Your Guide To Digital Promotion Types And Benefits (With Examples)

The digital market landscape evolves at a breakneck pace, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer behavior. As a result, marketing professionals must continuously adapt to stay relevant and competitive.

One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through digital promotions. By implementing promotions such as sweepstakes, contests, instant wins, and more, you can create engaging experiences that encourage repeat business. These promotions not only help attract one-time visitors but also play a crucial role in turning them into loyal customers.

Yet running promotions can be daunting because there are many options to choose from and different factors to consider when deciding which promotion type is right for you and your needs. To help, here's an overview of the most common types of digital promotions (along with a few examples to explore).

Understanding Digital Promotion Basics

Promotions, contests, lotteries, giveaways... all kinds of terms get used when discussing digital promotions, but they don't always refer to the same thing. Understanding the difference can make it easier to determine what option to go with for your brand.

To start, its important to know that in the U.S., promotions typically consist of any two of three elements: 

• Chance - random selection
• Prize  - anything of monetary value 
• Consideration - This can include requiring an increased level of effort to participate, purchase requirements, travel requirements, etc.

Promotions will consist of two out of the three of these options.

For example, a Sweepstakes includes both Chance and Prize, meaning a prize is given to a winner who's been chosen completely at random from a pool of potential winners.

A Contest on the other hand includes Consideration and Prize, because contests require an element of skill where a potential prize winner is judged (considered) according to a set of criteria and not being picked at random. 

If a promotion consisted of all three elements - chance, prize, and consideration - then by law it would be deemed a lottery and thus fall under Federal jurisdiction...something that is better to avoid for the sake of ease and simplicity.

Now that you understand that, here are a few of the more popular and effective digital promotions to consider. 

Instant Wins

Instant Wins are an excellent versatile promotion that allows customers to feel excited about the chance to quickly win a prize and helps build anticipation that can keep them coming back to enter again and again. These promotions are great for brand awareness and acquisition campaigns because the ease of entry and high chance of winning increases the chances customers will submit their information to play.

Instant Wins are a fun, flexible option for businesses because they can be used as a long-term, ongoing contest or as a limited-time, standalone promotion. They also allow for companies to offer a more extensive prize inventory; instead of a single prize, companies can provide a range of prizes available to win from small prize tokens like product coupons to extremely high-value prizes like VIP trips.

Instant Wins are ideal promotions because they can keep your marketing campaigns creative, unique, and exciting for your customers. The flexibility of  Instant Win promotions means they're easy to customize to work with other marketing incentives; they can either be an overlay for a contest or a standalone promotion. For example, they are a great way to promote a holiday giveaway or a sporting event promotion!

View Nestlé Toll House 'Cookie of the Year' Case Study 

Sweepstakes 

Sweepstakes are perhaps the best-known and most popular type of promotion. Companies like to run Sweepstakes mostly due to their ease of use and their ability to be customized based on a brand's vision or budget. Sweepstakes are used to generate overall consumer interest and to promote new products or events. These promotions offer elements of chance and prize, meaning anytime you reward your customers at random, you are presenting a Sweepstakes.

One benefit of Sweepstakes is that they can easily be combined with other promotion types such as Instant Wins, Collect & Wins, Contests, and more, which makes a more robust and exciting promotion for consumers. This promotion type also pairs well with a loyalty program because it lets members burn points with little cost to your brand. 

View Nestlé 150th Anniversary Family Sweepstakes Case Study 

Games & Advergames

Games or Advergame promotions can come in a variety of shapes and forms, such as collect & wins, bingo boards, scavenger hunts, and more. This type of promotion invites customers to dive into their competitive side by playing different games and collecting unique pieces to win prizes.

Game-based promotions can be highly engaging because (as their name suggests) they can incorporate different gamification elements to attract, engage, and entertain audiences of all different ages. They can also take place for an extended amount of time, which gives more people the chance to play and win.

Some Games or Advergames promotions can be used just to drive engagement or can be used to promote the sale of certain products - not unlike how Willy Wonka hid Golden Tickets inside the wrappers of specific chocolate bars. Games like collect & wins or scavenger hunts can also utilize geo-location elements by enabling customers to collect items or pieces they need to win when they visit specific locations or areas, such as an in-store display. 

