Methods and strategies for operating sweepstakes activities!

This article will focus on the question of "how to optimize the lottery activities" and change the angle from the [user perspective of the lottery] to discuss with everyone how to "do a good" lottery activity?

As an ancient operating method, lottery has always been at the forefront of marketing. Whether it is offline store promotions or online activities, raffles are widely used in growth links such as attracting new customers, promoting activation, and acquiring customers. Although the gameplay seems old-fashioned, it always attracts many users to participate, and merchants and customers enjoy it because of the leverage effect of small gains and big returns, low threshold for participation, and high reward temptation activity mechanism.

For C-end operations, planning lottery events is a necessary course in their career. However, this seemingly simple lottery is not easy to do well, and many experienced operators have failed in the lottery.

At present, many operations experts have shared their views on "how to optimize lottery activities". Most of them will start from classic theories such as psychology and sociology, supplemented by refined operations and user behavior analysis, which is very beneficial. However, some of them involve models and psychology, which seem too obscure and difficult to implement for some operators. In response to this problem, the author changes the angle and approaches it from the perspective of [users of lucky draw] to discuss with you how to "do a good" lucky draw activity?

What are users thinking before participating in the lottery?

Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will win every battle. Before planning a lottery event on the platform, we must first sort out "what users are thinking about". This is very important. This first requires platform operators to think from the user's perspective. When we put ourselves in the shoes of users, we can clearly see that when users consider whether to participate in the lucky draw, the core issues they are concerned about are nothing more than the following three points:

These three questions have been running through the entire lottery activity. Any unresolved doubts will seriously affect users' enthusiasm for participating in the lottery. So let’s start with the three issues that users are concerned about, and break them down one by one to understand how to “do a good” lucky draw event:

1. Threshold - How can I participate in the lottery?

For participating users, the threshold is an important basis for them to judge whether they can participate in the lottery. To outsiders, this seems like a random setting, but for the platform, behind the threshold setting is the planners' screening mechanism for lottery participants, and it is strongly related to the activity goals and target user attributes.

After all, if the threshold is set too high for target users, users will not be able to reach the threshold and will not be able to participate in the event, the number of participants will be greatly reduced, and the expected activity effect cannot be achieved; if it is set too low, it will attract a large number of non-target users to participate, and the prizes will be taken away by non-target customers, which will not effectively motivate the target population, and it will be a loss-making effort, which is not worth the loss.

Simply setting thresholds based on new or old customers or PC or mobile customers is a manifestation of extensive operations. We need to target activity goals and user attributes to set them.

As shown in the figure below, based on the lucky draw activity of a certain Internet finance platform that the author has personally experienced, the logic behind everyone choosing Option 2 is that we know from the historical data of this channel that the average initial investment amount of users is 8,000 yuan. Setting a threshold of 10,000 yuan is an achievable task for users. Users can participate in the lucky draw by supplementing about 20% of the funds. Usually users are willing to try it when they are tempted by great prizes.

However, in the first scenario, users do not need to do anything, as long as they make normal investments, they can participate in the lucky draw. In this case, the activity will become a sunshine-like activity for the platform, which will only increase the activity cost.

The 15,000 yuan threshold in Plan 3 is equivalent to doubling the user's initial investment amount, which is inconsistent with the user's perception of making large investments when they first come into contact with the platform. Even with the incentive of rewards, it is difficult for users to do so because they have to pay nearly 1 times the cost.

Of course, after reviewing the event, we found that option 2 was the right choice. While achieving the established goals, it also increased the investment conversion rate of channel users.

Therefore, the threshold setting for lottery activities must be thought out in advance, and cannot be directly speculated based on professional experience. It tests the operation team's understanding of the attributes of platform users. Any threshold setting that does not meet the target and target audience will inevitably lead to failure.

In order to effectively avoid foreseeable event disasters caused by such wrong decisions, it is recommended that new operators should be prepared to explain "Why set the threshold in this way?" when setting the lottery threshold. They can use user portraits, user surveys and other dimensions, supplemented by data analysis to provide evidence. Only after successfully convincing the team can they carry out the event.

