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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.

At a given time, a winner was randomly selected from those registered. That person had to be in the area to participate. We only had to select a couple of people before we had one that was present and ready to play. We’d done it before but this is the first time I was on hand to see it live.

I mention this here because the process was suprisingly easy. If you’re running a promotion at a trade show, festival or sporting event, you may want to consider a “virtual draw” using mobile phones. It eliminates the paper and speeds up the process.

One of our mobile marketing partners provided the engine to make this happen. Comment or shoot me an email though the contact page and I’d be happy to pass along the info.

In the shootout, the contestant will be required to make, in order, a lay-up, free throw, 3-point shot and half-court shot, all in 25 seconds.  The contestant will have to gather all made / missed shots, and the attempts will be videotaped for authenticity’s sake. 
   
To be eligible, the participant cannot have played any high school, junior college, college, semi-professional, professional, or Olympic basketball, or have coached at any of those levels in the last five (5) years.
   
The first $10,000 shootout occurred at the Midnight at Madness event on October 19, as part of the pep rally to conclude the first official week of basketball practice, while two fans were unsuccessful in their respective November 30 and December 1 attempts.

Here are the remaining five dates and opponents for the OSL-sponsored shootouts:

• Friday, January 25 – Chico State
• Saturday, January 26 – Cal State Stanislaus
• Friday, February 8 – Cal State San Bernardino (in conjunction with Toro Days)
• Saturday, February 9 – Cal Poly Pomona
• Saturday, February 23 – San Francisco State

http://www.gotoros.com/news/2008/1/23/mbb_shootout_012308.aspx

Even consumers not hip on texting their every movement can receiving and view a text message on their phone, which opens up endless opportunities for motivating and incentivizing.

In order to include a mega-prize where the risk is covered by an outside firm, you will need to have a secure and auditable mechanic so a prize result can be determined.

Below are a few ideas for adding a big prize — or lots of small prizes — to your next mobile marketing campaign. Either way, a promotional risk coverage will keep the prize costs fixed.

Instant Win – Crack The Code Number Match

Consumers text a sponsor-specific keyword and receive back an invitation to play “Crack the Code.”

• Once the invitation is received, consumers send another text message with their guess for the winning combination.
• If the guess matches the winning combination, the prize vault opens and the winners are sent instructions on how to claim their prize.

Retail Traffic Builder

Send a test message and drive consumers into retail locations to check the winning number.

• Consumers send a text message and receive a unique code on their mobile phone. They bring their phone to the retail location to see if they are a winner
• If the code matches posted winning code(s), then the consumer wins the Grand Prize.

Online Traffic Builder

Consumers text a promotional code to a specified number. The reply text instructs consumers to go online to play a game or sweepstakes.

Listeners, customers, prospects, clients – they subscribe to your Twitter feed – and become “followers” of your message. You “tweet” short messages and your subscribers get them instantly via their computer or mobile phone.

Imagine driving immediate traffic with a simple tweet! It pays to build a Twitter following.

Give your audience a reason to follow you immediately by offering a chance at a big prize. Use PrizeCode to deliver an instant chance to win $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 or more.

Here are a few simple ways to add big prizes to your promotions, increase your Twitter following and generate immediate traffic.

• Randomly select a follower each day, week or month to receive a chance to win.
• Preselect a follower for their Birthday Tweet – If their birthday matches the preselected birthday they win! For example match the month wins $100; match the month & day wins $1000; match the month day and year wins $100,000!
• Schedule big-prize promotions at your location, and invite people exclusively through Twitter to come into your location and play. For example: Create a special “Money Bags Game Show” that offers one follower the chance to play for big money at your retail location.

Because Twitter is such an easy way to communicate, it’s also a perfect tool for leveraging a sponsorship. For example you could conduct a score prediction contest where fans tweet their score picks. One lucky fan closest to the correct score is selected to play for the big money.

Building your Twitter following — and using Twitter to connect with your target audience — is a key marketing strategy today. Putting big prizes to work to build your Twitter following quickly can help drive more traffic and increase sales far into the future.

Naked Pizza Generates Sales from Twitter

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans pizzeria, is generating thousands of followers on Twitter and more than $1 million in annual sales with a micro-local marketing focus using Twitter as its primary tactic. The restaurant promotes its Twitter ID on a billboard placed right above the location and tweets specials regularly.  A recent “twitter-only” promotion increased sales on a single day by 15%.

http://www.smallbusinessnewz.com/topnews/2009/05/18/business-puts-a-value-on-twitter-marketing-success

The Hartford Highlights Richard Childress Racing No. 33 With Online Contest

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., is promoting its NASCAR Sprint Cup car sponsorship with a five-day national online scavenger hunt this week. Each day The Hartford will tweet clues on www.twitter.com/TheHartford. The clues, which will also be posted on http://thehartfordracing.com/, will prompt fans to search online to find the daily answers.

http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=338806&FS=NASCAR-CUP

B2B Marketer Skyrockets following with MacBook Promotion

Moonfruit, a UK-based web-design software firm, added 10,000 followers a day with promotion that awarded one mac book a day to their Twitter followers. They currently have 37,712 followers.

http://mediatransparent.com/2009/07/03/twitter-contests-also-work-for-local-business/

Using Twitter to Find Customers

Boloco, a Boston Mexican restaurant collected 900 coupons on a recent promotion – up from an average of 350 — after they started tweeting their specials. More good examples in this Inc. including comments from Dell Computer, which currently speaks to over 700,000 followers through Twitter.

http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2009/07/twitter.html

Twitter Small Business Examples

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html?_r=1&em

Twitter Use Guide

Whether you’re just getting started on Twitter or a seasoned veteran, Twitter’s own guide provides good insight on Tweeting to increase business.

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/
An aggregation of links to Twitter accounts of major retailers.

http://www.noturnonred.org/twitter/

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pZq18f491UTAIVBwD9SyhDQ

Here’s a link to the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines on presenting prize offers to the public.