Six ways to avoid being smothered by die-hard compers

sydroo

I was googling that Channel 4 thing about compers and I came across this posted by a marketing company:

Six ways to avoid being smothered by die-hard compers

My particular favourite is in point 4:

Compers and other people enticed in by a successfully social competition may be willing to research a little (usually only very little) to find the right answer

What a crock!

purplebutterfly

"Google+ is slightly awkward for competitions as there API is limited (no way to automatically verify competition entry requirements have been met) and, like Facebook, Google+ have restrictions on incentivised activity."

Really? You want to pass judgement on me as a comper and you don't even know the difference between "there/their/they're"?

The whole piece is badly researched and rather poorly written considering the person is a "Media Innovations Director" :rotfl:

lilias

"Community sites like Loquax or even MoneySavingExpert allow compers to surface and share other competitions too."

Makes us sound like things that come out of the woodwork

Blulu

At the risk of being annoyingly optimistic (me? Surely not) I don't see this article as anti-comping. They're a consultancy company and I think they are talking about the benefits of an online company running competitions for marketing purposes.

Clearly we will have an impact on this, but as they say at the end of the article, not necessarily a bad one:

"It is important to remember that compers are generally a gift to anyone running a competition. They are a source of fuel for the competition and vital for many SMEs and bloggers. The challenge is to design a competition that accommodates a wide an audience as possible."

Blu X

StrayCat

Why do companies insist of separating compers from customers? We are customers or potential customers to any business just the way anyone else is.

jeddentad

It is a bit of a blog spam of an article.

It doesn't really talk about the "why's" of competitions or, even more importantly, how to calculate if a competition has been a success.

It'd be more helpful to see:
What is a sane conversion rate to expect from a competition (insert different types of competitions and levels of prizes), and what are the methods a company can use to try to increase that conversion rate?

poor_student138

Sydroo - Did you find out anything about the Channel 4 thing? I was wondering about that yesterday

jdsaint

Why do companies insist of separating compers from customers?

I spent years trying to argue the case for compers with retailers and affiliate networks - and unfortunately I have to admit that they were right. A competition may generate thousands of entries but perhaps only a few sales from a comper - and for a lot of retailers that's not good (and it wasn't too great for us either).

We did pick up sales - so some folks buy after clicking from a comp - and yes some would buy outside of comping - but the general stat is no compers aren't easy to convert into sales. We sent one major retailer x000 clicks over a few months but sales were zero - in the end they kicked us off their affiliate program.

Trying to convert a comper to buy is quite a difficult process. Firstly you're visiting sites to enter comps, not necessarily to purchase - so a retailer has to work hard to convince you to buy as opposed to going to do another comp on another site. They could do that on their "thanks for entering page" (many don't) or sending you an email (many don't).

But many compers will enter the comp and give them an email but either choose "no communication" or perhaps use a "comping email" - so again harder for that retailer to mail you/spam you with offers.

Of course compers are potential customers and should be treated with the same level of respect as anyone else, but from my experience I can understand why brands may prefer targetting non-compers.

What is a sane conversion rate to expect from a competition

In terms of sales - a sane rate would be 0. In terms of 'using' compers for brand awareness, social etc then that would be different.

Jason

Blulu

I agree with you Jason. Perhaps the main positive we compers can bring to the game is in building social standings for companies, by increasing the numbers of likes/followers significantly.

Blu X

[Deleted User]

Fair points made in this thread, although it should be noted that the figures on sales from compers will not be entirely accurate. Sure, I only use my social media accounts for comping and I have a comping only email address, but I will often return to a site and make a purchase with my non-comping email address by navigating directly to the site, and NOT via any "offers" email I might have received to my comping address. The sites involved will have no way of knowing that my purchase came as result of their comp/my comping, but it did. In fact, 100% of my Christmas shopping I have done so far has been from sites that I would not have known about if it wasn't for my comping.

euronorris

In addition, there is the word of mouth advertising aspect we give when talking to others, and making others aware of them by their pages showing up on our newsfeed thanks to likes, shares, tweets etc.