So I have a client whose end customer had a need for a sweepstakes to promote their new website. The sweepstake was for a high end ($2k+) BBQ grill. The target customers, technical trade journals in a niche industry.
We setup the ColdFusion form to capture the sweepstakes registration information, drop it into a database and email us each time so we know we have a new entrant. The lawyers write all the legalese, 1 person per household, etc. First 2 weeks go by, very very small number of applicants (<10), but the trade journals havenât been sent to everyone yet and we are happy with the QUALITY of the applicants (i.e. they were in the industry and likely customers of the expensive customized products being promoted). The past few days we get a dozen applicants in groups of 2-5, same address, last name, etc. Hmâthey didnât read the fine print, 1 entry per household, well, they are disqualified. No problem. Our marketing is still hitting the target customer who is likely to win and be happyâ.Until this morning. I check my email before leaving from work, and the email starts transferring into Outlookâand doesnât stop! Between something like 4am and 10:30am we had over 600 entries! NONE of them were legit target customers! Turns out, there are lots of lazy people in the world who have nothing else better to do than sit at their computers, go to a website that publishes online sweepstakes contests, and then proceed to enter them, thereby wasting our marketing efforts and ruining the chance of a legitimate customer winning. By the rules, we canât very well not accept these entriesâstate law being as lame as it is. We canât put up big obstacles to make it harder for the masses to apply. We canât shoot the proprietors of the website that is openly mocking our very well targeted marketing efforts. Lessons learned: 1) for a big contest with a wide audience, you are best off following the laws in order to stay clear 2) figure out a way to follow the laws while minimizing the likelihood of your contest being ruined. 3) Giving the people a way to opt-out of future emailings is probably important (may be legally required now), likewise, since your system will be full of entries, its best to do this anyway to help weed out the people who are not potential clients and save yourself hassles.,4) Make sure (we did) that you store the ORIGINAL http referring info as well as the referring info for the actual sweepstakes page. Thereby, when someone follows a link from a search engine or contest aggregator, you can easily filter them out for your marketing/sales staff. No reason to call them.,4) DO NOT have your sweepstakes system send you an email every time someone registers or you will be flooded by emails! ========================================================Kansas City ColdFusion User Group's website & listserv is hosted through the generous support of Clickdoug.com To send email to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] To (un)subscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with your request. For hosting solutions http://www.clickdoug.com Featuring Win2003 Enterprise, RedHat Linux, CFMX 6.1. =====================================================
