Sweepstakes and contests have been around for a long time. How long, you ask? In their book, “The History of Sweepstakes,” Lawrence Curtin and Karen Bernardo date the sweepstakes all the way back to the Greeks and the Trojans. In fact, King Menelaus was said to have won Helen of Troy’s hand through the casting of lots.

More recently, social media marketers have used sweepstakes and contests as a way to collect information and entice users to engage with social presences. Though Facebook recently announced 543 million monthly users access the site on mobile, sweepstakes and contests have been practically non-existent on phones and tablets.

But as Josh Glantz, VP/GM of Publishers Clearing House Online (PCH), showed at Dreamforce 2012, the mobile sweepstakes is not a pipe dream; instead, it’s available now.

At Glantz’s session, co-presented with Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Michael Jaindl, attendees were given a chance to win two $50 cash prizes or a $100 cash prizes from PCH in a sweepstakes powered by the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. But the entry method was unique: instead of filling out paper forms or even using a laptop to enter, Glantz directed attendees to pull out their phones and point their browsers to bit.ly/DreamforcePCH. Once there, attendees filled out a simple form entering them into the competition. Glantz understands the power of social sweepstakes, and its potential as a digital complement to e-mail.

“Sweepstakes and other promotions, when properly targeted, are a great way to motivate handraisers and fans for your brand and your offer.  Using these promotions to drive viral marketing has long been a foundational strategy for digital marketers, but [Congressional legislation] CAN-SPAM limits what you can do in the world of email," Glantz said. "Tying your promotion to the social graph, especially when leveraging the ubiquity of mobile devices, is a natural and powerful new move to extend your reach.” 

Once users share their entry into the sweepstakes, that content can gain viral lift as it appears in the Facebook News Feed, ticker and timeline: 

When friends of entrants see the sweepstakes shared across Facebook, they can click back to enter themselves, either directly on Facebook from their desktop computers or via the mobile entry form. The link automatically optimizes based on the user's device.

For brands like PCH, social sweepstakes provide a new way to reach audiences on a medium where people already spend so much time.

“As we see our mobile audience grow, we are leveraging dedicated sweepstakes more for that audience specifically.  They are highly engaged and they have access to our content wherever they are and whenever they want it," Glantz said. "That’s very attractive to us and we are more than happy to provide our audience with more of the winning opportunities that they are looking for.”

The ultimate goal for social sweepstakes should be happy users and a happy brand. As the picture below shows, mobile sweepstakes can definitely help accomplish both. 

Stay tuned later this week for tips on creating successful social sweepstakes. Interested in using the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to create mobile sweepstakes or further your own social objectives? Get in touch to find out how the Marketing Cloud can help!