Looking for a proven way to grow your customer base and data set? Sweepstakes are an effective and manageable option with a high rate of return and engagement.

The key is to keep it simple! Offer a prize people will be excited about. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to expensive, but it should be relevant to your business. For example, a lawn service company offering a free iPad does not tie the sweepstakes to the company. While iPads are nice, it makes more sense for a lawn service to offer free fertilizer applications or free Fall leaf removal when you sign up for 6 months of lawn service. This will draw in the kind of customers interested in lawn service and it’s also a way to give back to your loyal customers, and even generate new ones.

Another way to increase your customer database is by adding opt-in options such as, “Yes, I want to receive more information and special offers”. This one question is a great way to increase email subscribers giving you another chance to speak to an audience group that has raised its hand (meaning they are further along in the purchase funnel). You could also allow entrants to share the sweepstake with their friends via email and social media, generating (audience look-alike) leads and gaining you product exposure to an audience similar to the one that has already indicated that they like your product!

Want more exposure for your event? Run a sweepstakes for a free entry. Perhaps a health clinic is hosting a free event on heart-health. Run a pre-event quiz asking 4 or 5 questions on exercise and eating habits.

These are just a few examples of simple activities that will create more exposure and get new subscribers in your email database.

You’ll want to think about the date you want to run your sweepstakes, the prize you’ll offer and if you’d like any survey questions. Our MLive team will take this information and build a landing page. To launch the sweepstakes, we send emails to an existing list of over 60,000 people in our sweepstakes database, inviting them to participate. Once it has ended, the winner is drawn and you are supplied an email list of all the people that opted in to receive emails.

At MLive Media Group we make enters-to-win easy by offering our clients the ability to participate in white-labeled sweepstakes on the number one news and information sites in the market.

Again, the key is to keep it simple for people to enter while having some fun with future customers! Good luck!

Contributed by: Monica Donahue