How to Create a Great Promo Email for Your TapKat Sweepstakes
Once you’ve selected an exciting prize for your TapKat sweepstakes, built a sweepstakes site with great images and compelling text, it’s time for the most fun part of sweepstakes: sharing your fundraiser with the world!
Throughout the duration of your sweepstakes, we recommend creating and sending at least one promotional email to your donor base per month, and more during special flash contests and toward the end of your sweepstakes (get the full rundown of email marketing best practices here).
Email is by far the most effective way to raise funds for an online sweepstakes, so make sure you are taking full advantage of this powerful tool!
When it comes to email, we’ve seen it all here at TapKat! Our team knows what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to encouraging donors to enter your sweepstakes over email. The very best emails have several components in common:
The messaging is clear and direct,
The images are beautiful and clearly depict the sweepstakes prize,
The email is FULL of links back to the nonprofit’s sweepstakes site.
It’s also important that each email you send is a “dedicated email,” that is, an email with the sole purpose of promoting your sweepstakes. Just including a blurb about your sweepstakes in a crowded newsletter isn’t going to cut it (and you’ll only raise around 10% of what a dedicated email will bring in, donation-wise).
Make sure that your email also looks great on mobile devices. Many donors are checking their email and making donations via their smart phones these days, so it’s important that every email you send out looks great on a phone screen, too. That means checking that text is large enough to be legible and that images look just as great on a smaller screen.
Today, we’re going to look at specific ways to build an effective email to send to your donor base. Follow these guidelines, and you’ll find success!
Anatomy of a Great TapKat Sweepstakes Email
Let’s take a look at a mock email for an example sweepstakes:
Section 1: Clearly state what the email is about.
These days there isn’t much time to capture the attention of a reader, so your opening headline needs to be very clear about the contents of the email. Make it clear what your prize is (a vacation to Hawaii) and that the reader has a chance to win this prize. If you have room, you can also include a brief phrase indicating what their donation will support (in this case, cancer research).
Section 2: Include at least one compelling image.
No matter what your prize is, you must be sure to include at least one great image that “sells” it well, whether it’s a vacation, a new car, motorcycle, season tickets for a professional sports team, or something else. This image of a woman in the pool works because it helps the reader visualize themselves lounging in the sunshine at the vacation destination. It looks great! Who wouldn’t want to have that experience?
The more vibrant and eye-catching the images, the better. Often you’ll be able to pull these photos from the sliders on your sweepstakes site.
Section 3: Include some brief text about your prize.
But you don’t have to include much! Remember, the goal of the email is to get your readers to click through to the sweepstakes site (did we mention that every image should be linked to your TapKat sweepstakes site?) Once they click through, they’ll have the opportunity to learn more about the details of your prize, so you only need to include prize highlights in your email.
Section 4: Create a clear “call to action”
A “call to action” is a short phrase or sentence that essentially tells your reader what to do. In this case, it’s the phrase “Enter now!” You might notice that in this email, it also looks like a click-able button, and your readers will understand that it is linked to your sweepstakes site. Make sure to test out all your links before sending an email.
Section 5: Let them know that they’re supporting a good cause.
At the bottom of your email, you can also include a short blurb about your nonprofit. Remember that readers will be able to learn more about your organization on the sweepstakes site, so keep this short. Including a brief sentence or two about your nonprofit will also reassure your reader that the email is from you, and let them know that by donating, they’re supporting a great cause.
Final Tips on Creating a Great TapKat Sweepstakes Email
Some final thoughts to really make your dedicated emails sing…
Put the most important information “above the fold,” that is, at the very top of the email. Things like the headline, images of the prize, and links to the sweepstakes site should always be the first items that the reader sees.
Write a direct and interesting subject line. Some ideas:
Enter to win a dream vacation to Hawaii!
Imagine you + a friend snorkeling on the Oahu coast
Support cancer research and WIN the trip of a lifetime!
Link, link, link! We’ve said this already, but it can’t be emphasized enough: Every chance you have, create a link back to your sweepstakes site. Make it easy as pie for your readers to click through to your TapKat sweepstakes site and make a donation.
Make sure your email looks great on mobile devices. It’s worth it to take a little extra time to make sure that everything looks good on smart phones, too!
Ready to get started with your TapKat sweepstakes? Apply for a TapKat account today!
