Considering the algorithms that govern social media posts, brands have to look for clever ideas for their posts to come up on their followers’ feeds. Besides advertising, an indispensable tool for increasing engagement is social media giveaways. They are a highly effective marketing tool as they generate organic interactions, which algorithms view favorably. Furthermore, they assist in energizing your social profiles and reaching a broader audience.

So, if you want to launch a new product or stay atop people’s minds, run a giveaway to develop interest through an incentive, which could be the new product itself or a discount. If you own a fashion e-commerce store, promote your online shop by giving away the best-selling clothing items.

In the following example, the online clothing store “Femminile” ran a giveaway open to everyone who commented on the Instagram post and tagged three friends for the chance to win a pair of jeans, allowing the shop to promote its flagship product. Additionally, the shop has a section for featured stories in its Instagram profile where they share information about giveaways and winners.

Are you looking into running a giveaway on social media? Take a look at the kinds of social media giveaways that you can manage with Easypromos.

Interactive games to promote an online shop and draw traffic

Social media can be a significant source of traffic for your online store, but it’s not the only one. There are other ways to attract visitors, and one of them is by implementing interactive features on your own website.

Incorporating games into your marketing strategy enables you to personalize communication to the point of establishing a fun and rewarding connection with the target audience. The interaction achieved through games allows you to showcase a product or service, offer prizes or discounts, raise awareness about your brand’s values, and capture the user’s attention to generate high-quality traffic.

Create a puzzle using an image from your new collection, a memory game to match the trendiest looks, or a word search to discover the whole range of clothing and accessories available in your store. Then embed the game on your website or app so that players have to enter your store to play, and voilà!

The Spanish shopping center Alcalá Magna launched a fashion Spin the Wheel promotion to capture customers’ attention. They promoted it on their website, social media, through emails, etc. However, participation took place directly through their app, which drew a significant amount of traffic to this channel.

Are you keen on the idea of launching a gamified action to promote your e-commerce? Check out all the games that you can create with Easypromos with no programming skills needed.

Promote an online shop and build customer loyalty

Loyalty programs are a must for retaining customers. Loyalty is a key factor in encouraging customers to make repeat purchases and meeting your sales targets consistently. There are many types of loyalty strategies, but the most successful ones are those that provide some form of reward and offer added value.

For instance, you can promote your online store and build loyalty through actions to give away instant prizes. Create a campaign where users redeem a code (received earlier through their purchase) to earn points, discounts, or a gift.

In fashion, providing styling and color advice is quite common. How about offering this service in your online fashion shop? Kettlewell Colours is a company specializing in fashion. For years, it has been providing color-related advice to their customers. Its website features several quizzes that offer recommendations on what suits customers best.

Want to learn more about the Kettlewell Colours case? Read all about it in this case study.

We hope you find these strategies to promote an online fashion shop useful and inspiring to create your own promotional action.

Why use digital promotions for your company anniversary campaign

Celebrating your brand’s anniversary online can bring about significant advantages. However, having clear objectives is essential to decide what type of campaign and activities to carry out. Easypromos offers a variety of tools and applications to create giveaways, contests, games, knowledge quizzes, and other interactive dynamics to help you achieve your goals.

Still not sure how promotions to celebrate your company’s anniversary can help? Take a look at these marketing objectives you can achieve:

• Promote your company’s corporate values.
• Share the success of the company and thank the people who have made it possible.
• Increase engagement with clients.
• Reinforce employee commitment.
• Give the company a more human feel.
• Generate content for PR actions in the media.
• Strengthen brand awareness and brand identity.
• Reward and motivate employees.
• Recruit and retain talent.
• Build customer loyalty and generate leads.
• Gather UCG.

Examples of company anniversary campaigns

Let’s go over some ideas to celebrate your company’s anniversary. These are real-life examples of game and contest-based company anniversary campaigns. Use them for inspiration and start planning your anniversary campaign!

Celebrating the company’s anniversary with a memory game

To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the Spanish brand Borges launched a memory game to celebrate it with its customers, strengthen their brand image, and promote their products. The brand raffled a product bundle valued at 125 euros among all participants, linking this amount to their anniversary.

Celebrating the company’s anniversary with a prize wheel

Another fun way to celebrate company anniversaries is with prize wheels. It’s also a good idea to make this an annual thing, turning it into a tradition. Here’s an example from the Wee Nam Kee Chicken Rice restaurant celebrating its 9th anniversary.

The restaurant shared this promotion with its clients who, after registering for the promotion with their email address, got to spin the wheel for a chance of winning discounts, vouchers, or products that could be redeemed at the restaurant celebrating the anniversary. This promotion is a good example of how you can make customers’ part of your celebration by offering rewards in exchange for their contact information. Which you can later use in future email marketing campaigns or to increase subscribers to your newsletter.

Redeem Codes promotion to celebrate with your customers

El Rincón, a store specializing in nuts and snacks, celebrated its 40th anniversary by providing codes to all customers who purchased certain products. Users would validate these codes in the app and instantly find out if they had won a prize. The company was giving away a trip to New York, gastronomic experiences, and spa relaxation tickets.

Celebrating the company’s anniversary with a purchase receipt validation campaign

As Cancelas Shopping Center in Spain has a loyalty club led by a fun alien mascot named Celi. The Celi Club has over 20,000 members who enjoy discounts, workshops, shows, and other activities. To celebrate Celi’s anniversary, the center organized a marketing action where users had to validate their purchase receipts to enter a giveaway of a trip or discount coupons.

Celebrate the company’s anniversary with a photo contest

The following is an example from the travel website Last Minute and its Photo Contest. The brand asked users to upload a photo of their most memorable, magical, or romantic moment for the chance of winning a ride on the iconic London Eye. With this promotional action, the brand gathered valuable UGC and draw traffic to its website, as the promotion’s access was embedded on their website.

Multigame campaign to celebrate the company’s anniversary

Our last example comes from the supermarket chain Alcampo and its 40th anniversary celebration. Using the Easypromos Multi Game app, the organizers set up 16 different games that were made available to the public over a period of one month. Participants scored points playing the different games (puzzles, minesweepers, match-it, hidden objects, etc.) that could later be redeemed for prizes. With action, the company strengthened brand awareness and fostered customer loyalty.

As you can see from these examples, interactive promotions require participants to carry out an action to gain benefits. This in itself is a powerful resource for brands, as it provides users with a unique experience and fosters engagement. If you would like to learn more about our platform’s advantages and features, feel free to contact us and request a personalized demo.

Here is a selection of 10 different promotion dynamics to reward your users. Additionally, all these promotions can work as independent microsites or embedded on a mobile app, a loyalty program, or a private section of a website.

Prize Wheel

The “Spin the Wheel” app is one of our star products as its simple concept has a great appeal to the general audience. Its iconic format is ideal to give away a set number of prizes. We recommend the wheel has a maximum of 10 sections, more than that would make it look cluttered. The greatest advantage of a prize wheel is that all the possible prizes are clearly visible to the participant. Furthermore,  the intensity of the spin can be regulated by the participants, which gives them the impression that the result of the spin is not entirely dependent on luck, and that there might be an element of skill. Thus, the Prize Wheel is an optimal tool to capture users’ attention and create a user experience that includes excitement and suspense. An archetypical use of the Prize Roulette is to situate it right after a purchase. For instance, after a customer has finalized a purchase on your mobile app, a prize wheel comes up and offers the chance of winning a gift card or a discount for their next purchase. 

Scratch & Win

The “Scratch & Win” app takes the classic scratch card dynamic into the digital world. In the same way as the “Spin the Wheel” app does with the prize roulette. The dynamic is quite simple, users simply have to “scratch” the screen to find out if they have won. In contrast to the prize roulette, users cannot see the possible prizes prior to participating. Hence, the user experience incorporates a sense of mystery and surprise. This dynamic can be presented right after a purchase both online and offline. Thus, an example of a promotional action that works very well is to use Scratch & Win to reward customers that buy from a shop that belongs to an association, mall, or local chamber of commerce. After the purchase at the brick-and-mortar shop, users receive a QR code and a participation code to access the promotion and obtain discounts for other affiliated shops. This sort of action not only builds customer loyalty but also allows the organizer to collect user data and better understand the target audience. This kind of promotional action is a win-win for customers and participating businesses.

All promotions in the “Instant Prizes” category can issue digital coupons that can be redeemed as a discount, gift, or reward. If you wish to use them to draw foot traffic to your physical store, the prize redemption tool is the solution you are looking for.

Reveal & Win

The “Reveal & Win” dynamic is a variation of “Scratch & Win” in which users have to tap the screen to find a set number of objects in order to win a prize. For instance, customers scan a QR code that is displayed at the checkout, register, upload their receipts, and play. In order to win, users have to find three burgers, three sodas, or three french fries. Whichever product they find three images of, is what they win. This dynamic has a high level of playability and is ideal for businesses with a high volume of low-value transactions, e.g, restaurants, bars, or fast-food establishments.

The prize distribution system in all the aforementioned apps allows the organizer to define whether the prizes will be given away by probability or by Instant Win. In the first case, the organizer can set the odds for each prize to be given away e.g, 2/1000, 5/1000, etc. In the latter, the organizer defines a specific date and hour when each (or some) of the prizes will be given away. For example, in a promotional action that includes small value prizes with more important ones, it is a good idea to give away the small prizes by odds and the bigger ones by Instant Win. This will ensure that the bigger prizes will be distributed throughout the entire length of the promotion.

Play and win

In this scenario, users interact with the brand through one of Easypromos’ game apps, e.g, a memory game, puzzle, or word search. After playing the game, users get a score and a position in the ranking, which will be the main variables for the brand’s prize distribution.

We recommend using a combination of prize distribution mechanics to create a more positive user experience. A typical example would be to give a small prize simply for participating and completing the game, e.g, a 10% discount on the next purchase. A bigger prize if the player scores above a certain amount and an even bigger one for the top-ranked player(s). The organizer could wrap up this action with a final prize draw among all the participants, thus giving the brand the opportunity to extend the interaction with the users beyond the moment of playing the game by at least two additional emails. The first email might read: “don’t forget we are giving away X prize among the participants”, and one email more to inform of the results of the prize draw.