However, in addition to the above user participation thresholds, there is also a hidden threshold: the user lottery operation experience threshold, which should also attract the attention of operations.

Usually a smooth user lottery process allows users to complete the lottery activity smoothly and efficiently. From a purely scientific point of view, it does not seem to have much boost to the entire lottery; however, a lottery activity with cumbersome operations and poor user experience will greatly reduce users' interest in participating in the activity, resulting in serious user loss, and the effectiveness of the activity will be greatly reduced. Therefore, it is very important to design a lucky draw activity with a smooth and seamless operating experience, which tests the basic skills of the entire product team.

2. Activity incentives: What prizes can I possibly get?

Rewards, as a kind of "temptation", are the core factor in attracting users to participate in the lottery. And the higher the value of the prize, the more attractive it is to users.

In order to enhance the effectiveness of an event, operators usually have the urge to set up multiple high-value prizes to amplify the effect of the event. However, high-value prizes mean high cost expenditures, which are completely limited by the overall budget and ROI considerations of the marketing team, and are completely different for different companies. Therefore, the suggestion of enhancing the effectiveness of lottery activities simply by increasing the value of prizes has no practical guiding significance, and I will not listen to it anymore.

Instead, what we need to focus on is how to maximize the attractiveness of the event prizes through the strategic setting of the lottery event within a limited budget. This is the key.

Next, I will combine my own event operation experience to explain how to enhance the incentive effect of prizes through leveraging marketing, real-time incentive mechanisms and the relevance of event rewards:

1. Leverage marketing

Operations require going with the flow. In daily event operations, people usually use holiday hotspots (Valentine's Day, Double Eleven, etc.) and event hotspots (company anniversary, new product launch, etc.) to conduct event marketing. This is a common case of marketing through leverage. However, when selecting prizes for sweepstakes, operators also need to apply this thinking to conduct leveraged marketing.

For example, in the early days of the launch of new Apple mobile phones, smart operators will choose to use the new Apple mobile phones as prizes in lottery activities, which can effectively use the hot spot effect of Apple mobile phones to attract more people's attention to the activities.

For example, in the early stage of pre-sale of new sneakers, operators will also use new air jordan sneakers as raffle prizes, taking advantage of the scarcity and high attention of the product to attract traffic to the raffle.

Because these star products are actually "explosive" traffic products, they come with their own "eye-catching" effect. Choosing them as event prizes will make the marketing topical and gimmicky, attract the attention of many users at the moment, and bring exposure and participation to the lottery. We can widely use them in the aspects of attracting new users and activating old users. If your target customers overlap with the user characteristics of this product, then congratulations, the lottery will be of high quality and quantity.

2. Real-time incentive mechanism

It is human nature to want instant feedback and real-time gratification. Especially in sweepstakes that are full of uncertainties, a good reward feedback mechanism can bring positive incentives and promote continuous user participation.

The on-site lottery events held by offline hypermarkets today are a typical example of this. In order to attract as many customers as possible, shopping malls usually hold raffles in the exhibition hall on the first floor of large shopping malls (a place where users must pass by when shopping in the mall, and the entrance of user traffic). All the prizes for the event are placed on the table (using super-valuable prizes to stimulate and attract users), and then the DAYINBEI audio equipment is used to guide users to watch (forming a gathering effect and stimulating tourists' curiosity), and guiding users to draw the raffle themselves (giving users a real sense of participation and avoiding users' distrust of the staff). If a user wins a prize, the merchant will directly award the grand prize to the user on the spot (using real-time feedback of the grand prize to motivate users and the audience to follow suit and participate). Usually, after this operation, a popular raffle is formed.

What attracts users the most is the on-site award ceremony, which is the most exciting and thrilling. With the excitement of the grand prize, the event will quickly reach its climax. In the many offline lottery activities that I have witnessed, almost no merchant secretly gave the prizes to the winning users. This loses the advantage of motivating users in real time, and it has been proven time and time again.

