Holiday Sweepstakes Spreads Revenue Cheer

The Idea

Diana Dionisio and the WGN-TV team were looking to take advantage of the holiday season to draw in sponsors and promote participation. They also wanted to utilize their core media within the package to make the sponsorship even more valuable.

The Execution

With their goals outlined, the WGN-TV crafted a sweepstakes campaign sponsored by 5 different businesses each offering a large prize package for 5 winners. Within the promotion itself, they provided:

• Links to sponsors’ sites in CTA​
• Opt-in on contest entry form

They also wanted to ensure their package included multi-media offerings to provide as much value as possible to their sponsor, and also revenue opportunity for themselves.

Commercials

• One :30 spot was provided with 20 ROS over 10 days

Social Media

• One post created each day of the promotion highlighting one of the sponsors​
• Provided a QR code to contest entry page

Morning News Show

• Created an identified paid segment, hosted by announcer (not news talent) who provided live promo reads daily over a one-week period​
• Supplied a QR code to contest entry page

Emails

• One invite email sent each of the 5 days highlighting one of the 5 sponsors​
• Each sponsor was able to get larger ‘shout out’ than on the entry page

The Results

With the help of their multi-media sales package, WGN-TV brought in $40,000 of revenue and over 4,000 new opt-ins between their own newsletter database and their sponsor opt-ins. They will continue to run this promotion in future years because the sponsorship spots for this campaign have become so popular and coveted!