Register and win

“Register and win” is the simplest and most straightforward dynamic we are covering. Users simply register by filling out a customized registration form and once the registration is complete, the system allocates a prize. The prize could be the same for everyone or have different prizes that will be given away randomly or depending on what the user has replied in the registration form. For example, a shopping mall is carrying out a promotion and in the registration form, users are asked about their interests. Users who reply with “sports” will get a discount for a sports shop. Whereas users who reply with “fashion” will get a discount for a clothing shop.

Prize Calendar

The go-to example of a prize calendar action is the Advent Calendar. This is a widely successful kind of promotion as it keeps the audience engaged during the holiday season, which sees a sharp increase in sales. With the prize calendar, users register once and check in daily to find out what each day holds in store. This action allows for a combination of all the previously mentioned promotion types. One day might feature a discount and the next one a Scratch & Win, then a prize wheel, then a game, and so on. The key to this dynamic is to keep users motivated to check in daily. The organizer can give away prizes daily and also reward loyalty with a final prize for those users who checked in every day. Another advantage of such promotion is that it creates a natural and positive communication channel with the audience for an extended period with teaser messages such as: “Don’t miss today’s surprise, you will love it!”. Or reminders like “you still have three more days to open, keep in mind that there is an exclusive prize for those who check in every day!”.

Answer and win

An answer-and-win action rewards users who provide the organizer with information on a specific topic. This might be a quick survey about the brand’s products or services, a questionnaire on users’ preferences, or simply generic questions that help the brand get to know its audience better. At first glance, this kind of promotion might seem to go against the generally accepted usability rules. UX/UI manuals state that organizers should keep the information fields in a registration form to the minimum as each additional field increases the chance of users getting tired and quitting. Be that as it may, including a prize at the end of the process will increase the users’ motivation significantly. Hence, brands can dare to ask users for more information without running the risk of them quitting halfway through the process.

Watch and win

A watch-and-win action rewards users who watch a video, an image, or a text related to the organizing brand. This action is usually combined with other dynamics. E.g, “Watch our latest promotional video to get a chance to spin the prize wheel.” It can also be included in multi-stage promotions such as an Advent Calendar.

This is a useful branding action to reinforce product launches or complex services that require the users’ attention for some time so that the brand can explain its offering. Despite having said that whenever there is a final prize for the user, the brand can be more demanding, it is important to keep in mind that users’ attention span is short. Therefore, videos should be kept under 30 seconds and texts shouldn’t take up more than half of a mobile phone’s screen without scrolling down.

Validate your purchase receipt

Promotions with purchase receipt validation are ideal for retail businesses to reward customers there and then. With Easypromos, organizers can determine the necessary validations of the purchase ticket to ensure that it is real and hasn’t been previously validated. We will not delve extensively into the casuistics of automatic receipt validation, but as a general rule we will state that:

• The more restrictive and specific the validation rules are, the more automated the prize awarding will be. For instance, once the receipt has been deemed valid, users can access a Scratch & Win, a prize wheel, or an instant prize promotion.
• However, if it is not possible to determine a unified set of rules for all the receipts. The alternative is to run a final prize draw among the participants. Moreover, it will be necessary to manually check that the winning receipts are valid. In case they weren’t, prizes would then be awarded to the alternate winners.

An important feature of promotions with purchase receipt validation is that with Easypromos, the prizes awarded can be determined by the amount shown in the purchase receipt. For example, users who spend over €100 will get a bigger prize than those who spend €50.

Instant Win

The last action we will look into usually works well as a secondary action for a primary promotional action. For example, in a promotion that rewards users with a 20% discount for registering, the organizer can incorporate an Instant Win to give away additional prizes. Hence, users will get a 20% discount just for registering. But there is an additional incentive of winning a special prize that the organizer has set to be given at a specific date and time.

With Easypromos, the organizer can set concrete dates and times in the calendar for specific prizes to be given away. Thus making sure that the most important prizes are evenly distributed along the length of the promotion. If the organizer has plenty of prizes to distribute and is expecting massive participation, the prizes can be set to be given away automatically. However, if the organizer doesn’t have that many prizes, the moment they are given away can be manually set with the Instant Win feature. For instance, the organizer can set the Instant Win to Monday at 3:00 pm. Thus, the first user to register after that moment will get the prize.

The user experience of an Instant Win promotion resembles that of the promotions that showed the prize below the lid of a consumer product such as a soda bottle or a yogurt. The excitement and anticipation are quite similar.

We can conclude that there are three main factors to keep in mind when creating actions to distribute direct prizes: the value of the prize, the number of prizes, and the number of expected participants. With these three variables in mind, the organizer can decide which participation dynamic will provide the best user experience and the most effective management.

The Easypromos platform supports all the dynamics that we have covered in this article and our customer support team is available to clarify any doubt or to show you a DEMO live and advice on what kind of promotion will better fit your needs.

However, in this context of high competition, it is important to establish a connection with visitors who approach your sales stand so you can communicate with them once the fair is over. That’s why obtaining a visitor’s data – in other words, capturing the lead – is so important.

Dropping off a business card, or perhaps by filling in a paper form in order to take part in a giveaway are, or should be, a thing of the past. After all, if marketing actions are increasingly moving into the digital realm, shouldn’t lead capturing at trade shows follow suit?

Learn more about the Easypromos solutions for brand promotion in trade shows.

Easypromos not only has the right tools to help you turn visitors to your stand into qualified leads, but also to draw visitors to your stand even before the trade show starts! This is exactly what Fisiomarket did by embedding a digital prize wheel on their website. Visitors to the website got a chance to spin the wheel and win a prize that could then be collected at the brand’s stand in an upcoming trade show.

The idea is to create a participation dynamic that’s straightforward and appealing, offering a prize that will capture the attention of visitors and motivate them to leave their contact information via a digital form. The most common and simple dynamic is an Entry Form Giveaway displayed via a microsite. Visitors can then participate using their own mobile number; all they have to do is scan the QR code displayed on the posters or display screens at the stand.

To give you some inspiration, here are some actions available to you:

• Register in a giveaway for a chance to win a fantastic prize.
• Spin the wheel or Scratch & Win dynamics to distribute prizes.
• Test your knowledge with our quiz and we’ll give you a t-shirt.
• Find out which product best suits your needs and get big discounts.
• Play with us and win exclusive prizes by accumulating points.
• Complete this survey about our brand and get free merchandising.

The main objective of all these actions is to arouse the visitor’s curiosity by using simple, but fun, digital interactions that generate an emotional bond with the brand while serving to feed leads to your CRM.

How can you run a promotion from your stand?

Here’s a 10-step guide:

• Create an Easypromos account. It’s free and you don’t need to enter your bank or credit card information.
• Access the Easypromos dashboard and click on “Create New Promotion.”
• Select the type of promotion you want to use: Games, giveaways, contests, quizzes, there are over 40 options to choose from.
• Customize the design with your own logo, images, and brand colors. 
• Customize the contact form.
• Customize the game or the dynamics of participation with your own message.
• Set up the prize or prices you wish to distribute. 
• Carry out all the necessary tests to ensure that the promotion works and looks like you want it to.
• When you want to make the promotion available to all audiences, click on the “activate promotion” button. At this point the system will ask you to sign up to an Easypromos plan.
• Choose the license that suits you best. The Premium or the White Label plans offer the widest range of options and features. 

How can I simplify access to the promotion?

The best way to provide quick and easy access is to use a QR code that leads to the promotion URL. To give the QR code maximum visibility, display it on signs or screens at your stand. Visitors will be able to simply point their smart phone at the QR and be participating within seconds.

The more accessible you make the QR the better. Ideally, even if there are too many people at your stand for you to attend to them personally, visitors will be able to participate in the promotion and interact with your brand on their own.

If you’d like to give your promotion a nice finishing touch, you could customize the URL with your own domain or subdomain so that the QR leads to your specified link, e.g., tradeshow.mybrand.com.

Below, you can see an example of the type of poster you could display at your stand, including the promotion’s URL plus the QR. Scan the code with your phone and test for yourself what the participants’ experience will be like!

I’ve my got leads. Now what?

In the registration form of your promotion, you can include a box for visitors to give their permission to receive commercial information from your brand. You can then import this contact data directly into your CRM. Easypromos offers integrations with the most popular CRM and email marketing applications. If you don’t use a CRM system, or if you’d rather manage the contacts manually, you can export the data in CSV or Excel. If you wish to use your IT department, remind them that we also offer an API that they can use to process the data automatically.

You can also use the Easypromos email platform to communicate with your visitors. For example, after each visitor participates in the promotion, you can have an email sent to them automatically, thanking them for participating. You could include relevant service information in this email, so that the visitor really gets the most out of the trade show. In addition, you could send an email to remind promotion participants when the final draw of your giveaway will take place. This will help keep your brand in their minds.

Make the most of all the options that Easypromos provides for creating interactive experiences at trade shows. You’ll capture leads and strengthen the link between your brand and visitors to your stand. If you’d like to see a live demo, get in touch with us and we’ll analyze your needs and provide you with solutions and ideas for your next trade shows, conventions, and congresses.

Easypromos offers a pioneering application that uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology applied to digital promotions, such as interactive and gamified marketing campaigns. OCR technology allows recognizing images without human intervention to validate receipts uploaded by customers. Thus, making sure that they comply with the participation requirements that the organizers have set for their promotional campaign, both in paper and digital receipts.

Using this app, brands can create promotional campaigns that are directly linked to the purchase by configuring it in a way that it will allow them to achieve several marketing objectives. 

Before moving on to the advantages of Scan Receipts with OCR promotions, let’s take a look at five conditions that will make it possible to organize such promotion.

