Getting Started with Recurring-Revenue Campaigns

What are Multi-Month Campaigns

Securing a big sponsorship for a single contest is great, but then you have to do it again and again each month. Multi-month campaigns are streamlining your sales process as you turn a single campaign into a 9-12 month opportunity sold to a single presenting sponsor such as a year-long top teacher campaign or a monthly getaway giveaway.

Ideas for Multi-Month Campaigns

You’ll want to start by picking a theme that resonates with your audience over an extended period of time. Consider a topic to tie into other initiatives you’re already planning. If you cover high school sports, consider Athlete of the Month.

Here’s a few topics to get you started:

• Teacher of the Month
• Fan of the Month
• Volunteer of the Month
• Monthly Grocery Giveaway
• And many more!

Keys to a Successful Campaign

The classic movie quote, “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t work for promotions. Not only do you need a great theme and topic, there are two other keys to ensure you’re getting the engagement you (and your sponsor!) want from this multi-month campaign: prize and promotion.

Whether you’re running a weekly or monthly contest, you need a prize valuable enough to bring people back all year long. To entice them even more, don’t just offer a prize for your winner, offer a prize to a random voter as well.

On top of the prize, you also need to make sure your audience knows about your contest and how to enter. Email is the number one way to drive participation, so make sure you have a robust email campaign at the start of each new ‘round.’ In addition, leverage your core media, digital, and social as well.

Creating the Sponsorship Package

These aren’t just multi-month campaigns; they’re also multi-media campaigns. When you build your sponsorship package, be sure to include your sponsor prominently across all elements of all the assets you have available:

• Core Media (print or on-air)
• Digital (website ads, mentions in your app, etc.)
• Email (invite emails, thank-you emails, etc.)
• Social (consider sponsored, paid posts)
• Recognition of the winner (on-air, print, etc.)
• Event recognizing all the nominees and winners

Multi-Month Success Stories

Partners are seeing some tremendous success with this. Sales teams love it because it’s a true “set it and forget it” style sale – sell it once, and revenue keeps coming in month after month. Plus, this frees them up to sell additional campaigns as well.

Check out a few of our favorite multi-month success stories:

• $60,000 from Athlete of the Month contest
• $17,000 from an annual Birthday Club email program
• $17,000 from Teacher of the Month contest

Getting started with these campaigns is as easy as 1,2,3. Pick your theme, secure your sponsor, drive revenue all year long. Looking for more tips to get started, check out our ‘getting started’ guide here.