View Progressive Super-Duper Bingo Case Study

Photo, Video, or Essay Contests

Contests are digital promotions where, unlike random chance promotions such as sweepstakes, the winner is determined by some element of skill. Since the element of random chance is removed, the entrants’ submissions are judged according to specific criteria outlined in the official rules to select a winner. The most common types of contests include photo contests, video contests, essay contests, or a combination of the three.   

Contests are a more complex but equally popular promotion for brands, primarily because of their ability to collect high-quality user-generated content (UGC) from brand customers. The photos, videos, or essays collected by contests are content the brand can then share or promote across its channels or platforms. Brands can also use hashtag-aggregation tools to curate UGC submissions into a mosaic or collage on a microsite that can be easily viewed by wider audiences.

View Gerber Baby Photo Search Contest Case Study

Contests are also popular because they inspire deeper levels of user interaction than promotions like instant wins or sweepstakes. Contests can inspire customer creativity and create a sense of community around your brand as participants share their entries and vote on others. By inviting customers to share their creativity and enthusiasm, you make the experience memorable and personal.

User-generated content is also today's version of word-of-mouth marketing and is a great way to grow brand loyalty and trust. Because there are so many brands and options available to customers, building trust is more important than ever for helping distinguish your brand from competitors. 

Receipt Validation 

A Receipt Validation promotion is typically used in two ways: either as a Rebate promotion or as part of an entry mechanism for another promotion type like a Sweepstakes or Instant win. This promotion type is a great way to drive engagement and sales while also capturing live data and insights into your customers' buying habits. A brand could use receipt validation to award its customers with points, entries, or prizes once they upload a receipt or reach a certain spending threshold. 

Image recognition technology like Brandmovers' proprietary receipt validation module, ValidSpend, is a great way to let customers enter for chances to win prizes with every purchase they make. It allows for easy scans and validations of receipts containing multiple purchase and non-purchase submissions.

View Penguin Random House Reader Rewards Receipt Validation Program Case Study

There are a few important factors to note when running a Receipt Validation promotion. 

Firstly, to not conflict with federal and state lottery laws, brands cannot require an individual to make a purchase to enter to win; generally speaking, there must be no cost to a participant to enter your sweepstakes. This is why you usually see or hear the condition "NO PURCHASE NECESSARY" in a promotion's Official Rules or Terms and Conditions.

That being said, you can still run a Receipt Validation promotion and allow users to earn entries for making a purchase and uploading proof-of-purchase, as long as you also offer what's called an AMOE - an Alternate Method of Entry. An AMOE is a free, no-cost alternate method of entering a promotion like a sweepstakes or instant win. Allowing users to enter via AMOE and receipt upload is allowed as long as both types of entries receive equal treatment when randomly drawing the winners.

Fire Drill or Giveaway Promotions

While the term 'giveaway' has been used in the past to refer to all kinds of digital promotions from sweepstakes to instant wins, true Giveaways or Fire Drills exist as a category of their own. Fire Drills are a type of promotion that doesn't include chance; instead, they typically follow a first-come first-serve format. The first X number of people to do an action (register, purchase, enroll, sign-up, etc.) within a specified timeframe are the ones who win the prize. Once the timeframe is over or all prizes are claimed, then the promotion ends. 

Giveaway promotions and their 'limited-time only' prizes offer a unique sense of exclusivity and luck which is both appealing to audiences and helps build high levels of anticipation. These promotions are perfect for drawing people in and achieving the brand's desired goal (whether that's increasing account registrations, collecting customer contact info or opt-ins, etc.). Running a series Fire Drills or Giveaway promotions can generate high levels of customer engagement and encourage repeat visits by allowing non-winning users to return again for another shot at a prize.

View Babybel Lunchbox Design Studio Giveaway Promotion Case Study

A true Giveaway promotion doesn't fall into the same category as a Sweepstakes or Contest because it's not random and does not include skill, which means the usual type of official rules that are legally required when running a promotion aren't typically needed. However, as a best practice, we still recommend creating rules that establish how long the giveaway lasts, who is eligible to apply, etc. 

Picking The Right Promotion Type For You 

This guide can help you get a start on which promotions will work best for your brand. These six different promotions give you plenty of options and are a great way to excite your customers! Promotions can be used for whatever your company needs, whether a product launch, a new partnership, a giveaway, or more!

Need help figuring out how to implement this into your loyalty program? Reach out to us today and see how we can help you put these promotions into play and have your customers wanting to join in!