• Total amount of the purchase e.g., a minimum of €20.
• Date of the purchase, e.g., within the last month.
• Text on the receipt, e.g., the name of a specific product or shop. 
• Unique identifying codes in the receipt.
• Total amount of all of the uploaded receipts. E.g., giving out a direct prize when a customer has uploaded several receipts that together amount to a previously set amount.

Which objectives can brands achieve using scan receipt with OCR promotions?

Increasing Sales

It is the most common objective for brands carrying out this kind of promotion. Commonly used in shopping malls to draw foot traffic to their location. It is also commonly used to boost sales both in online and brick-and-mortar stores within a specific period of time using the receipt’s date as a participation requirement. That is to say, only purchases made within a pre-established period are eligible to participate.

In the promotion below, the fashion retailer C&A joined forces with Toys R’us to reward customers who shopped at C&A during a specific period. To participate, customers had to register and upload a photo of their receipt. All registered participants then entered a final prize draw of gift cards to be spent in toys during the holiday season.

Another strategy to grow sales and increase the average purchase value is to allow participants to upload more than one receipt with different purchase values. Once consumers reach a certain accumulated amount, they will receive a direct prize (prize configuration must be set to “when participating”).

Boost sales for a specific product or product line

These kinds of actions are a very effective way of capturing new clients. When a potential customer needs to buy a specific product and the time comes to decide which one to purchase, they will typically opt for the brand that offers some sort of incentive or promotion.

Building customer loyalty

Offering special rewards to active customers will build loyalty and trust. It is always a good idea to offer discounts, rewards, product samples, and coupons to clients. Rewarding clients promotes repeat purchases and may make ambassadors out of customers.

If the promotion implies uploading more than one receipt within a period of time, it is fundamental to consider the product’s consumption frequency. These kinds of promotions are advisable for daily or weekly consumption products as the premise “the more receipts you upload, the more chances to win” can be applied.

Increasing the average purchase value 

First and foremost, you need to know the average transaction value and set a realistic objective. Once you have figured out the average amount per purchase, you can decide what is the minimum amount that the customer has to pay to participate and offer an incentive in exchange for the economic effort.

Upselling is another strategy aimed at nudging the consumer to buy a higher-end product. This implies only including higher-priced products in the promotion. Cross-selling is yet another technique that consists of suggesting an additional product that is related to the one originally purchased. For instance, if a customer purchases a toothbrush and dental floss of the same brand to get a reward as it is required that both products’ names’ appear on the receipt.

Capturing leads at the point of sale if the action is offline.

Participants have to register with their personal details alongside with the purchase receipt. This kind of action is ideal for brands that want to capture leads as it wouldn’t be possible to gather user data otherwise.

Advantages of using a Scan Receipts app to grant access to exclusive promotions 

Running a campaign that requires uploading purchase receipts and using OCR to recognize text, numbers, and images instantly implies a shorter implementation period and fewer human resources, which in turn, reduces costs.

Fewer human resources needed 

Avoid allocating personnel to manually verify receipts and avoid fraud with this automated process. An entire team of people to verify receipts in promotions that rack up hundreds or thousands of participations is no longer necessary.

Save time

With the automation of the process, the person in charge of managing the participation will only have to check the receipts that show up as not correctly uploaded. The validation system includes very specific and detailed error codes to inform the participant of what the problem is and how to correct it.

Lower cost

Checking the receipts manually required a lot of time and staff, which often made it necessary to outsource this activity and, in turn, reallocate a lot of resources to this task. 

We hope you find this information useful for your next promotion. If you have any questions or need more information, you can contact our customer support team via live chat. We will be happy to help. 

Discounts, coupon codes, loyalty programs, and post-purchase rewards are popular with customers across all industries. Who didn’t have at least a few loyalty cards filling up their wallets a few years back? These plastic cards have now been replaced by mobile apps and QR codes – and we continue to accumulate points for purchases at our favorite shops. 

But now there is another way to thank your customers for their purchases and loyalty. With our new Validate Receipts app you can not only foster customer loyalty but also encourage repeat purchases and attract new customers – without having to spend extra money on lead acquisition. 

The Easypromos application allows brands to organize customer-exclusive promotions and giveaways for clients only. To participate, users register in the promotion and upload their purchase receipts to prove that they’re one of the paying customers. If the receipt is valid, the user enters a prize draw, receives a direct prize, or gets to spin a prize wheel. Ready to find out more about the Validate Receipts app, its recommended use, and advantages? 

Why launch promotions with the Validate Receipts app

• Customer loyalty: Offering special perks to your customers is one way to reinforce their loyalty and trust. Give discounts, prizes, and coupons to those that buy your products or use your services. By giving back to your clients you increase the likelihood of repeat purchases and create potential brand ambassadors. 
• Lead generation: Each participant must fill out a registration form as they upload their receipt. By entering your promotion they become a new member of your database. 
• More sales: Offer attractive incentives to drive more people to your point of sale or to your online shop. You can also specify the minimum spend amount to indicate how much customers must spend in order to qualify for the prize or enter your giveaway. This will encourage some customers to spend a little more so that they get a chance to win a prize or obtain the reward involved in your promotion. 
• Brand recognition, visibility, and awareness: Whenever you launch a promotion you work on brand awareness and visibility. Make sure you inform your in-store customers, website visitors, newsletter subscribers, and social media followers about the special campaign that you’re running. Chances are they will share it with friends and family, spreading the word about your brand. You can also invest in social media ads for further visibility.

How does the Validate Receipts application work

There are two ways to validate purchase receipts with the Validate Receipts app by Easypromos:

• Manual validation: Users register and upload pictures of their proof of purchase from a desktop or mobile device. Once you choose a random winner of your giveaway, manually validate if the receipt uploaded by the winner is valid. This is why choosing alternate winners is important. (For Premium plans).

Don’t wait any longer – try our Receipt Validation DEMO to test the real user experience.

• Automatic validation with OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Whenever a user uploads their receipt, the application automatically scans and checks it – you can choose what information must be included on the receipt, for example, the name of your store, specific dates, products, or minimum spend amount. The application will automatically accept all valid receipts and reject the ones that don’t comply with the requirements. (For White Label and Corporate plans). Find our more about automatic receipt validation with OCR.

Different ways to use the Validate Receipts app

Depending on the version you’re using, there are different dynamics that you can launch with the Validate Receipts application:

1. Random giveaway for all participants – users share pictures of their purchase receipts for a chance to win one of the prizes you raffle. The prize draw will take place after the participation period ends. *For Premium and White Label versions.
2. Weekly giveaways – is your promotion running over a few weeks? Do you have more than one incentive to give away? Run weekly – or even daily – giveaways for participants that entered your promotion in the given period of time. *For Premium and White Label versions.
3. Direct prize or participation in a Spin the Wheel promotion
   1. For Premium promotions – this dynamic can be organized only for in-store promotions. You can reward customers with direct prizes or participation in a Spin the Wheel promotion, however, you will have to monitor the participation. Once a customer spends the required amount in store, inform them about the campaign and invite them to participate in your promotion via a tablet at the point of sale. 
   2. For White Label promotions – this dynamic can fully take place online. Allow users to spin a prize wheel or give direct prizes to those that share valid purchase receipts. There’s no need for manual intervention or validation, as the OCR system will take care of everything. 
   1. For Premium promotions – this dynamic can be organized only for in-store promotions. You can reward customers with direct prizes or participation in a Spin the Wheel promotion, however, you will have to monitor the participation. Once a customer spends the required amount in store, inform them about the campaign and invite them to participate in your promotion via a tablet at the point of sale. 
   2. For White Label promotions – this dynamic can fully take place online. Allow users to spin a prize wheel or give direct prizes to those that share valid purchase receipts. There’s no need for manual intervention or validation, as the OCR system will take care of everything. 

Interested in running a Spin the Wheel promotion with OCR? Give our DEMO a try – and discover the real user experience.

Why use the Validate Receipts application by Easypromos?

Creating your own Validate Receipts promotion is simple and straightforward – just like running any other campaigns with Easypromos. You don’t need any programming experience to launch a Validate Receipts campaign and in case of questions, doubts, or struggles, our experienced Customer Support Team will happily guide you through the setup. The application can be fully personalized so that your branding colors and logos are visible throughout the participation process. 

With the Easypromos application, you can display your privacy policy and terms and conditions in an easy and transparent way. The registration form can be fully configured so that you can obtain all the user information that you need for your database. Download your new leads at any moment and send them directly to your CRM. 

Are you ready to launch your own promotion? Before you start, you can take a look at more Validate Receipts DEMOs and templates for extra inspiration.

What kind of promotions can be used to distribute discount coupons?

From entry form giveaways to loyalty surveys or branded games, Easypromos offers many possibilities for distributing coupons through games and promotions. Whatever your choice, the promotion editor, features a section to create and configure coupons:

Once the prize is created, you can configure the coupon to your liking. If you need it to have a promotional code, the options are:

1. Use the same code for all participants.
2. Upload your own list of codes.
3. Automatically generate unique codes with QR codes or barcodes.

If you want the winners to be able to download the coupon, the platform offers two possibilities:

1. Upload your own PDF.
2. Generate the PDF with Easypromos.

How to configure a downloadable coupon with Easypromos?

Click on ‘Edit PDF template’ to access the editor to create your customized coupons to upload the coupon’s background image, choose the elements to include in the PDF, and add any other elements you need.

Background image

Size: 1190x1684px. This image shouldn’t have too many graphic elements, as this is where the winner’s name, the date and time of prize acquisition, its description, the coupon image, etc., will appear. Therefore, it’s important to go for a ‘less is more’ approach.

It is also advisable to keep the same graphic style used for the promotion background but adapt it to the previously mentioned dimensions or leave it blank to emphasize the coupon itself.

Template elements

This section includes the elements that will make up the downloadable file. These include:

1. Name of the prize
2. Description of the prize
3. Date and time
4. User code
5. Participant code
6. QR / bar code
7. Winner’s name and last name
8. Coupon inage

All these elements are editable. So if there’s one you don’t want to display, you can remove it and add it back whenever needed. Here’s another example of a coupon edited with the Easypromos app, a 2-for-1 coupon from Taco Bell:

Online coupons, tips and examples

Once all the elements to be included on the PDF have been defined, it’s time to move on to the most important step: the design.

