Competitions are a popular way of elevating a brand’s marketing efforts, allowing brands to engage with their consumers. Such interactions also allow brands to build a fan base and convert customers into brand ambassadors who do the marketing for your business by spreading the word.
Such competitions are usually conducted online – via a brand’s websites, social media or through mobile campaigns.
The POPI law has added new challenges to such marketing efforts. The law requires brands to obtain explicit opt-in permission from consumers before sending them any form of direct marketing communication. The removal of “Like-gating” on Facebook, which forces Facebook users to like your page before they are able to see content or enter competitions is also going to make it more difficult for brands to gain followers and fans.
Online competition creator, uWINa, hopes to help brands circumvent some of these restrictions.
uWina founder Shaun Trennery created the web-based platform to allow businesses to create their own competition campaigns to add to their brand equity.
The platform works on an opt-in basis and helps them generate leads.
According to Justin Raliegh, uWina marketing manager, most big brands are throwing big money to market their competitions, but there is often no customer leads generated as participants enter a regular competition in the post or at the supermarket, and no engagement occurs.
How to get on board
Businesses register on the uWina.com website and start designing the competition for their campaign. The competition can be entered by consumers on all devices with internet access. When entering a competition, the ‘player’ opts in for their details to be used which helps brands grow their leads.
The platform has many different features such as a plug-in “spin & win” tool and a digital scratch card.
uWina has already had interest from big brands. They recently hosted one-day campaign for Wakaberry (pictured below). The Wakaberry competition received around 4000 unique entries. Liquor brand Jagermeister saw a total of 9500 unique entries in one month.
Big companies and small businesses can join
uWina also allows for social sharing options on the competitions, which is a great way for brands to get more publicity and potential leads via their customers’ social media pages.
uWina is also being marketed to small businesses as a cost-effective way to generate customer engagement. Brands are able to choose the budget which they have to work with to develop a campaign.
