Marketing Sweepstakes and Contests

Sweepstakes Administration Companies

Can you execute a marketing sweepstakes promotion on your own? You can try -- if you're a glutton for punishment. It's a much better idea to partner with a sweepstakes administration company. Here are a few attributes of good sweepstakes administration companies you'll want to look for.

A promotional sweepstakes contest can go one of two ways for a business: Either it can be a smashing success with tons of brand awareness and new customers generated for the company, or it can be a complete disaster with PR and/or legal consequences that will make your head spin.

Unfortunately, for business owners who lack sweepstakes expertise, the results tend toward the latter.

But the good news is that sweepstakes administration companies are readily available to help your business organize and manage your next sweepstakes contest. These companies specialize in squeezing the maximum possible benefit from promotional sweepstakes and are skilled at helping companies like yours avoid unnecessary entanglements.

If you're in the market for sweepstakes administration provider, here are several of the services you should expect to receive:

• Design & rules development. The FTC is acutely aware of the fraudulent potential of a promotional sweepstakes. Sweepstakes administrators help you create rules that protect your company and the contest's integrity.
• Full compliance. Sweepstakes administration companies ensure that your contest is designed properly. But they also ensure full legal compliance at every stage of the process, including public notifications, 1099 distributions, and other details you don't want to think about.
• Contest promotion. Your contest's effectiveness will be limited by the number of people who participate in it. A qualified sweepstakes administration company will have a proven track record in achieving targeted participation levels with similarly sized companies in your industry.
• Entry management. You've probably thought about what will happen if your sweepstakes fails. But have you considered what will happen if it succeeds? You could quickly be inundated with thousands of entries. The advantage of working with a sweepstakes administration provider is that they will manage entries and create mechanisms for capturing large amounts of data.
• Winner selection & validation. If there is even a hint of misconduct in the selection of the winner your company will have a major PR nightmare on its hands. Sweepstakes administration companies are experienced at the process of selecting and validating winners—and if something goes wrong, they provide a buffer between you and the public.

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