Display an image of the prize

For example, if you own a children’s clothing store and want to offer your customers a 15% discount on new season purchases, reserve a section of the coupon to display a photo of the prize or an example of your products. This will make the coupon visually appealing and will help the winner conceptualize the prize.

Make sure the prize description is readable

If you’ve previously decided to allocate a portion of the coupon for the image, make sure you leave room for text. Use the same font throughout the promotion. This way, you’ll keep a consistent graphic style and create a visually pleasing experience. Write the prize name in a reasonably large size so that it can be easily read. The prize description can be in a slightly smaller font than the title.

Leave room to include the codes

For instance, if you want the winners to redeem the coupon in a physical store using a QR code, you can choose from a couple of solutions:

Reserve space in the PDF document (e.g., below the coupon image).

Include the code within the coupon image, provided you have enough space, as the coupon can become overloaded with information.

Include your brand’s logo

Either in the corner of the coupon, above the prize name, or even at the top of the PDF, always include your logo in the coupon. It never hurts to include your brand logo as it provides credibility to the promotion.

Use your corporate color palette

Maintain the same graphic style throughout the promotion to avoid disrupting the visual consistency.

With Easypromos, you can now easily create and make your coupons redeemable at physical stores. Check out the prize redemption feature for physical points-of-sale. Check out the prize redemption time limit in the image above.

What is the prize is not a physical product?

If you can’t display an image of your product because it’s not physical, make sure that the text carries the visual weight. Therefore:

• Center the text (title + prize description) in the middle of the image.
• Use a legible font at a medium-large size.
• Include your brand logo.
• Leave room for the codes (if you want them to appear on the coupon).
• If possible, include an image related to your business.

Online tools to design digital coupons

If you don’t have graphic design skills or a designer to do the work, you can find many online tools that will help streamline the process of creating these images.. Here are two examples:

Canva is an online application that allows you to design and create coupons easily. Once you’ve chosen a template, you can customize it to your liking with images, text, fonts, and colors that match your brand’s style.

Adobe Spark is a tool from Adobe that will help you create great designs in just a few minutes. Choose a photo, add text, apply filters, and you’ll have your image ready to upload to your promotion. Adobe Spark is available on both the web and mobile app.

We hope you find these tips and examples helpful when creating your next coupon promotion.

Coupon distribution promotions

Did you know that with Easypromos, you can create a promotion to distribute exclusive coupons? This type of activity is ideal to build customer loyalty. Create a digital coupon book and share it in your private customer area or on a section of your website. Here’s an example of an online coupon book to see how it works.

If you have any questions or need assistance, contact us via live-chat. Our customer support team will be happy to help.

A Multi-Stage campaign is a promotion with its own URL, ideal for generating user engagement over a longer period of time. It has an umbrella structure, meaning there are multiple stages within each campaign, each stage fully independent, with different dynamics and structure. 

Currently, there are various types of Multi-Stage applications available at Easypromos:

• A Multi-Game application that allows you to easily combine multiple games in one campaign and display user scores in the overall ranking.
• A Multi-Round Predictions app with which you can challenge your online community to predict the winners of different stages of championships and sporting events. 
• The Digital Coupon Book, where you get to present various discount codes and vouchers in one place. Shopping centers frequently use this solution to share special offers and discounts.
• An Advent Calendar app that allows users to do daily check-ins or games which enter them into random prize draws and raffles.

Take a look at our short Multi-Stage webinar. It takes you through different types of Multi-Stage promotions and real examples. 

Main characteristics of Multi-Stage applications

The Easypromos Multi-Stage applications are a broader concept of digital promotions, designed to attract and retain online users by offering them a long-term experience with new challenges published daily, weekly, or monthly. 

All the different Multi-Stage promotions have the same characteristics:

• Single registration: users register only once. The next time they access the promotion they only need to log in. 
• All promotions are accessible from the same microsite. You can modify the open stages without having to deactivate the campaign.
• The overall ranking page is optional but recommended. Users participate in different stages and collect points, which the system sumsup and displays on the ranking page. 
• Each stage has its own dynamics and independent configuration of participation dates. You can choose to open more than one stage at a time or activate a new stage every week. 
• Prize management and winner selection follow the standard Easypromos structure. You can run random prize draws, reward the best player, give incentives to all registered users, or raffle gifts between the participants with the best scores.
• Although you might have dozens of stages, there are certain settings that you only have to configure once. The Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and registration form are an element shared by all the stages, therefore you save time by configuring them only once. 

All the Multi-Stage applications are available in White Label and Corporate Plans, starting from 399$/399€.

When to use Multi-Stage promotions

As you already know, Multi-Stage applications are useful for campaigns that run over a longer period of time and for those that combine different dynamics in one application.

Integrate Multi-Stage promotions with customer loyalty programs

The Easypromos Auto Login system allows brands to integrate Multi-Stage promotions with their customer loyalty schemes. The integration happens thanks to the Auto Login API, which connects your promotions with your mail lists, CRM, or private customer areas. This way participants can access the Multi-Stage promotions by using their login credentials for your web or app. It’s a great way to create customer-exclusive promotions.

Create a Digital Coupon Book for multiple businesses

Want to promote several establishments and distribute coupons with a single action? This is often the case for shopping malls, commercial centers, businesses associations, or tourist destinations. The Digital Coupon Book application allows you to create multiple coupons within one campaign. You can for example offer discounts for a number of different shops in your shopping center or create a coupon directory to classify coupons by type of business, area, etc. Users will only have to register once to claim the coupons.

Launch a portal with promotions active throughout the whole year

Many brands dedicate independent microsites to promotions and special offers. The Multi-Stage application can be easily embedded into any page or e-commerce site. Promotion organizers can therefore activate and deactivate promotions whenever the time is right, without having to worry about creating new URLs, registration forms, or even integrating new promotions with the database, as newly activated promotions will belong to the same campaign, which can be active for months. 

Are you thinking about launching a Multi-Stage campaign but you still have some doubts? Live chat with our customer service representatives, they’re always happy to help!

We hope that you now have a better understanding of Multi-Stage promotions. The Easypromos application can help you save time and facilitate the whole campaign launch process.

But this time we take it one step further because now you can combine various games in a single application and prolong user engagement with long-term campaigns. Yes, this is where customer loyalty comes in! 

You can run Multi-Game promotions for:

• Followers that are not yet your clients but you wish to expose to your brand, the longer the better. 
• Clients that you want to reward for their purchases through interactive exclusive promotions.
• Website visitors that you want to convert into qualified leads.

What objectives can you achieve with the Multi-Game app?

We’ve already mentioned some of the goals that the Multi-Game application can help you achieve. The application allows you to launch multiple stages in a single promotion, for example, daily, weekly, or monthly – and this takes us back to the classic old-school computer games where you had to complete a level before proceeding to the next stage. In the Easypromos Multi-Game application users participate in numerous games where they collect points that are then summed up in the overall ranking page. 

Gamification not only attracts attention but also generates rivalry between the participants, and therefore boosts user engagement even further.

All games and stages can be fully customized with the corporate image of the organizing brand (logos, corporate colors), which allows you to expose the audience to your brand and reinforce branding. 

Participants gain access to the different game stages by registering through an integrated registration form. That’s how you achieve another goal – you get to generate new leads and therefore expand your mailing list. 

How does the Multi-Game application work?

The Multi-Game application allows you to launch various games in one promotional campaign. To be exact, you can launch Puzzle, Memory, Word Search, Hidden Objects, Match It, and Minesweeper games. By participating in each game, the user obtains points which are then added up and displayed on the overall ranking page. 

The application comes with the following pages:

• Welcome page – with participation instructions and information about prizes and participation dates.
• User identification page where participants register – it’s a compulsory step so that all games played can be linked to the same account.
• User registration page where participants leave their contact details the first time they participate. Here’s where entrants leave all the information you wish to obtain. 
• Game stages – each stage is a different game. Normally, new games open daily, weekly, or monthly but you can choose to open all games at the same time and invite users to participate in all the stages straight away. 
• Thank you page – this is where the user sees their score. You can also personalize a “Thank you” message. From here the participant can access the overall ranking page or play the game again in an attempt to get a better score. 
• Overall ranking page – this is where all participants and their scores are displayed. You can filter the results by different stage, or look for your friends to compare your scores. 
• Prizes page – showcase all incentives if you’re raffling various prizes. Here you can also present the winners. 

Other sections of the Multi-Game application, such as Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy and “My networks” must be configured only once in the Multi-Game application and not in separate stages – what a timesaver!

Try our Multi-Game DEMO to test the user experience! Do you like it? Download our pre-configured template and launch your own long-term campaign.

The promotion organizer gets to decide how many games they want to incorporate into their campaign, how long each stage will be active for, and how many times users can participate. Put simply, it all depends on your plan and objectives that you want to achieve. For example, if you’ve decided to reward the fastest participant, it’d be a great idea to give users 5 chances, so that they can practice and better their score. If you want to draw a random winner from among all participants, one participation per player will be enough. 

Types of Multi-Game promotions that you can launch

The Multi-Game application is a great tool for fostering customer loyalty and retention, as it encourages repeat participation for weeks, and thus works on the brand-customer relationship over a longer period of time. You have full flexibility over the different stages of the game; you can add new stages anytime you want, and you can also hide all the games that are already closed. 

The great thing about the Multi-Game app is that the user registers only once. The next time they want to participate in your Multi-Game promotion they must only log in. 

Do you want to create a long-term campaign for members of a private area like mobile apps, customer area, or intranets? Learn how to launch promotions where users log in using your brand’s login system. 

The Multi-Game app works very well for long-term campaigns such as Advent Calendar, as the user comes back daily to interact with your branded app. Take a look at this Advent Calendar DEMO: 

It’s also possible to set participation requirements for different stages of your campaign, so that only the users that meet the requirements can gain access to the games. You can for example associate the stages with purchases. To do so, distribute unique codes every time clients shop at your store and use the codes as a stage password. The user will be asked to introduce their code before accessing the new stage and the app will automatically verify whether the code is valid.