Of course, when planning online activities, we must also establish a real-time incentive mechanism so that users can truly feel the existence of rewards in order to further motivate them. But such important content is often ignored by the platform. Even the veteran in the credit card industry, China Merchants Bank's Mobile Life App, accidentally overlooked this point in the design of some of its lucky draw activities.

As shown in the picture below, this is the "Scratch-off Cashback" activity organized by China Merchants Bank. From the title of the activity, we can clearly understand that this is an activity that uses cashback to encourage people to bind their Alipay or WeChat credit cards for consumption.

Looking at the entire process, the activity’s guidance and experience for users are pretty good, but the feedback mechanism for user rewards is relatively poor.

For example, after a user wins a cash prize, apart from a picture informing the user on the prize drawing page, there is no reminder or feedback during the user's consumption or payment process that the user has enjoyed the cash deduction service. Friends around them even thought it was a scam because they did not feel the existence of the discount anywhere after winning the prize.

It was not until I finally found the deduction in my monthly credit card bill details that I discovered the deduction, and it was done in the form of automatic batches late at night every day. The display was so hidden that it was really embarrassing.

This is as if I won a prize, but you didn't give it to me on the spot, but secretly sent it to my house and hid it. It completely loses the incentive effect of the reward on the user. However, if it is reflected in real-time deduction or display every time the user pays, the effect will be completely different.

3. Relevance of Prize Setting

Prizes are the most important "hook" to attract users to participate in activities, and the selection of specific prizes is crucial. Before determining the final prize, just like setting the threshold for users to participate in the event, we need to consider relevance, that is, we must aim at the two major premises of the event goal and target users when making choices, and we cannot set them arbitrarily.

However, in daily event operation practices, the setting of event prizes is usually decided independently by the event planners or the leaders in charge of this work. Many operation teams lack the above considerations and thus are arbitrary and overly subjective in selecting prizes.

For example, in activities aimed at attracting new users, platform points can be used as prizes; among high-net-worth user groups, small cash red envelopes can be set up as prizes; in activities aimed at preventing user churn, low-leverage coupons can be set up as prizes like ordinary users, etc. These are all things that operations need to avoid as much as possible.

In addition, everyone also needs to pay attention to the biased and misleading selection of event prizes caused by the gender and vision of the operators themselves.

For example, in my personal experience at work, a female-dominated event planning team selected prizes such as Dyson hair dryers, cosmetic sets, and household cleaning products for a lucky draw to encourage investment from old customers of an Internet finance platform. In the end, they found that the mainstream target users (mainly men, mostly aged 30-50) were not interested in the prizes at all, and the effect of the event was greatly reduced. This is a typical failure case of selecting prizes based on one's own gender role.

Therefore, the selection of prizes for an event reflects the planners’ thinking on the consistency between the target users and the event goals. We must not be trapped by the operator’s own gender and vision and choose prizes based on assumptions. Inappropriate prize selection is often the beginning of a lottery tragedy. If you are not sure, how should you choose? Then, research on competitors’ activities and interviews with target users will be important bases for everyone to make decisions.

3. Winning probability/authenticity question - Can I get the prize?

Before participating in a lottery, users will consider whether they can win a prize and use this to decide whether to participate. When a user judges that he or she has a greater chance of winning a prize, the probability of him or her participating in the event increases.

Usually, when users judge "whether they can win the prize?" they mainly consider two points, namely the probability of winning (is there a high probability of winning?) and the authenticity (is there a scam?).

When we can reduce these two concerns of users through operational mechanisms, users will be more motivated to participate in activities. Below we will try to talk about two common methods to inform and hint users that the probability of winning is very high, and make users believe that the lottery activity is more authentic, thereby driving users to participate in the activity:

1. Environmental cueing effect

The environmental suggestion effect means that the platform should not stand from its own perspective and unilaterally brag about itself, but should create a real and highly tempting environment to guide and suggest users, and ultimately stimulate users' interest in the activity.

This practice usually manifests itself in that the platform will use bright colors and large fonts to display the user's winning history information on the sweepstakes page (barrage announcements of winning, scroll bars of historical winning information, etc.), and use large blocks of special content to display the existence of many prizes (indicating that there are many prizes and everyone has a greater chance of winning a prize), in order to inform and hint to users.

