Procrastinate Your Planning.
Take the time to develop a year-long calendar planning out your various campaigns. Make sure that your calendar includes holidays, special community events, and any special programming or special sections you produce throughout the year. With a great plan, your entire team will be better suited to target the right advertisers and achieve your monthly and yearly revenue goals.
Need help getting your calendar up and running? Download our Planning Calendar to get started today.
Put Too Much on the Registration Form.
It’s great that you’re wanting to collect consumer data. But when you include too many fields on your registration page, you’ll discourage even the most dedicated entrant. Only include the fields that you are actively going to use.
Run Entire Contest by Yourself.
To make your promotions and interactive content as successful as they can be, have brainstorm meetings with a small committee of individuals from your digital sales team, marketing department, and web team. When you have everyone participating, you can make sure that your engagement campaigns are helping the entire company.
Skip Email Opt-Ins.
Growing email databases for yourself and your advertisers is a fantastic benefit of running contests. But just requiring the email address itself, isn’t enough. You need an email opt-in in order for you or your advertisers to contact participants for future marketing campaigns.
Assume If You Build It, They Will Come.
Even a beautifully designed contest with a fantastic prize needs to be promoted or no one will enter. Make sure that you are heavily promoting your contest on every aspect you have available including on-air or in-print ads, website ads, social media, and (most importantly) a designated email announcing the contest.
Don’t Follow Up After the It’s Over.
After your campaign ends, be sure to send a follow-up email thanking participants for playing and announcing who won (if it applies). Include a direct link for users to participate in the next great campaign you’re running. Plus, this is a great place to include a coupon or special offer from your advertiser to help drive foot traffic.
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Ellen is a Manager of Customer Success. She works with clients to help them create engaging campaigns that are optimized to reach their digital goals.