How to distribute prizes in the Multi-Game application?

There are many different ways to distribute prizes in Multi-Game promotions, however, the most popular are:

• Prizes for the top players in the overall ranking
• Random prize draws among participants of a specific stage
• Prizes for the top player of each stage
• Random draw for all registered participants
• Direct prizes for participating, they can differ depending on the stage

How can you try the Multi-Game app?

It is completely free to create a draft version of the Multi-Game application. Log in to your Easypromos account, choose the Multi-Game app, and start testing! You won’t be asked for any payment unless you decide to activate your campaign. Bear in mind that the Multi-Game application is available in the White Label and Corporate plans. 

Do you have some doubts about the application? Chat with our Support Team, they’re ready to answer all your questions.

However, as consumers have more and more choices, it’s harder to retain customers and build loyalty. Faced with so many options, people don’t make rational economic choices between different products. Instead, they rate brands on more instinctive criteria. I call these the three Es.

Modern consumers are interested in:

1. Ethics. What are your brand’s values? What do you stand for? Do you have a sustainable supply chain? Do you treat your employees well? Shoppers want to know.
2. Experiences. Modern consumers, especially Gen X and Millennials, are more interested in experiences than products. Your in-store ambiance, website design, and customer service matter more than ever.
3. Emotions. People buy from brands that they identify with. They’re looking for products that make them feel something. They respond well to marketing and follow-up which offers emotional rewards.

In this article, we’re going to focus on that final point: emotions. Loyalty itself is an emotion. So when we’re talking about how to build customer loyalty, we’re going to have to use a little emotional intelligence.

Here’s how to tap into your customers’ emotions and build a customer loyalty program with emotional rewards!

Different types of rewards and incentives

Most customer loyalty programs are based on rewards or incentives. These incentives are designed to reinforce positive behavior, such as completing a purchase or writing a product review.

Think about supermarket or gas station points, or beauty and fashion shops fidelity programs: the more you spend, the more perks or virtual coins you get to exchange for prizes or rewards. That’s one way to retain customers and get more value from them, by offering economic incentives. 

But, as we’ve already discussed, the economy isn’t everything. People don’t make purely rational decisions based on their budget. We’re emotional creatures, and we seek out emotional rewards. 

David Feldman, an expert in airline and hotel loyalty programs, says that “the real currency of any loyalty program lies in its ability to drive changes in customer behavior.” Before you offer any kind of reward, emotional or economic, you have to know what changes you want to cause. 

For example, according to Feldman, hotels usually have the same three goals for their customer loyalty programs: more frequent stays from repeat customers, higher spend, and brand affinity. Now, reward points might be a good tactic to encourage more frequent stays. But when it comes to brand affinity, emotional rewards are more effective. 

“Ultimately, we want to get them to form an emotional attachment with us in order to progress to a state of true loyalty,” explains Feldman.

Why are emotional rewards so effective?

The beauty of emotional rewards is that they give you so many options. There are only so many ways that you can set up a reward points scheme. Economic rewards are pretty straightforward.

But there are infinite ways to evoke emotions. We have a lot of different feelings, and they can all promote different kinds of behavior. 

The Retail Customer Experience recommends focusing on “rewards, recognition, and relevance”. Rewards are economic rewards. Recognition makes customers feel welcome and valued. And marketing relevance, based on your knowledge of the customer, is what builds true emotional loyalty.

But that’s not all! Entrepreneur Magazine points to other psychological factors that keep customers coming back. People enjoy a sense of novelty, identity or community.  So you can offer emotional rewards in the shape of new and exclusive offers; building an identity around your brand, and making customers feel like they are part of a wider community.

And the Harvard Business Review (HBR) has even more suggestions, including a sense of confidence, wellbeing, thrill, freedom, belonging, security, success, being one’s best self, being unique, or even protecting the environment.

That’s a lot of different emotional rewards to work with. Each emotion could be bent towards a different goal in your customer loyalty program.

And do emotional rewards work? Well, those same researchers from the HBR found that customers’ emotional attachment was twice as valuable to brands as customer satisfaction.

How to use emotional rewards in your customer loyalty program

Now for the real question: What do emotional rewards actually look like in practice?

As always, the answer depends on your brand, your customers, and your goals. But we can set out a few general guidelines and ideas.

Start by setting out your aims for your customer loyalty program; then go back and look through the emotional rewards we described above. Do any of them jump out at you? Perhaps you could add more personalization to your customer rewards, and offer more relevance. Maybe what your customers need is more of a thrill or a sense of community.

To get you started, I’ve looked at a couple of these ideas in more detail.

Personalization and customer loyalty

As we heard from the Retail Customer Experience, relevance is key to customer loyalty. Customers want to feel that you know them and understand their needs. Knowing your customers well also helps you to send out the right messages, and avoid irritating people with irrelevant marketing.

So how do you make your customer loyalty program relevant for each individual? Well, you’re going to need a lot of information. This is where your CRM system comes in. You should be tracking customer order histories, how they prefer to shop, how they prefer to communicate, and what their particular interests are. 

If you’re still at the stage of gathering information, then you could run customer loyalty campaigns that collect data and offer relevant marketing at the same time. My favorite way to do this is with a Product Recommender. Customers answer some quick questions about their tastes and needs, you store the information, and they get personalized advice or offers in return.

Here is an example from BYHOURS, a platform that allows booking hotel rooms by the hour internationally. The brand launched a product recommender to promote its services.

Participants answered questions about their preferences and tastes regarding hotels, and at the end of the questionnaire, the application displayed a personalized message recommending the ideal hotel. In addition to providing entertainment for customers, each participant received a discount on their next booking.

And what did BYHOURS get in return? They collected new contact information, conducted market research, and strengthened customer loyalty.

Community is an emotional reward

Never underestimate the power of the community for your customer loyalty program. When someone signs up for your CLP, they’re not just joining your brand. They’re joining the community of other customers.

Reminding people of this fact is a really powerful way to retain customers. And the community is, in itself, an emotional reward. We all like to feel part of something.

There are lots of ways to encourage a community around your brand! Here are just a few ideas:

• An exclusive email newsletter with offers that only members can access
• Create a brand blog and online discussion spaces so users can get informed, have a conversation about your brand, stay updated on current events, or learn about your product news.
• Create social media giveaways to reward your online community users and encourage engagement with your brand. You can give away products, discounts, courses or workshops, tickets, experiences, etc. Customers can participate in the giveaways in various ways: by commenting on posts, sharing photos using a hashtag, sharing the posts, etc.

In the example above, you can see how two brands interact and start a conversation with their audience through social media giveaways. This makes the audience feel valued and rewarded and gives the brands a an increased presence and wider reach on Instagram.

Thrill and success as emotional rewards

The basic idea is to use the excitement of a game to create a bond with customers. When users compete, challenge each other, and win, they remember your brand much better. Additionally, if you reward users for participating, the level of satisfaction will be even higher.

The games don’t have to be very complicated as the game can be adapted to the type of audience. For example, a children’s brand could set up a word search or a puzzle to entertain the little ones at home. A supermarket brand could think of a prize wheel to turn shopping into a game for adults.

In the example below, the plumbing parts and fittings brand Jimten created a prize wheel to reward its customers. Users feel the excitement of participating, and the brand gets their contact information outside of social media or the store.

Whatever app you choose, the aim is to give your customers something fun to do. They’ll associate your brand with the sense of excitement and achievement they get from playing along.

Do you have some other examples of emotional rewards in customer loyalty programs? In case of suggestions, questions, and doubts you can always contact our Support Team!

Today, we take you through launching a client-only promotion. We also show you how to verify clients, register them in your database, and validate their unique codes with only one application. The Easypromos Redeem Codes application allows you to configure a promotion adapted specifically to your needs and objectives. In addition, you can use the same app to distribute additional prizes and perks. 

Check out all the promotions that you can create with mandatory code validation:

Opt for a code validation app

Looking to launch promotions for paying customers? Turn to our code validation application.  It is the only tool you need to verify if those registered in your prize draw are your brand’s customers. 

But how and where can you distribute unique codes?
When it comes to small products, customers can often find their unique codes on product packagings, or even inside the product (for example crisps bags). Codes can also be printed on receipts, invoices or even leaflets that employees hand out to each customer, or add them to orders that are shipped. The following example demonstrates how easy it is to distribute codes in the form of stickers by putting them on products you want to promote. 

Barefoot Venus – a beauty product brand – looked for a one-of-a-kind way to promote their Mustard Bath Tin. Every tin came with a unique code that customers validated using the code validation application. Barefoot Venus rewarded their customers’ loyalty with free products, discounts, and store credit. To increase the number of validated codes and registered users, the brand added a banner to the product landing page.

What types of codes can be validated online?

The Easypromos code validation system works with several different options:

• Promotional codes: a single code associated with a specific campaign that is distributed to all customers. Many shops (online and brick-and-mortar) hand out codes at checkout or add them to order confirmation emails. These codes are normally part of thematic campaigns that run just over a short period of time. A great example could be Valentine’s Day code campaign: VALENTINES20. Customers use these codes to access special promotions, contests, games, or giveaways. They act as passwords to access customer exclusive promotions.
• Set of codes: most common when organizing brands have the entire list of all unique codes that have been distributed to customers. The codes are uploaded to the Redeem Codes application. Participants enter their unique code to verify they’re the brand’s customers. 
• Regular expressions: codes that follow the same pattern can be validated without having to upload them to the application. For example, if the code always has 10 digits and starts with two letters.

How can you reward customers that validate codes?

Firstly, it’s vital to take into account a very important aspect: a customer participating in your online code promotion does more effort than the majority of your paying customers. This individual has enough motivation to read participation instructions, visit the promotion microsite, and fill out the registration form. Thus, their loyalty deserves an attractive reward. 

