I wondered if anyone had any benchmarks for responses to online completions, which are advertised offline.

We ran a URL for a competition in an inset in a magazine and got a good number of people to the site to enter the competition.

Does anyone have any figures on the kind of response for offline driving people online?

Many thanks

On 11:42:04 12 December 2003 L Fisher wrote:
>Does anyone have any figures on the kind of response for
>offline driving people online?

We have helped with a number of off line/online competitions using our instant win games. If you want details of some of them navigate youself to www.visionet.co.uk

A previous competition by Thomas Cook Vouchers that was advertised in real world magazines and drew people to a supporting web site created a 8% response after deduplication. The incenitve was a cash prize.

Another promotion using Codem by charity AICR created a pull through from a mailing going to 300,000+ past doners to a support internet site generated £500,000 in donations.

If you want to discuss online promotional idea, get in touch because we have a great deal of experience in this area.

Pete Bresser

Response rates depend on a number of factors. As suggested by Alex who monitored a series of 100 polls in order to assess “Success”, you really need to create your own “product” benchmarks based on a series of similar promotions. Borrowing other people’s benchmarks may lead to you accepting consistent “underperformance” or… over critical appraisals.

For my area of business - film marketing - in absolute terms I take any competition that generates between 5,000 -10,000 entries as strong. Over 100,000 entries in a single country is achievable (i.e. not a pan European campaign). %'age wise we don't have any benckmark as we always drive people to enter the promotion from a number of different media whose absolute audience we cannot measure (magazines, posters, and online). 10-20% of our database of fans would normally enter our competitions.

Of course it's sometimes more important to understand how many people viewed the ad and "considered" entering it. People will often be put off from entering for a number of (difficult to measure) reasons - e.g. they're lazy, they forget, they don’t like the prize, they think they'll never win it. However, if the original message / ad was powerful enough to grab people's attention e.g. "WIN A DATE WITH MADONNA", then a promotional lead advert can command more attention than a straight ad.

Giving people the choice of how to enter should be considered if for some reason you want to maximise actual “entries” (vs maximising impact of your advert) . Eg. Enter via: SMS, Online, post, premium phone line…

Here are some factors that will impact response rates:

a) The type of product you are selling - do people love it even before they have experienced it? (e.g. Films Vs Insurance)

b) The incentive: does it really incentivise people? Do people think they can win? (100's of prizes to give away Vs One Grand prize)? Do they want the prize? (Tickets to a premiere/Trip for 10 to Las Vegas Vs money off coupons for dishwashing powder)

c) The strength of association between the offline medium and the online medium (e.g. Channel 4 broadcast and Channel4.com / Radio station and radio website Vs Advert in Times colour supplement with a message of "Go to kelloggs.com") - the stronger the association the more likely people will be going there anyway

d) Is the URL easy to remember and does it relate directly to the product? (e.g. Go to: www.renault.com Vs Go to: www.winacarcompetitionwithrenault.com/entry)

e) The quality of the Offline message: is it really clear what you are asking people to do/are there too many messages that are being communicated? (e.g. A whole ad dedicated to WIN TICKETS TO THE PREMIERE of LAST SAMURAI Vs multiple messages: New film, release date, staring X, Y and Z, and go online to win a prize

f) The quality of the offline media: is it somewhere that people really do browse and look at ads? ( e.g Back of a cereal packet / Bus shelter / competition pages of a magazine Vs small ads in back of a magazine / non editorial radio ad)

On 11:42:04 12 December 2003 L Fisher wrote:
>I wondered if anyone had any benchmarks for responses to
>online completions, which are advertised offline.
>
>We ran a URL for a competition in an inset in a magazine
>and got a good number of people to the site to enter the
>competition.
>
>Does anyone have any figures on the kind of response for
>offline driving people online?
>
>Many thanks

Response rates can vary a lot between sectors, B2B vs B2C, depending on the incentive, and the creative.

To generate high response rates, great creative/copy, fabulous prizes, memorable url and a well-designed landing page/entry form will all help.

However if the goal of your competition is to acquire new customers, response rate alone may not be the best measure of the competition’s success. More important is how the entrants behave after the competition, and whether they convert to buyers. If none of the competition entrants go on to buy your product, I would argue that the competition has failed to be an effective customer acquisition vehicle.

The biggest driver of entrant/buyer conversion seems to be relevancy of the incentive: If it is aligned with the product you are selling, you have a much better chance of using the list generated by the competition for future marketing. Don’t offer a car if you are trying to sell software… unless you want to sell the list to a car company. (Having said that, one of our B2B clients, Screwfix.com, is successfully attracting trade customers with ‘Win a Van’ competitions – but maybe there is still a link to selling them the tools to fill the van with afterwards!)

Best wishes

Obi Felten