After seeing this type of winning information, users will have a sense of involvement and feel that the lottery is real, which to a certain extent eliminates their distrust of the event and allows them to gradually participate in the lottery.

In addition, outside of the lottery event, target users can also be activated and guided through environmental effects.

In the above cases, many users may still feel that the winning information was directed and performed by the platform and cannot be trusted. But what if a winning case occurs in a social circle that the user is familiar with? Will you still remain indifferent?

For example, in the “Shake to Get a Free Bill” activity held by WeChat, when the activity was first forwarded to the group, most friends were indifferent, thinking that the probability of winning a free bill was very low, or that the reward was very small and not worth participating.

However, as the circle of friends was filled with screenshots of friends showing off various high-value free bill amounts, everyone gradually became swayed and expressed interest.

During this period, when friends in the group shared pictures of winning large free bills, the discussion atmosphere in the group reached a climax. Almost all friends in the group tried to use WeChat to pay that day to try their luck. This is the effect of the law of environment.

In fact, the probability of winning a lottery has always been constant, and whether you win is still a matter of probability. However, after everyone found out that their friends had actually won the prize, they psychologically magnified their own judgment of the probability of winning, and thought that if their friends could win, then so can they. It is precisely because of the existence of this environmental suggestion effect that ultimately arouses users' interest in participating in the lottery.

2. 100% winning mechanism

In addition to the above methods, the "100% winning" lottery mechanism has also become increasingly popular in the past two years.

The so-called 100% winning rate means that empty prizes such as "Thank you for your patronage" in traditional lotteries are eliminated, and the entire prize pool is replaced with goods or coupons, so that every user participating in the lottery can win a prize.

Compared with the previous situation where users worried about not winning the prize, the 100% winning mechanism is full of publicity gimmicks. It effectively overcomes users' concerns and is deeply loved by users. It is now being used by more and more Internet companies.

This is because users are concerned about the probability and authenticity of the lottery, and at its core, they are concerned about the loss of their investment costs (worrying that they will win and thank you for your patronage). After all, winning the lottery is still a matter of probability and requires gamble.

However, the "100% winning" lottery mechanism can effectively reduce the participating users' concerns about sunk cost losses. It is equivalent to the platform adding a safety cushion to the costs it has invested with sunshine rewards. It will make users feel that they have participated in the event. If they do not win the grand prize, there are guaranteed prizes to comfort them. If they are lucky enough to win the grand prize, it will be a huge profit. Once users form this mentality (of course the platform can also guide users through relevant copywriting), it will become easier for users to participate in the lottery.

As shown in the figure below, in order to effectively guide existing users to follow its official account, Didi Taxi App guides and motivates users through a "100% winning" lottery event.

Some operations colleagues may worry that the 100% winning mechanism will greatly increase the activity budget expenditure. However, this is the case at first glance, but when we look closely, we will find that in the current raffles with 100% winning rate, many prizes are in the form of coupons or small cash red packets. These coupons are leveraged (such as 10 yuan off for purchases over 100 yuan, etc.), and users need to make additional investments when using these coupons. If users use them, they can bring corresponding transaction volume to the product; if users do not use them, the prizes will be invalid and the cost will be zero.

On the whole, the cost is basically controllable. Moreover, this form can effectively drive users to participate in the lottery. Why not do it?

Summarize

If you want to be successful in sweepstakes activities, the key is to fully understand the user's pain points.

Whether it is the establishment of activity thresholds, the selection of activity prizes or the establishment of activity operation mechanisms, behind them are the operators' most essential thoughts on the activity goals and target users.

These few lines of text written at the very beginning of the activity plan are not just simple text read out by the operations staff at the activity review meeting. Instead, the product/operation staff must apply these two most important activity elements to the planning, execution, and marketing of the entire activity, and engrave them in the blood of the entire activity operation process. Only in this way can the lottery be "done well."

Author: Monk

Source: Monk