Apart from appealing prizes, it is also important to ensure that the participation process is clear and not too complicated. Therefore, explain how to enter the promotion and share clear participation instructions. Take a look at the next two examples to see how the organizing brand communicated their promotional campaign. They clearly explained what the user must buy to obtain a code and validate it. 

The social media posts and the landing page of the promotion both explained how to obtain a code and participate in the client-only promotion. In the next examples, you can see how the organizing brands explained the participation process step-by-step and how they also showcased the prizes that were up for grabs. To reinforce customer loyalty further, promptly indicate how the prizes are being distributed: if the users immediately find out if they’re one of the winners or if they have to wait until the end of the promotion. 

Let’s now take a look at how you can assign prizes to participants of your customer exclusive promotions.

Run a giveaway for all registered users

Running a giveaway for all users that register through the app is a great way to motivate participants to join your promotion. Stone Ridge Medical Group wanted to reward their customers’ trust and strengthen customer relationships. All customers that visited their store while the promotion was active, received a code that allowed them to access the giveaway. One lucky winner won a new fitness watch.

Assign awards to specific codes

The next option is what we call “winning codes”. In the next example, you can see how an accessories shop can organize a promotion for their paying customers. Each client receives a unique code, which they then validate in our loyalty program application, which has the “winning codes” option enabled. It means that as the promotion organizer you assign prizes to specific codes. When the user registers and accesses the promotion they must introduce their code. The app then checks:

• Whether the code is valid.
• If the code is one of the winning codes.

The user automatically finds out whether they’re the lucky winner and how to claim their prize. 

Try this option by testing our Redeem Codes DEMO and download our ready-made template to configure your own code validation promotion. 

Instant moment prizes

If you prefer to control how the app distributes the prizes, you can configure the application so that it is combined with the Instant Win app. The participants still register through an entry form and introduce their code. The application checks whether the code is valid or not, and then checks if any prizes have been assigned to the time of the day that the user validated their code. If the entry of the participants coincides with a winning moment, then the user sees a winning message with congratulations.

The user experience is very similar to the experience that participants get in Winning Codes promotions, however, the brand notices a bigger difference. The organizer has more control over the prize assigning process, making it possible to choose how many prizes they want to give away daily or weekly, and when. When it comes to Winning Codes you never know how many codes will be redeemed or even if the holder of the winning codes will redeem them while the promotion is active. Instant Win promotions allow you to select the day, hour, and even minute at which you want to distribute prizes. 

Greenbank Hunt Club Center distributed a variety of different prizes with the Instant Win but they also raffled big awards among all registered participants.

Give away prizes when a set number of codes has been validated

Here’s a solution for anyone who wants to reward only the customers that have spent a previously established minimum amount of money. In this kind of promotion the user normally must collect a specified number of different codes and then validate them through the Redeem Codes application to obtain a guaranteed prize that the application automatically presents on the final page. If the prize is a coupon, the user can download it in PDF or automatically send it to their inbox. 

Here’s an example of how a gas station franchise can thank their customers for choosing their brand over and over again. The customers receive a code for every $20 spent at the station. Once the customer validates 5 codes they receive a 5$ discount on the next visit at the organizing petrol station. The participants can obtain their coupons in QR format or download them as PDF. 

Why is it beneficial to encourage customers to accumulate codes online? It is a fantastic customer retention dynamic and a creative way to encourage repeat purchases. You also get to collect contact information from your customers and thus work on more direct relationships. 

Try your luck with a branded prize wheel

Another way to generate excitement for your customers is to use code validation to access contests and games. For example, Los Alfares – a shopping center – launched a branded prize wheel for their paying customers. Every client that spends a minimum of $20 obtains a discount code to validate online. After introducing their code and filling in the registration form the user can spin the prize wheel and see if they’re the lucky winners.

How does the code validation application work?

In order to launch a code validation promotion for your paying customers, it is important to be clear about the steps that users must follow to enter the promotion. 

1. The user must confirm their identity: users register through an entry form or log in to your brand’s loyalty program, customer intranet, etc.
2. Users fill in the missing entry form fields so that you have all the details that you need for your database.
3. Participants introduce the code and validate it.
4. Customers discover if their code has been validated and if they have won or entered your prize draw (depending on the type of promotion you went for).

The application configurations

• Unique registration: once the user registers they don’t have to repeat the registration process to validate subsequent codes. They log in and validate their codes straight away. 
• Code accumulation: it encourages repeat purchases and makes customers come back.
• Each validated code is a new participation: it allows you to identify the most active users.

Do you want to organize your own code validation promotion? Use our Redeem Codes application templates and configure them according to your own needs and preferences.

How to verify the purchase

Sometimes a code is just not enough to confirm whether a user is an actual client. On these occasions brands ask for more specific information at the moment of user registration. 

• Validate the code printed on the product. if you identified all distributed codes, upload them to the platform so that the code verification application can verify them.
• Ask for the date of purchase. Asking for the purchase date is a way to allow users to access the promotion.
• Upload picture of the receipt. Ask the participants to take pictures of their receipts and upload them to the app. Afterward, you can check if the ticket is valid.
• Identify where the user purchases the product. More often than not, such promotions are launched in collaboration with retailers and intermediaries. Asking for this information will make it easier to verify the purchase.
• Simplified invoice number: each receipt comes with a unique number. Request this information by adding an extra field to your registration form. 

The following example shows you how the organizing brand asked participants to state at which shop they purchased the promotional product. It was simply an additional way to ensure that the user participating in the promotion is a real customer. 

As you can see, there are many different ways in which you can verify whether users accessing your promotion are paying customers. Keep in mind that the more personal information you ask for, the more chances that the clients will lose their interest. Each new field is a new participation barrier. This is why it is so important to find a balance between user verification and enough motivation to participate. If the prize involved in the promotion is attractive users won’t mind making the effort. However, if the prize doesn’t appear to your audience you will use many participants in the registration process. 

Thinking to create your own code validation promotion? Don’t worry, simply contact our Support Team!

Reasons for implementing user and customer retention strategies

Did you know that lead generation is the top priority for marketers? This is why you often hear marketing professionals talk about new and effective ways of attracting customers and growing databases. But the interesting thing about leads is that you don’t know how good they are until you contact them for the first time. 

And this is when the frustrating thing happens; a high number of subscribers don’t even open your newsletters and let’s not even mention the poor click-through rate. This is the moment when brands realize that their lead generation campaigns weren’t as successful as it might have seemed at the beginning. This is when efforts should be placed on customer retention. So let’s see how to do it well.

Get to know your database 

If over the last years your company has been working on generating leads but didn’t put much emphasis on retaining the subscribers they already have, it’s possible that many of your leads are dormant. Some brands might simply decide to get along with it, as they accept the fact that a high percentage of their contacts might unsubscribe or become inactive. 

And now imagine how helpful it’d be if you could easily qualify each lead before even making the first contact, and then target them with messages and promotions adequate to their preferences. It’s all possible with a retention strategy, as its prime purpose is to help you know and classify each prospect better. 

Let’s take for instance an online clothes shop. Imagine that a customer visits the website and opts in for the newsletter. What do you know about the user that hasn’t purchased anything? You can assume they’re potentially interested in your products but you can’t send them any promotional content being sure that it’d appeal to them, as you simply don’t know what they like. But what you can do, is send them a time-limited discount code for their first purchase. It’s a great chance to convert them and boost sales, you’d also get to find out what products they’re interested in. 

Did you know that you can connect your database with the Easypromos platform and send out personalized offers with unique codes? It’s a great option for anyone who doesn’t have their own coupon editor. 

Use lead segmentation to launch better-targeted campaigns

Let’s just say it: sending the same messages to the entire database won’t work. Many contacts won’t perceive the content as interesting and your email marketing will automatically become highly ineffective. To ensure that each user receives information that they have interest in, you should focus on lead segmentation. It’s the only way to understand what groups of clients or potential customers you have, how to retain them, and what to do to reinforce customer loyalty. 

Let’s stay for a moment longer with the example of an online clothing store. If the customer has redeemed the previously mentioned discount, the brand already has some information about the products they like. Therefore, the next step is to communicate with the customer through better-targeted content, based on their recent purchase. By doing so, you automatically build a better relationship with the customer and start working on their loyalty. To spark their interest further you can, for example, send them an interactive Memory game showcasing the bestsellers of the collection they just purchased. 

By putting aside direct sales you increase the chances of boosting customer engagement, since this communication tactic is much more casual, and in fact offers high-quality entertainment. In addition, if you incentivize the participation you automatically increase your odds of attracting and retaining customers, as attractive prizes are the biggest motivation to participate in online promotions. If you’re looking to reactivate members of private communities you can even embed the promotion in your mobile app or customer area. 

Optimize your marketing budget and get better results

Did you know that attracting new customers costs five times more than retaining the existing ones? According to Saleslayer:

• It is 40% easier to convince existing customers to repeat purchases than to convert new ones. 
• You have 70% chances to sell to previous customers, while only 5-20% to sell to new clients.
• Loyal clients spend up to 30% more than new leads and they’re 50% more likely to try new products than potential customers. 

If you’re not sure whether you can retain your customers think about the competitive advantage that you already have over the rest of the market:

• The customers are already aware of your brand. All you need to do now is take every chance you get to provide excellent customer experience. 
• You have valuable information about your customers’ likes and preferences that your competitors don’t possess.
• You’re in a better position to encourage purchases and increase average order value. 
• The customer lifetime value is easier to predict.
• Well-targeted campaigns can often convert customers into brand ambassadors.

Customer retention and loyalty: two similar but different strategies

Customer retention is a strategy that brands use to keep their customers for as long as possible or for a specific period of time. It is therefore different to lead acquisition strategies. Retaining is also different from loyalizing customers, although at the beginning of the brand-client relationship it might be sometimes unclear in which direction to go. 

Putting emphasis on customer satisfaction is the first step brands can take to retain them. It doesn’t mean, however, that the customer will be loyal to your brand, as loyalizing customers goes far beyond satisfaction. Customer loyalty comes from affinity and a strong long-term relationship. 

