Having a Contest
This blog is a primer about setting up random winner on any online contest.
Giveaways and contests draw people to our blogs, websites, and books. The wise marketer/author will make use of these.
However, the challenge is: how do I make sure my contest is operated with integrity.
To me, being honest is more important than selling a book or finding new readers.
That’s where random generator comes in. It is a free website that selects random numbers.
Here’s how I set up this weekend’s recent complete book set giveaway.
1. I use Mail Chimp as my newsletter provider. It’s a good program that sets up your mailing list and helps create professional looking newsletters. Erin Casteel, a talented Lake Charles area graphic artist, does the leg work of setting up the template.
2. We send out the newsletter to the 1100+ subscribers we have. The contest guidelines stipulated that anyone who read the newsletter was elgible to win a complete set (all 10) of our Creekbank Books. The deadline was Sunday midnight.
3. Using my Mail Chimp report page, I exported (to Excel) a file of everyone (all 215) who opened the newsletter. This file was in the order opened from 1-215.
4. I used Random Generator to select a number. It selected number 31.
5. I went to my Excel file to find number 31 on the list. It was Liz Bollich.
This is a simple way to honestly generate contest winners. Best of all, this portion of Random Generator is free.
Your input needed: About 20% of my newsletter subscribers opened this issue. This is about the industry average. However, I’m not happy with it. I am thinking of removing the names of those who’ve not read/opened the last three newsletters. What say you?
It’s really easy to remove your name from a newsletter on Mail Chimp using the unsubscribe button.
I surmise that most of these non-newsletter readers don’t want to hurt my feelings, so they just leave it alone.
Should I remove their names?
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