Bring your Online Store to Life with Sweepstakes and Contests

Easypromos team
Easypromos team
When you have an online store you are continually seeking ways of attracting new users and leads who can then be encouraged to advance through the sales funnel. This is where sweepstakes and contests can come in very handy indeed.

Customers like to be pampered and made to feel like they’re part of the brand. They also like it when a brand shows that it’s grateful for the commitment of its customers. This loyalization strategy is very important for three key reasons:

  • Gaining new customers requires a lot of time and investment, so once you have them it’s important that you make an effort to keep them.
  • If you develop your current customer loyalization strategy carefully you’ll be able to increase the purchase ratio of each one. So, it is also a way of boosting sales from a base of existing customers.
  • By increasing the satisfaction of your existing customers, you also exercise a call effect on those who aren’t yet customers but who would like to enjoy the experience. You’ll soon see positive comments about your brand begin to proliferate across social media, your content will be shared more frequently, and visits to your website will increase.

First of all, ask yourself what you hope to achieve

Before launching a promotion, you should define a clear short or medium-term dynamization strategy. You’ll be able to feed the information obtained from the first launches back into the process, making any necessary changes, but you should also establish enough criteria from the start to enable you to proceed with a steady step.

The first thing to do is set the objectives that you intend to achieve with your dynamization strategy. If your business is an e-commerce store, then your primary goals are likely to be as follows:

  1. Increasing visits to your online store. Publicize your brand, gain more social media followers and try to bring traffic from your social networks to your website.
  2. Expanding your emails database. Look for simple promotions that don’t require a huge amount of effort. Use a participation form that enables you to collect all those email addresses.
  3. Generating more short-term sales. Launch campaigns or promotions offering discount coupons for purchasing in your online store as prizes.
  4. Supporting the launch of a new product. You can build a promotion around the launch of a new product. Make the product the foundation of the whole campaign.

These are just four examples of goals you are likely to have. We’re sure you can think of a few more. When you come to define your dynamization campaigns you should always keep your primary objectives in mind.

Which tools do you have at your disposal for bringing your e-commerce store to life?

Here are three examples of promos you can run to analyze how your audience behaves when faced with these types of initiatives. Start right now, the possibilities are endless!

  1. Sweepstakes. As a general rule, participation in these types of promos is simple. Dynamics encouraging participation are employed with the aim of boosting the contacts database. Existing customers of the brand will also take part, but the primary objective of this type of promo should be to collect new email addresses.
  2. Contests. Contests imply another level of difficulty. You are asking participants to make more of an effort. They may have to answer a question correctly, upload a photo or video, and so on. People who take part are likely to have a greater connection with the brand.
  3. Discount coupons. This is a useful way of encouraging people to buy your products. You can focus on recruitment, with discounts for first-time buyers or for participants who provide information, etc. Or you can link to regular buyers who have already made a purchase.

If you have an online store, dynamize your community and get ready to take your sales to the next level. And since we love hearing your feedback, please tell us, have you launched these types of promos in your e-commerce store already? If so, how did your audience respond?