The economic aspect can be a great bonus in the loyalty strategy, meaning that the customers are often attracted to the brands that offer the best prices. However, in the current market situation, price is no longer the only aspect that affects long-term customer relationships. An interactive and creative approach to customer communication can do a great job. Here’s an example of a gamified promotion that any brand could incorporate into their customer retention strategy. 

Such a branded prize wheel is a great tool to use in an attempt to reconnect with customers who have been inactive for a while or those who haven’t purchased anything in a long time. And any of those clients is a perfect retention target. And the best thing about it is that you’ll spend much less than for client acquisition and the results can be far greater. 

When it comes to customer retention and customer loyalty, they’re both strategies focused on maintaining the client, and in both, there are three key phases:

• Capture the client: grabbing the attention of potential customers is the first step.
• Guide the client: once the client is interested, it’s time to convince them to make a purchase.
• Develop the relationship: after getting the client to purchase your products or services, your efforts should go to maintaining the initial attention. Do it well and you’ll get yourself new brand ambassadors.

Useful tips for your customer retention and loyalty strategies 

At Easypromos we want to help our clients retain their customers and reinforce their loyalty with giveaways, contests, games, and quizzes. All our apps allow brands to launch creative and innovative marketing campaigns that apart from boosting engagement also help brands keep their customers and engage them. However, there are some aspects that brands must keep in mind prior to launching their customer retention and loyalty campaigns.

1. Always have your main objectives in mind

The retention strategy should always be planned and fully prepared before you share it with your target audience. As obvious as it seems, it’s easier than you think to miss some important aspects out. If we want to retain customers from the very beginning, you have to have it planned and know what action would work best for your objectives. Maybe a customer survey, or a discount voucher? Or maybe a short email with an engaging game for Mother’s Day? 

2. Incentives are the best motivation

Just like we already mentioned before, if you want to attract customers to your promotion you have to give them a good enough reason. And this is when prizes and special offers come into play. 

In many cases, brands send out follow up emails, trying to obtain feedback. How often have you just deleted the email and moved on to open the next one? Well, imagine if you receive an email from a company asking to review the shoes you bought last week. Wouldn’t you be more likely to fill out the form if in return you’d receive a discount code or a chance to win another pair of shoes? That’s the easiest way to attract more participants! This also works if you’re trying to reconnect with previous customers. 

3. Make the participation process easy and without registration 

The ideal retention and loyalty promotion doesn’t ask the users to register again. If you’re targeting existing customers you should already know who they are when they participate. How? If you have the users already identified and segmented (dormant, new, old, regular customers) you should offer them a promotion that automatically identifies them and doesn’t require to repeat the registration process. So if you’re looking to send a prize wheel or a Puzzle game to your email subscribers you should go for the Easypromos auto login API – affordable retention and customer loyalty tool.

The auto login API redirects participants to the brand’s intranet or app, where the user is already registered and logged in. Therefore, users get to participate in your promotions without having to register themselves again. It speeds up the whole participation process and provides a much better and simpler experience. Here you can see how campaigns with enabled auto login work. 

With the auto login API you can easily identify the participant using the credentials of the app – your brand’s database. It allows you to obtain more user information, such as knowing if they partake in promotions. With the auto login API, you can also convert and retain more users. 

4. Target segments, not the whole database 

In order to retain or loyalize customers, you must target segments and not the whole database. Adjusting the way you communicate with different groups of customers is one of the best approaches to building better customer relationships. Simply put, you can’t send the same emails or offers to heavy and dormant customers. 

Do you have more questions about customer retention and loyalty? Don’t hesitate to contact our Support Team!

A customer loyalty strategy based on relationship marketing

Every marketing strategy should plan for customer retention, just as much as customer acquisition. Why? To maintain and expand your base of repeat customers.

In a traditional sales funnel model, this is called the post-purchase phase; in the AIDA marketing model, this is the final stage of “Action”. Inbound marketing, calls it “delighting” customers, in order to transform them into brand ambassadors and promoters. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a key phase in the sales cycle – and often neglected by marketers.

But customer retention is now being treated with more respect. We know that repeat customers bring plenty of benefits for brands. And – even though new customers are expensive to acquire – it sometimes feels easier to hunt down new prospects than to retain former customers. The question which many marketers face is: In a world full of limitless options, how do you get customers to stick around?

The key is to think long-term and build lasting, meaningful relationships with customers. Multiple studies have confirmed that modern consumers no longer respond to conventional customer loyalty programs. Instead, consumers have changed their priorities. Although they still want value for money, their brand loyalty is also determined by emotional and ethical factors.

According to a study by Capgemini, 77% of customer loyalty programs fail during the first two years. The solution? Create programs that focus on unique experiences and high engagement levels, offering consumers both rational and emotional reasons to stick around.

To recap: if we only focus on economic rewards for customers, it’s difficult to achieve true engagement. We also need to offer emotional incentives which create a relationship of trust and loyalty between brand and consumers. That’s how to get customers who make more purchases, identify with the brand, and promote it to other consumers.

Old and new paths to customer loyalty

There are many different paths to customer loyalty and customer retention. Some only appeal to consumers’ rational side; others, to their emotions. Let’s take a look.

• Discounts. Discounts are the perfect excuse to catch up with customers with a special offer. Brands can use discounts as a gift or reward to gratify customers. Discounts are also ideal for encouraging repeat purchases, since they often expire quickly. Add more power to this strategy by linking it to an emotional experience.
• VIP offers. These offers make the individual customer feel special: for example, they can shop, reserve or view a new collection of products before other consumers. This is a powerful emotional tactic which can be combined with other, economic incentives.
• Customer loyalty programs. The tactic par excellence for customer retention – although it’s not as easy as it looks. Many reward programs include points for purchases, rewards for challenges, and so on. This ebook analyzes 5 successful customer loyalty programs; notice that all of them focus on long-term relationships with customers, with a corresponding increase in the lifetime value of each customer.
• Gamification. Now that almost everyone has a smartphone, brands are waking up to the power of mini-games and puzzles to entertain consumers and hold their attention. This kind of engaging, interactive experience appeals to consumers on an emotional level. You can also follow up with rewards and economic incentives.

Build customer loyalty with games and rewards

Some brands have been using branded games for years. Walkers Crisps found huge success in the UK with a game where users could design their own crisp flavor – and the most popular creation was then released on supermarket shelves. The customer behind the new flavor won £50,000 and a cut of the profits for life!

Another snack brand, Doritos, teamed up with Marvel Studios to mark the release of Spiderman: Far From Home in 2019. They created a suite of promotions in 35 markets that collected user data, showcased both brands, and boosted customer loyalty. 

However, branded games used to be restricted to big corporations because of time, cost, and hard-to-measure ROI.

Now, gamified campaigns are much more accessible. In fact, even smaller brands can no longer afford to ignore gamification. As consumers are surrounded by ads and branded messaging, only creative and interactive campaigns can really get their attention.

Branded games are no longer aimed solely at young consumers who identify as gamers. The vast majority of internet users respond positively to mini-games and challenges. According to a Facebook Business report from November 2019, 80% of their users who say they aren’t gamers, also regularly enjoy playing games on their phones.

4 examples of gamified campaigns for customer loyalty

Are you ready to add games to your customer loyalty strategy? First things first: before launching a campaign, you’ll need to choose your objectives.

Obviously, your primary objective is to grow your community of loyal customers. And your strategy is to use the power of relational marketing. Your gamification campaign should line up with this strategy and objective. Each campaign that you create can focus on a different supplementary objective, as it tactically supports your main goal.

In the following examples, we’ll take a look at how four successful branded games, and the objectives they achieved.

Campaign objective: brand visibility

Rosana is an iconic Spanish singer-songwriter. To boost album sales over the Christmas period, her record label set up a branded game. Because many people buy music and concert tickets as Christmas gifts, the festive season is a great moment to work on brand loyalty and repeat purchases.

The objective was to put Rosana “top of mind” for customers and suggest the idea of Christmas gifts. So the label created an app where consumers could decorate a virtual Christmas tree. Then they could download their designs to use as Christmas cards!

Campaign objective: customer loyalty on social media

Baby brand Liam & Lilly has a small but active community on Instagram. Just like the record label described above, Liam & Lilly decided to take advantage of the Christmas season to build up customer loyalty.

They created an Advent Calendar to encourage purchases. Every day, for 25 days, the brand launched a challenge on their social media channels. Each day brought a different game, puzzle, or task to complete – with discounts or free gifts as a reward.

Campaign objective: increase repeat purchases

Customer loyalty campaigns on social media have one weak point. Your follower base is, most likely, a mix of current customers and new prospects. So it can be tricky to run a campaign that focuses on one segment, without alienating the other.

The solution? Leveraging additional channels of communication.

Here’s an example from a Spanish food brand. They ran a campaign that was not exclusive to past customers. But because they chose to share the contest via their email list, most of their respondents were past and present customers.

The contest itself was a jigsaw puzzle of their products. So, for as long as people played the game, they were exposed to the brand and its products. After beating the game, participants were shown a page with a direct link to the brand’s online store.

There are a few ways that this campaign could have been even more effective. Segmenting your email list, and personalizing each message, can increase conversion rates. What’s more, the brand could have offered coupons or promotional codes on the final page of the contest – encouraging sales and making attribution simple.

Campaign objective: boost customer loyalty among blog readers

Our final case study comes from a transport company that wanted to build loyalty with its blog subscribers. Most subscribers are already regular users of the transport service.

The brand decided to run a special campaign for Halloween. They embedded the branded game in their blog so that it would mainly be seen by blog readers and subscribers. The game itself was a classic memory game: find the pairs of spooky images in a deck of cards. To encourage participation, the brand gave away four free travel passes to the fastest players.

Every one of these gamification examples took a different approach to customer loyalty – whether they chose to focus on brand visibility, sales, social media, or other channels of communication. Customer loyalty campaigns require us to think outside the box and do something creative with each new promotion. What’s your big idea? Contact us through our Online Chat in case of any doubts or questions!

