The holiday season is an exciting time for brand marketers, but standing out in a sea of companies vying for attention and consumer dollars can be daunting. When everyone seems to be shouting their loudest, how do you draw customers to your brand without flooding their social media feeds or inboxes, or breaking the bank?

You offer an instant win promotion! They’re a creative way to spark curiosity and encourage your target audience to engage with your brand.

Instant win promotions effectively increase awareness, earn loyalty, and establish relationships with customers old and new. You can use them to promote a new product, service, or campaign, or simply to reward existing customers for their loyalty.

If an instant win promotion is planned strategically with the right mix of prize structure, involvement device, promotion channels, and timing, it’s also an excellent lead generation tool. Convert new potential customers from casual browsers to loyal fans through tailored messaging and promotions.

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Back up. What’s an instant win promotion, exactly?

An instant win promotion is a game of chance (also known as a sweepstakes) that tells users immediately whether they have won a prize or not. Unlike traditional sweepstakes, instant win promotions provide instant gratification and encourage repeat interaction.

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Instant gratification = immediate excitement

People love the thrill of winning, and if the prize is of value to them and ties back to your brand, it’s a win-win! Learning right away whether you’re a winner significantly elevates the level of excitement and entices people to come back and try again. Instant win promotions can be much more effective than a simple ad without an incentive due to this ability to create a high level of repeat engagement.

This excitement also increases the likelihood that your customers will share the promotion with friends and family, resulting in an increased response rate and organic audience growth.

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More fun means more sharing

Most instant win promotions are designed as games to create a unique and fun way for people to engage and interact with a brand. Who doesn’t enjoy a little distraction to break up the workday?

Including a gamified element (think spinning a wheel or solving a puzzle) encourages people to come back to play again and again. It also makes it more likely they will share the promotion via their social channels and by word of mouth.

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Keys to a successful instant win promotion

• Make the rules for entry crystal clear
  There should be zero ambiguity about how a customer participates.
• No delays
  If you’re calling it “instant” – make sure the results are, in fact, available in an instant.
• Be clear about prizes
  Don’t exaggerate a customer’s chances of winning or how many prizes are available. If you want people to love your business, you have to maintain their trust.
• Offer a variety of prizes
  You can offer low-, medium-, and high-value prizes to entice customers to return and play again.

Need some guidance?

Probability is a full-service promotions digital agency in New York City with years of experience creating instant win campaigns that generate results and attention for our clients. Here are a few recent highlights from our work on instant win promotions:

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CrunchLabs Platinum Ticket Instant Win

To promote their monthly Build Box and drive sales, CrunchLabs offers a Platinum Ticket Instant Win Game. Customers who subscribe to receive a monthly Build Box automatically earn one entry into the sweepstakes each month. A winning Platinum ticket game piece is hidden in one box per month, and the winner receives a trip for four to visit CrunchLabs. Customers also have the opportunity to mail in for a free game piece.

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Kohl's YAY for Black Friday! Sweepstakes

For the 2nd year in a row, we collaborated with Kohl's for their Black Friday sweepstakes. Kohl's gave shoppers the chance to win big in-store. The first 200 Kohl’s customers at each store received a game piece with a prize reveal, offering thousands of prizes: from coveted Kohl's Cash to $5,000 in LEGO® sets and other top brand prizes.

The best part? Every game piece was a winner.  

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Expedia Spin to Win Instant Win Game

Earlier this year, Expedia members were invited to a promotion microsite to virtually “spin the wheel” for a chance to win OneKeyCash prizes, which could be used to purchase travel on Expedia. The winners were determined based on the time they entered.  

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We’re ready to go this instant

While instant gratification is great, there’s no denying the importance of hard-earned skill and experience. When it comes to creating and deploying creative instant win promotions (and other campaigns), Probability has plenty of both. Our dynamic team delivers stress-free campaigns by managing every detail from start to finish.

That means planning the promotion, handling official rules and legal approvals, prize fulfillment, tax reporting, data management, and more. We’ll also give you real-time data so you can track the impact of your instant win campaign’s performance and KPIs.

Get in touch! We’d love to talk about setting up a bespoke instant win promotion for your business this holiday season.