coincides with another DFWinners meeting!

So if you are travelling, see which clubs are in the area and attend a meeting if you can.  It’s a great way to be around fellow sweepers in between conventions.

As a follow up to my post The Future of Contesting?, Eric Friedberg was featured on CBS News.

Where does the time go?  It’s Tuesday and this is the first chance I have had to blog again about the convention.  Sandra on the other hand was able to blog about the convention (her day 2 post), and she managed to blog about a few of the other speakers and their great entry tips (cooking & baking contests).

Saturday was a very full day as the vendor room opened early and there were activities until almost midnight.  Sandra was scheduled to give three speeches as she is very knowledgeable in all areas of sweepstakes.  (There are over 2000 sweepstakes related articles on the About.com website.)  However, I am assuming she does not have a lot of public speaking experience because she made a very common public speaking error.  She spoke too quickly.  It is easy to do when you want to ensure you cover all the points in your speech.

(I have to credit being a member of Toastmasters with helping me improve my public speaking skills over the past two years.  This year I completed both my Competent Communicator and Competent Leadership pins and I have just started my Advanced Toastmasters Bronze badge.  I highly recommend joining Toastmasters.  It’s a perfect organization to join for anyone who has to give presentations either in an office or to large groups.)

It actually worked in the attendees’ favour because she had extra time we was able to cover topics not originally on the agenda.  Since one reason many attended the convention was to learn more about the hobby, we certainly benefited from Sandra’s short speeches.

Craig (my husband) spoke late in the afternoon on text messaging contests.  Everyone enjoyed pulling out their cellphones for a hands-on session.  We even had a few instant winners!  (Try texting JONES to 64000 if you have a US wireless provider and see if you are an instant winner too.)

Then we all dressed up for dinner, enjoyed a fabulous buffet dinner, gave out the vendor raffle prizes, the mailed-in raffle prizes and the biggest prize donations for the weekend.  I donated an 8GB iPod Nano so the winner would be able to listen to all my online radio show iTunes podcasts.  No excuses!

Stevan of Wellsboro, PA won the lucky basket in my vendor table raffle and Lauralee of Manchester, NH won the iPod we donated.

The past few days have been extremely busy.  This is the first chance I have had to blog between all the travelling, shopping, schmoozing, selling and winning.

Early Thursday morning we left Oshawa to head down to the convention.  After a few unscheduled stops and a beautiful scenic fall drive, we arrived at our hotel at 9pm.

No sleeping in late for us.  Friday morning, after our favourite breakfast at Cracker Barrel, we were off to run errands.  We had to buy a prize donation for Saturday night’s banquet, souvenirs, donations for that evening’s Hershey Bonanza and CHOCOLATE!  On our way to Chocolate World we passed a street sign that I just had to stop and photograph.

When we got back to the hotel we had just enough time to set up my vendor table before the convention officially started.  After dinner the Meet and Greet began with an Ice Cream Social.  After mixing and mingling the Hershey Bonanza began.  Neither Craig nor I won a basket full of chocolate themed goodies.

Then Let’s Sweep a Deal began.  Those dressed as a prize they won were eligible to win extra prizes.  Somehow I forgot reading about the costumes in my convention information packet, so we didn’t pack anything fun to wear.

Craig won some CDs in the evening’s regular draws. WOO HOO!

The best part of the evening for me was finally meeting Sandra Grauschopf of Contests.About.com.  (You can read her version of the evening’s events on her blog.)

How do you feel about telemarketers?  Most of us find them annoying, but compaines wouldn’t use them if not one bought from that sales method.

The United States has had a Do Not Call registry for years.  You can register both home and mobile phones.  It then becomes against the law for companies to call you one month after you sign-up. Yesterday, Canada finally launched a Do Not Call registry. Like the US, sign-up any number you wish.

So, if you are tired of getting calls for every home improvement service under-the-sun during dinner, register today!

It will also cutback on disappointment in your life.  You will have much less excitement immediately followed by a deflating feeling once you realise the person on the phone isn’t notifying you of a win, but promoting an unwanted product or service.

If you do win a prize, the contest management company will call you even if you are registered in either country, because they are not contacting you unsolicited.  You agreed to be notified by phone once you agreed to the entry rules.

Journalist Natalie Pompilio wrote a great article about sweepstaking that appeared in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

Read full article here.

While cooking dinner the other evening I received a winning phone call. WOO HOO! I get so excited when I win. While getting all the details of my win, the gentleman commented on how nice it was to speak someone who was so excited about the prize (a one day family pass to our local zoo). He was giving out 75 passes and I was the first one he had spoken with that was happy.

WHAT?! How could anyone not be happy about winning? Why enter if it is not to bring unexpected fun and excitement plus unplanned adventures into your life?

So next time you get that winning call, get excited! Make the person notifying you happy he called you today.

More and more companies are looking for a way to “cut through the clutter”, so they either bombard us with their product message or they use a new medium (social marketing), such as Facebook.

Contest Finder is a new application on Facebook that has partnered with Adooga to bring contests and sweepstakes right to your Facebook account. Since so many people log on to Facebook every day, it is such an easy way to find new promotions.

Don’t have a Facebook account yet? Why not sign-up, it’s FREE!

The two very interesting things I read about this week related to contesting and sweepstaking are: some experts predict that companies with triple their spending on online promotions over the next five years. Last year U.S. companies spent 1.89 billion dollars on sweepstakes so in 2012 companies will spend 5.67 billion dollars. There are now, and will be, a lot of prizes to be won! (Read more here.) And, sweepstakes websites are the fifth fastest growing Internet property. (Read more here.) Just more places to find and enter sweepstakes! WOO HOO!