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THIS WEEK
Lucky Door Prizes & Competitions - Tips to Make them Legal and Work for your Business
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
| Small Business: Lucky Door Prizes & Competitions - Tips to Make them Legal and Work for your Business |
Many businesses use competitions and lucky door prizes as a way of generating leads or building their data base. But if done incorrectly you will end up losing customers and could even find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
So how do you run lucky door prizes or competitions that are legal and get you brilliant results?
Top 10 Tips for competitions
1. Work out your intent. You need to know why you are running the competition in the first place. Is it to qualify leads, get email addresses for your database, get a new marketing slogan, and get feedback on your product or some other purpose? Start with the end in mind. When you know why you are running the competition you will adjust the prizes, competition form and process to best match your needs.
2. You need an entry box. A lot of people use clear bowls or fishbowls for people to put their cards into. These don’t keep the details private so could breach privacy regulations in some locations. The best option is a solid sided cardboard entry box. You can buy a gift box and cut out a hole or buy a blank entry box from a cardboard box manufacturer. You can of course get one purpose designed and built for you. For online competitions I suggest setting up a separate email account just for each competition to keep your entries separate.
3. Somewhere to lean on to complete the forms. People need somewhere to lean on to fill in the forms. If the table you use is too low or you force people to sit down to complete the forms, many people won’t bother entering. Make sure your table is the right height for people to lean on (and no handing out clipboards with forms isn’t the solution. Many people are juggling bags and kids so can’t juggle a clipboard as well). Being comfortable also works for online competitions. If your form is tricky to complete you can expect people to click away rather than stay.
4. Make it obvious. Your competition needs to be located at the front of your trade stand or your office. It needs to be clearly and obviously signed so people can find it and are encouraged to enter. Put a banner on your website letting passing traffic know about your competition and where they can find you to enter.
5. Tell people about it. Tell your regular clients about your competition as well as your new clients. You could also tell some of the major competition sites – where the site collated competitions and lets their members know so they can enter them (my personal favourite of these is Luv2win).
6. Make it worth their while. Giving away a low value item is not likely to generate much interest in your competition. Make the offer enticing with high perceived value.
7. Protect their privacy. You need to make it very clear how you will handle their personal details. Will you pass on their information to other people? Will you contact them to send them marketing material? You need to tell people what you will do with their information. Give them an opt-out box for them to tick if they don’t want to receive any further information from you (and respect that tick in the box if you don’t want to fall foul of Spam Laws and Do Not Call Registers).
8. Sort out your legals. Many locations have strong rules around the operation of gaming including Lucky Door Prizes.
In Queensland, the Office of Gaming Regulation Inspectors check every stand of almost every expo or tradeshow for compliance. You need to download the Guidelines for Promotional Games and comply with items such as retention of entries for 5 years, the order of drawing prizes, written terms and conditions which must include things such as:
- the name of the person running the promotion
- Eligibility requirements for players
- Description and retail value of each prize
- Closing and drawing dates
- Order the prizes will be drawn
- How winners will be notified
- Whether the results will be published and where
- What will happen if the winner is not present at the draw
- Any elimination rounds
It almost goes without saying that of you run a competition you must honour your commitments and actually award the prizes (unless you get no entries at all). Running a competition and not awarding the prizes can see you before the courts. 9. Follow up promptly. If you are using the competition to generate leads or create a data base then follow up on all entries within 14 days of close of the competition. You may want to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) to convert the entries or business cards into a database for you. Pre-book your VA so they have time to do your data-entry when it arrives. When following up remind the person where you got their details.
10. Trumpet the winners. If you can get their consent, get photos of the winners that you can use in your marketing and promote the details of the winners to your mailing list and local media. Most people love the spotlight (and other people love to know the inside of other people’s lives). Good news stories are great for business.
If you follow these top 10 tips you will improve the response to your competitions and lucky door prizes and get more “bang for your competition buck.”
| HR Tip - Employees accepting gifts from suppliers |
One of the trickiest parts of any business is determining whether or not your employees can accept gifts from suppliers. This becomes a question of ethics - whether or not accepting the gift is a real or perceived conflict of interest. Ethics is a grey area - definitely not cut and dried for any business and needs to be discussed with your employees before the situation occurs.
Generally smart businesses allow employees to give or accept a gift which is of nominal value. If the gift is more than nominal value such as a fancy dinner at a restaurant, corporate box tickets, air fares or accommodation there is potential for a real or perceived conflict of interest. In those cases the employee should declare the gift to their manager and discuss appropriate actions which may include refusing the gift or donating it to charity.
But what if the employee puts their business card into the lucky door prize draw they attended as a representative of your company ... and won first prize? The same rules should apply - declare and discuss it with the manager.
Of course actively soliciting gifts is illegal and should be dealt with through your discipline procedures.
Business of the Week - Electrolux deliveries
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I have continued to blow things up this past week. My friends all joke that there is nothing electrical left in my house to blow up and they insist we meet at my house not their houses (in case I blow their things up as well).
This week it was my faithful dishwasher's turn. Dead hoses, a stuffed pump and broken seals were its death song. So I bought a new one. I paid a bit extra to Myer who I bought the new machine from to have old faithful taken away, and was told the delivery people would drop off the new one but I would have to install it and unplug the old machine myself.
OK - I'm pretty handy so no problems. Enter Electrolux deliveries. Two lovely guys rang me the night before to give me an approximate delivery time. On the day of delivery they rang to say they were half an hour away (without being asked!).
They arrived with the new machine and then proceeded to fully install it, test it and then show me how to work it before leaving with old faithful. They went above and beyond the call of duty and I was a 100% raving fan by the end of it.
How do you go above and beyond the call of duty in your business?
Does your handbag recharge your mobile phone during the day? It would if if was from Noon Solar. Read how a company has put a solar panel in their handbags.
Writing with personality
warm regards
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's blog also included posts about my friend Donna-Marie Coggins being nominate for Telstra Business Woman of the Year, tracking the impact of what you are saying, managing customer expectations and a brilliant range of free psychology quizzes.
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