In our recent Rosco giveaway, I noticed we were getting lower sharing than in other sweepstakes – so I sent a survey out to entrants who hadn’t shared.
The main responses in the multiple choice question were:
- I don’t want to “spam” my friends even tho I know it would gain more chances to win = 68%
- I don’t think my friends would be interested = 24%
- Additional entries won’t really give me a better chance to win = 10%
- I don’t have social media accounts = 10%
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I never see additional points on my share page so I think the tool is broken = 5%
The other items were very low compared to those.
Surprisingly, people who didn’t share on social media just don’t want to share, even if bribed with 10 more entries. Only 18% would do it for 10 entries and just under 5% would do it for 5 entries.
When asked for additional feedback or improvements, here’s some of what they said (with my reply underneath).
- You have a good site. It seems to demean it a little when you have these “shameless” promotions for sharing to expand your audience. If you want to have giveaways, just have one entry per person who responds. Respect your viewers. Simple.
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Well I have a different viewpoint (probably guessed that) and many people thank me for offering giveaways. I believe I’m respecting everyone. People can enter and not share.And it isn’t about expanding MY audience (tho yes, I do gain some readers but most are not opting in).The vendors’ goal is to add potential buyers to their email lists. They hope to expand their product awareness and encouraging people to share to their social media is expanding the product awareness.One entry per person is good for some, but it makes the giveaway more viral and therefore helps feed my family and those of the product vendors.We often think of advertising as a pain in the ass (and I do too) but since i’m now living off of it, I have a new and different appreciation for it 🙂
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- Your giveaways are great! The only thing that would make them better is my winning one (or all ?).
- There were several comments similar – I wish I could have thousands of prizes to give each one of you!
- As a rule, I don’t share giveaways on much social media. It’s annoying for everyone involved.
- Also many similar replies and this was echoed in the multiple choice question above. However, some of you registered because you saw it on someone’s social media and I imagine that you may have friends who would be interested. Only way to know is to try it 🙂
- I think if you didn’t require social media accounts to share and just asked for participants to feel free to email friends and family…you’d get a bit more “sharing” involvement. Not everyone is comfortable with “social media” groups. Just a thought.
- You know, there is an option to do that in the software and I never turned it on because I didn’t think people would use it… silly me! So I’ll turn it on for future giveaways – thanks for the suggestion!
- The idea of free gear is cool but the reason I subscribed to the 5D feed is to keep aware of stuff I need to know. Contests distract from that and I’d much rather have more/better content.
- Well, it is hard to satisfy everyone unfortunately. We’re working on it tho – giveaways for people who want them and additional content for everyone
- I think people would share them more often if they were also content based. If you ask people to share why lighting is important in their work (i.e. questions related to the product), that might make people more willing to share.
- This is another great idea – providing additional content so people might be more interested in sharing. Working on this one! Thanks!
- I don’t have hordes of friends so that option never does me any good. I would prefer options that I can do myself.
- I’m working with the software vendor to see if we can add some options for solo entry stuff.
- Can entries win twice? If I won before ?
- We haven’t run into that yet, but we’re going to set up some rules about only being able to win once per six months or something to make it more fair.
- Add instagram on the share thingamabob.
- I’ve suggested that – but i’m not sure that it really helps. One goal is to be able to have your unique link out there for people to click on and instagram doesn’t allow clickable links.
- Live/recorded videos of the raffles.
- We do record them and post some of them. We started doing the recordings as a CYA thing but we’re sharing the videos of major giveaways now. We can’t do them live tho as we don’t want to show people’s names and email addresses publicly. I block them out in post production.
- I find it a bit long to wait for the announcement of the winners two weeks.
- We usually announce winners as soon as we can. We like to have confirmation that they’re willing to accept and be willing to pay taxes etc.
- The maximum number of points you can give is statistically insignificant.
- Very true for many giveaways – including national or international ones, but every entry has as much chance to win as every other one.
- Text back to let the person know when extra points are award
- interesting idea – I’ve passed it on to the developers
- Request the winner to provide some feedback on the use of the product.
- we actually do – but realistically, that can be weeks if not a month or so before they get it and have a chance to really use it.
- It seems like, other than the words and what’s being given away, nothing changes from email to email. For each product, somehow change up the look of the message, so that other customers and I will be more inclined to buy into the product being sold!
- good point! It is easy for me to get into a rut and just clone what has been done before. I’ll work on it.
- Most competitions are in USA so I don’t really bother, mostly for just US citizens.
- most of our giveaways on planet5D have been open to international visitors
- good prizes – maybe more prizes but of a smaller value?
- I recommend that to our sponsors but they have final decisions on what to offer. They typically are promoting something specific tho and want that item highlighted. Noted tho!
- I feel like I constantly get multiple emails about the same giveaway. Unless it’s a daily entry thing, all that’s going to do is make me hit delete.. or maybe unsubscribe and give up on your giveaways. Appreciate the opportunity but there are other opps out there that don’t spam my inbox.
- Unfortunately, you’re one of the ones who opens many of our emails. There are lots of others however who may only open 1 out of 5, so we need to hit the whole list multiple times. But where I can, I do exclude people who opened earlier emails and clicked. But that may also eliminate someone who thought about entering and didn’t but then would enter if reminded…. a real catch-22 for giveaway operators like me 🙂
- The Confirmation-email did not get through to me even though I whitelisted it… So I don’t know whether it really works
- I’ve actually had trouble with some services (i’m currently working with this problem with Apple and iCloud for example). Not sure what can be done about it tho. Make sure you check junk/spam folders.
- I’m only on twitter, and I think it’s bad form to spam your followers with lots of contests that are really only for me. It is an abuse of your timeline unless it’s genuinely something your followers will be interested in.
- Well, isn’t it hard to know whether they’ll be interested or not? Why not put it out there and see?
- It was nice to see that the winners before seemed to be cross section of people from all over. It is amazing that the giveaways are on such expensive items but I assume it is a way of advertising to the company and possible new customers. I for one have gone to their websites to get informed on new and innovative products, many of which I didn’t know existed.
- Most of our giveaways have been international and winners have been from all around the world. Thank you for your comments and for visiting the vendor’s websites!
So there you go. Everyone who submitted a response was awarded 25 additional entries BEFORE the winner was drawn.
I look forward to serving you again!
planetMitch