Raise More with Your TapKat Sweepstakes by Involving Your Community
TapKat sweepstakes are an innovative, exciting, and powerful way for nonprofits to raise significant funds for their cause, and organizations big and small around the U.S. are raising significant funds.
When setting up and running your sweepstakes, know that there are essentially three major factors that will contribute to its success:
Whether your prize is exciting enough to engage your base and attract new donors,
How well your team spreads awareness of the sweepstakes via email, social media, live events, and your website,
How engaged your community is in helping promote the sweepstakes.
Community engagement is huge! And fortunately, there are several impactful and fun ways you can motivate members of your community to champion your sweepstakes. In this blog post, we'll take a look at some ideas to get you started.
Create a Friendly Board Member Challenge for Your TapKat Sweepstakes
Promo codes are a super-effective tool built into your TapKat sweepstakes site. We encourage all our nonprofits to put promo codes on everything — from social media posts, to email blasts, to post cards, to anything else you can think of. When you're logged into your TapKat dashboard, you'll notice that there is no limit to the number of promo codes you can create, and each one has a corresponding QR code that can be printed for donors to easily scan with their smart device and make a donation.
To learn more about the ins and outs of promo codes, check out this blog post. Tl;dr:
Promo codes are used to give donors an extra incentive to donate by providing a percentage more entries with their donation.
Donors get excited when they see promo codes, and are more likely to enter or re-enter the sweepstakes when a promo code is offered.
Promo codes help you accurately track which of your marketing efforts are succeeding. Because there's a promo code attached to each donation, you can easily see whether you're getting more entries from your Facebook ads, email blasts, social media, etc. With that data, you can make strategic choices about where to focus your ongoing marketing efforts.
Let's take promo codes a step further and use them to activate your board members
A great way to engage your board members is to create a unique promo code for each of them. Make a friendly contest to see who can generate the most donations — this will be trackable because every time they share the sweepstakes, they can say, "Use promo code LISA25 for 25% more entries with your donation!"
Board members can create postcards, send out emails, post on social media, or share by word of mouth. Whatever works best for them and gets the word out about your fundraiser!
At the end, we recommend having a fun prize for the winning board member. Maybe they get a reserved parking spot for the rest of the year, a gift certificate to a great local restaurant, or simply recognition in the next newsletter and at your next live event.
Ask Your Sponsors and Affiliate Organizations to Spread the Word
If you work with affiliate organizations, be sure to let them know what you're up to! When it really comes down to it, the more people that know about your TapKat sweepstakes, the better.
Work with your sponsors to share the news
Sponsors can be game-changing when it comes time to promote your sweepstakes. Whether you have a brand sponsor, work closely with another nonprofit organization, or a close relationship with a local brick-and-mortar business, don't be shy about asking them to share the sweepstakes with their community.
Sponsors are often willing send out e-blasts, post on social media, and put up flyers to promote your sweepstakes. If your sponsors run live events, like festivals or fairs, they may be happy to let your nonprofit set up a small booth somewhere so you can spread the word to anyone passing by.
Whatever your sponsors are willing to do can really help your nonprofit meet your sweepstakes fundraising goal!
Create a revenue share promotion with an affiliate organization – raise more money and put new donors on your list
Sharing a portion of the revenue from your donations can be a tremendous way to work closely with an affiliate organization. When you use promo codes, you'll notice that any income associated with a particular promo code is very easy to track.
So let's say your organization is a car museum, and you often partner with a local car club that shares a crossover audience. If the car club isn't willing to promote your sweepstakes for free, you can propose a revenue share.
Here's how that works:
Create a promo code just for the car club.
Decide how much the revenue share will be – common splits are anywhere from 80/20 to 60/40, with the nonprofit receiving the higher percentage.
After the promotion has run, you can easily track in your TapKat dashboard just how much came in from your affiliate's promotional activities. Then, it's easy to calculate how much money they will get from the revenue share.
A revenue share promotion has the potential to raise a lot of money, plus you’ll be gaining new donors. You'll retain the contact information for everyone who donates to your sweepstakes, which means that you can keep those donors on your list and engage them for additional donations.
Community Engagement is a Key to Success with a TapKat Sweepstakes
TapKat sweepstakes are an excellent way to bring in new donors, reactivate lapsed donors, and excite your current donor base. The more people who know about your sweepstakes, the more donors you're likely to attract!
Getting sponsors, affiliates, and board members involved is a strategic way to help spread the word and build buzz about your fundraiser. Keep going and have fun!
