Here’s a real life instance of how powerful a marketing and advertising tool competitions are, whether they are on the web or off line.

Six years ago I’d never heard of a Proton car. I wouldn’t have known one if it ran over me.  One day I took a wrong turning down a street and noticed, in a car showroom, that magic word WIN.

Screeching to a halt, I jumped out of my car and went inside to discover a WIN leaflet. Entrants were invited to see how many words they could make from Proton Persona.   The prize? A brand new gleaming bright red Proton Persona 1.5  The reason for the contest? The launch of this model.

Inspired by the challenge, I locked myself away in the library, only going home when they threw me out at 5pm closing time. 9am next day I was back again.  Three days searching twenty volumes of a dictionary I had 1,248 words.  But how to write them on a postcard? That was more of a challenge than finding the words. Hours later after copying all the words onto my improvised cut-down cereal box postcard, my entry winged its way to the judging table.

Now having read, reread and written out words relating to Proton Persona, this car name, unknown to me a week earlier, was now as familiar as the brand name of my favourite chocolate bar.  So when I’m next in the market for buying a car, whose name will I remember? Why theirs of course and probably be one of several showrooms I’d visit to make my purchasing choice.

However in this instance, I didn’t need to – I won the car!

Instead of a competition, a promoter could place a paid for advertisement in the press. But think of the free publicity for the promoter when you or I win their prize contest. In my Proton example, my prize presentation picture appeared in three different local newspapers, the story was related on Central TV’s Winners, appeared in my Win Your Fortune in Prizes book, was related to friends and compers at Win With Lynne events, and now here too on the Internet. So you can see why prize competitions are so popular, both with promoters and entrants.

Having entered a contest in-store, your name may be added to a company mailing list and they will send you offers and news of their products – sometimes even a contest to enter.  And so it is with the Internet too.

It is cheaper for you to enter contests on the Internet, thus saving a phone call or postage, then likewise, it’s less expensive for the promoter to send you emails instead of postal offers

Now for the problem, as I see it, with Internet comping.  The more you comp, the more marketing emails you get.  

A growing number of websites ask you to register to receive a newsletter with automatic entry into a prize draw.  Or when you read the rules you discover by entering you’ll receive future offers and mailings by email.

Believe me when I say these soon mount up.  At home I receive several items of postal 'junk mail’ a day through comping efforts. On the Internet I do not exaggerate when I say every time I check my email I’m downloading (copying to my computer) hundreds of emails every time.  Sometimes three or four times a day. That’s an awful lot of emails. 

Not all of this is due to Internet comping. For instance on my website www.win-with-lynne.co.uk I gave my contact email address, but unfortunately have had to remove it due to 'spam' (unsolicited and unwanted emails). Some webmasters collect email addresses from websites to send out unsolicited emails and I receive hundreds of 'junk emails' daily to my email address, from companies and individuals I’ve never even heard of – let alone entered their contest.

You have to remember too, that it costs you nothing to pick up mail from your doormat, apart from a little time and drop it into the bin if its unwanted, but on the Internet you’re paying connection time phone charges to download copy onto your computer for emails, some of which you’ve not asked for nor even want.

One company sent me five copies of the same newsletter, each of which was so filled with graphics it took half an hour to download!And, when I followed their link to unsubscribe, bearing in mind I'd not subscribed in the first place.  Blocking their emails doesn't help, as they keep coming, and when you try to reply to them, you find your own email address in the reply box!  You can imagine how you’d feel about that company.

What I do now and, you may like to benefit from my experience, is to have one email address which you use only for comping. Don’t give this address to anyone else at all. Then on your mailbox software set the filter to place all emails sent to your chosen address into one in-box folder. That way you can quickly scan through them, searching for the 'Congratulations' message to see if you’ve won a prize. And when the amount of emails you receive to this address becomes too much to handle, you can cancel that email address and change to another.

I find this a real shame, as there are thousands of reputable companies out there that organise prize competitions and only send you information and promotions when you've opted to receive them.

However, I much prefer to enter off-line in-store entry form competitions and prize draws, and competitions in magazines,as I believe chances of success are much better. However, the choice is yours! Happy comping.

© Copyright Lynne Suzanne www.win-with-lynne.co.uk

image by Sasha Davas