Sweepstakes are those promotions in which the sponsors do not require any purchase or monetary exchange to enter. Any legal sweepstakes must provide a way for people to enter without purchasing anything. This is typically when sponsors require entrants to mail their names, addresses, and phone numbers on a 3x5 piece of paper or index card. Online, you can provide an e-mail address to which entrants can send their entries or you can have them fill in an online entry form. Raffles are those promotions in which you would require entrants to purchase tickets for a set amount of money.
Raffles don t attract as much attention as sweepstakes, for obvious reasons.
Contests are those promotions in which the sponsor requires the entrant to submit more than just their name and address, such as a recipe, photo, jingle, answers to questions, and other creative information. There are also other types of promotions such as instant-win games on specially marked packages of a sponsors products, but handling this type of promotion is not within the scope of this article. If you are interested in sponsoring a game of this type, any respectable marketing agency should be able to help you set one up. No matter which type of promotion you choose to sponsor, every promotion needs to include certain information. This should be covered at your main Web site, but you would be surprised at the number of sites that sponsored an online sweepstakes and forgot to link the sweepstakes page back to their main site.