The main challenge when running customer-exclusive online giveaways is to quickly and reliably validate the purchase of the product or service. Easypromos offers three methods to verify that participants are genuine customers.

Purchase receipt validation prior to registration

If the sale is made through retailers, validating receipts is the most efficient way to confirm participation. Easypromos allows users to upload a photo of their purchase receipt or take the photo directly within the tool. Validation can be automatic if the OCR system (Optical Character Recognition) is activated, which checks the receipt information to ensure it meets the organizer’s requirements.

Manual validation is also possible for cases where automatic ticket information verification is impossible or not optimal. In this scenario, a ticket pre-moderation function is available to simplify the process, notifying users when their ticket is validated. Another option for when receipt validation has to be done manually is to carry out a final giveaway among participants, giving the organizer time to confirm the authenticity of all entries.

In both cases, the organizer can set a minimum purchase amount for participation. When users upload photos of their receipts, the information is never displayed publicly. The application supports several document formats and allows the maximum file size to be limited.

Code validation as a requirement to enter a giveaway

In many cases, the proof of purchase will be an alphanumeric code found on the product packaging or the purchase receipt, which allows for unequivocal identification. With Easypromos, these codes can be preloaded into the system, or the application can validate them using regular expressions.

Scanning a QR code to enter a giveaway

Another way to limit participants in a purchase-based giveaway is limiting participation to users who scan a QR code to access the registration. This option works well for physical activations at the point of sale. In this case, once the participant has made the purchase, the seller shows the customer a QR code to scan to access and register for the giveaway. To prevent fraud, the seller can configure the promotion to generate a new QR code every time one has been scanned. Learn more about dynamic QR codes here if you think they could fit your promotion.

Types of purchase-based giveaways to reward your clients

When talking about giveaways exclusive to customers who have made a purchase, there are several ways to organize the promotion. The most straightforward one is for users to register for the promotion once they have validated their proof of purchase. Easypromos features a proprietary random draw feature, available in all its products. Below, we will provide some ideas using demos and real examples.

Validate purchase receipts to enter a prize draw

If, on the other hand, you choose to validate the purchase using receipts, you can also configure it easily without any coding skills required. Check out this example of a final prize draw where participants must upload a restaurant receipt to participate, and try the DEMO to experience the entire process.

Gather codes to get more entries for the final prize draw

In promotions by major consumer brands, when many points of sale are involved, a participation code is included in the packaging to streamline logistics. The campaign then informs participants of the microsite where they can redeem their codes to enter the prize draw and access exclusive prizes. Additionally, with Easypromos, you can set up a registration form allowing the same customer to validate all the codes acquired through repeated purchases. Try this DEMO to learn more.

Final prize draw with purchase receipt pre-moderation

In promotions organized by shopping centers or retail associations, one of the challenges is to validate different formats of purchase receipts. In such cases, receipt pre-moderation may be the solution: the user registers and uploads the purchase receipt. However,  it is the organizer who finishes the validation process manually. Once the receipt is validated, the participant receives a message confirming it is valid. If instant prizes are available, the participant will receive a message then and there to continue with the process and claim the prize. Get a feel of the full user experience with his DEMO.

Final prize draw with one entry for every $5 spent.  

With this receipt pre-moderation system, you can further customize your promotion to incentivize purchases. In this DEMO, customers upload their purchase receipts first. Afterwards, when reviewing the uploaded receipts, the organizer can give an additional entry for every 5€ spent. So, if the customer uploads a receipt for 25€, they will receive five entries for the final raffle.

Final prize draw with instant win

Another way to reward customers is to run a promotion with a double chance of winning a prize. This DEMO for a travel giveaway offers additional incentives besides the grand prize. When the user participates to validate their purchase receipt, they can win an instant prize. Having multiple prizes to distribute is a great way to attract participants, as they realize they have more opportunities to win.

Winning codes to distribute prizes

Another type of giveaway is to instantly distribute prizes based on a code validated by the participant. To do this, you must first upload all valid codes to the platform, along with the codes that have an associated prize. When a user participates to verify their code and access the promotion, the tool checks two aspects:

1. If it is a valid code.

2. If it is a winning code (one that has an associated prize).

Try it out in this Redeem Codes Demo, where the customer receives a card with a code along with their purchase at home. The customer then goes to a URL (which can be on the brand’s domain), registers, and validates the code to find out if they have won a prize.

Instant Win prizes

Another dynamic to reward customers randomly, similar to the previous method, is “Instant Win.” In this case, the code entered by the user serves to confirm the purchase but does not have any associated prize. The outcome depends on the moment they validate the code: if it coincides with a previously established winning moment, the user will win a prize when reaching the final page. Try this Instant Win + code validation DEMO to see how it works.

Prize Wheel with code validation

If you wish to make prize distribution more exciting, try this Spin the Wheel with code validation demo. It is easy to implement and adds a gamification element to the promotion. The user will need to know the microsite where the wheel is presented and have a code that the brand can provide with the purchase. Easypromos’ wheels are highly customizable: the brand can adjust the number and probability of each prize, include non-prize slots, or set specific prizes by Instant Win to better control the distribution.

Spin the Wheel + Validate Receipts

Just like with code validation, a Prize Wheel-based giveaway can also be configured to include purchase receipt validation. The system works the same way: users identify themselves first and validate their receipt second, getting a chance to spin the wheel. Try the user experience with this Spin the Wheel + Validate Receipts DEMO.

Scratch & Win + code pre-requisite

Another type of dynamic for distributing random prizes is a digital “Scratch and Win.” The user must register and validate a code to check if they have won a prize. The scratch-off and hidden images are fully customizable, and the prize distribution is carried out by probability. Try this DEMO to see in detail how it works.

Reveal & Win + Validate Receipts

Lastly, try this Reveal and Win + Validate Receipts demo. This dynamic is very similar to “Scratch & Win.” In this case, the user scratches off elements to uncover hidden prizes. The promotion is configured so that it requires users to upload a purchase receipt to try their luck. If the user has multiple valid tickets, they can play multiple times without having to register again, streamlining participation. This approach encourages repeat purchases and strengthens brand loyalty.

Real-life examples of purchase-related giveaways

Organizing purchase-conditioned giveaways is a popular promotion strategy for many brands. Easypromos functionalities allow for highly personalized and transparent automation of these giveaways. Take a look at the following real-life examples of customer-exclusive giveaways:

Las Arenas Shopping Center organized a giveaway to celebrate its 27th anniversary among all customers who made purchases on-site during that period. Participants had to visit a stand to show their receipts and receive participation codes in exchange. These codes could then be redeemed through the application to earn an extra entry to the raffle of a car and several gift vouchers. Over 3,270 users participated, for a total of more than 10,000 entries to the final raffle.

The confectionery brand Vidal organized a prize wheel to reward their online shop customers during the summer. Each purchase earned a code to access the promotion. Users got one spin of the wheel for each validated code, resulting in over 5,000 spins.

The underwear and swimwear brand Tezenis, in partnership with Drumwit, launched a giveaway of 20 surprise trips. Customers who purchased products from the brand uploaded their receipts to enter the prize draw. The promotion featured an OCR system for automated validation.

Kinder Bueno organized a giveaway with Instant Win for uploading purchase receipts that included the chocolate’s name. If you prefer to validate receipts manually to make sure they include your product, activate the pre-moderation tool. Once validated, participants receive an email confirming their prize and instructions to redeem it.

The agri-food company La Granja de Xanceda created a promotional campaign to reward customers purchasing their yogurts. They launched a dedicated microsite to present “Vacajuegos,” leveraging the Olympic Games scheduled for that year. An Easypromos Entry From Giveaway was embedded in the microsite for customers to fill out and validate codes to enter a daily prize draw.

We hope you find these giveaway ideas to reward your customers useful. Visit our website for more tips and resources to build and reward customer loyalty.

Infographic: Purchase-related types of giveaways

Download the Infographic PDF with active links to the DEMOS.

Whether you’re using the Promo Codes app to distribute coupons or giving them away as prizes or rewards of other kind of promotion, the first step is to register the participants and give each one an individual code. This is the only way to differentiate each user. If you use coupons without any code to verify them, they could be used and shared without restrictions, leading to the almost certain loss of potential profit.

Nonetheless, using the same coupon code will sometimes be the best option, especially when the discount still leaves a good margin for profit. If you don’t mind your customers potentially using the same discount code again and again, then it’s ok to distribute the same coupon code to everybody. This is a great option for new businesses that want to attract attention and potential customers. This technique is also effective for businesses that want to get rid of old stock or promote a new product.

In contrast, if you want the discount or gift to be used exclusively by users registered in your promotion, and redeemed only once, it becomes necessary to distribute unique codes associated to each participant.

Luckily, this sort of promotion is now much easier to set up and monitor than ever before! The Easypromos platform transforms the information of each participant into a unique QR code. This QR code will then need to be presented by the participant at the shop or point of sale, where it can be easily verified using a QR code checker. Moreover, if the promotion organizer has generated a list of unique alphanumeric codes, the Easypromos platform provides the option of generating a QR code for each of the individual codes.

How do the QR code checker and validation portal work?

Users visit your store and show a QR code. The staff then scan the code with any QR code checker app. The app will immediately redirect to the Validation Portal where the code will be validated before applying the discount or advantage promised in the promotion. It’s that Easy!

What should you bear in mind?

1. Use the Easypromos Distribute Coupons app.
2. If you wish to use specific alphanumeric codes, upload them to the app.
3. Configure the app so that it displays the user information in QR code format on the final page.
4. Customize the PDF coupon that users will receive. This will allow them to save or resent it.
5. Enable the Validation Portal in the promotion editor so coupons can be redeemed at the point-of-sale.

The process is simple, quick and efficient, ensuring that your customers are treated professionally. If you’re ready to give it a go, access your Dashboard. And for more details and tips head to our app tutorial.

If you have questions or doubts, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Support Team through our Online Chat!