It’s a constant challenge to create new and unique campaigns that bring in new customers. Offering chances to win big money makes perfect sense for banks. Shareplus Federal Bank’s recent campaign for example, brought in over 500 new customers. How? In part by dangling a chance to win $50,000 as part of their big 50th anniversary.  But how do you do it? Here are a few simple ideas for incorporating a big offer into your marketing efforts.

Super Size Your Spiff (any objective)

Lots of banks offer an incentive to open an account. How about offering a chance to multiply that incentive by 5, 10, 20 or 100 times?  Supersizing the prize will help you turn more heads and get attention so you have an opportunity to get your message through.

There are a number of ways you can offer the prize but the easiest way is to give the prospect or customer a code that’s redeemable on line. The code itself can be printed, distributed in an email or included in broadcast or direct-mail media. Printed cards are handing for leveraging your events and sponsorships. Unique pass phrases for each event will help you track the effectiveness of your event marketing activities.

The online prize fulfillment offers opportunities to collect a little more information from the prospect and present some additional on your solution such as a video, a Flash presentation or simple HTML. This message could be customized by the Passphrase that’s entered. For example, maybe you have multiple locations. The Code entered could be keyed to specific locations, displaying unique content for each.

The visitor completes this page, clicks next and the prize result is displayed. The prize displayed could be the grand prize, or one of a number of secondary prizes or discount offers. A confirmation email is delivered to the contestant.

Conversion to Electronic Statements

The same mechanic used for the Spiff promotion also works here. Drive consumers to a promotion page, enter the code and watch a short presentation on the benefits of e-billing. Interested prospects could complete a short form that sends a link in an email to sign up for e-statements.  Also the thank you page that displays after the prize result is shown could take the consumer to e-statemement sign-up page.

By using a promotion-specific landing page, there is no need to impact the client’s current website, reducing the complexity of the program.

Win Free Samples! (any objective)

Who doesn’t want to win free samples from a bank! This is a great theme that can use the same “prize code” mechanic as outlined above.

Let’s say the offer is something like ”come by the branch to win free samples.” You could have prospects come into the bank, and use an online promotion page to fulfill the prize, while the customer is sitting in front of you. You just log on, enter the prospects “promotion code” and their prize is instantly displayed.

SCA’s gameZizzle platform is a good fit for this type of promotion where you are in a retail or event setting and need an instant prize result.