There's nothing like a good old sweepstakes to add a little life to your summertime marketing efforts.
We especially like the idea of contests tied to online usage, especially bill payment. Resource Bank is the latest we've spotted with a bill-pay sweeps. This homepage announcement sums it up:
Pay 3 bills online during the month of June and you will be automatically entered in the "Let Us Pay Your Bills" Sweepstakes. The winner will be reimbursed for all online payments made during the month, up to $300.
This three-month contest (June, July, August) is ultra low-budget — a total prize pool that maxes out at $900 ($300 times 3 months) — but it's still effective.
It would be even better if the bank spent a couple hundred bucks on professional graphics and boosted the monthly maximum payout to $1000 or more. If you are lucky, you won't have to pay out more than a few hundred dollars anyway, so why not make it sound better?
On the other hand, we're not so sure about PNC Bank's latest, an online "scratch" card you take into the branch to check for a match. Matches are rewarded with the prize shown (iPod Shuffle, portable DVD, or digital cam).
We live outside the PNC footprint, so we can't check it out firsthand, but I'm guessing the branch is supposed to cross-sell like crazy when you show up to get the official "match card" to see if you are a winner. But more than likely the branch sales staff will be otherwise occupied during the lunchtime rush when most online users stop by, so sales impact will be low.
Also, it's too easy to win. With 5000 total prizes across 700,000 maximum entries, the overall odds are 1:141, pretty sweet for prizes worth $100 to $200 each. With such a rich prize pool, and relatively low hurdles to entry, the bank risks being overrun with repeat entrants. Granted, you can only enter once per day, but it would be hard to stop users from going to multiple branches. Even if everyone abides by the rules, the bank may see the same faces day after day, reducing sales opportunities and clogging the branch at busy times.
Doing the math: If the average number of entries is 10 per person, PNC will interact with just 70,000 unique customers. Assuming a 2% conversion rate, that's 1400 new product sales. Just considering the $700,000 prize pool alone, that's an acquisition cost of $500. That does not include other sweepstakes and marketing costs.
In comparison, it makes Resource Bank's $300 sweepstakes look pretty cost effective. Probably better would be something in-between, not so rich that you attract too many people out to game the system, but not so stingy that your customers wonder why you are even bothering.
If you'd like access to more financial interactive marketing ideas, check out the Interactive Financial Marketing Database from our sister publication, the Online Banking Report.
