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Getting better results from competition lists

Posted by Mathew Patterson on October 22, 2007

Campaign Monitor is used by people in all kinds of industries and for all kinds of reasons. Some businesses are more naturally suited to email contact, and some types of email contact are more welcomed than others.

One type of list that seems to get a disproportionate amount of spam complaints is competition entry lists. These are the lists where you have entered your email address to win some kind of prize, and at the same time agreed to receive email in the future from the company running the competition.

This is completely legitimate, assuming it is made very clear to people signing up that are giving that permission. However, even when it is clear we still see a lot more complaints from campaigns to these kinds of lists. It's reasonably apparent why that should be the case:

There can be a significant time lapse between entering the competition and the first email campaign.
A big chunk of entrants only signed up for the competition and never wanted extra email anyway.
It's often easier to hit the spam button than the unsubscribe link.
The emails often have no apparent connection the original competition.

So it's not hard to see why some subscribers would have forgotten that they signed up, or not understand why they are on the list at all. Fortunately, these issues are all quite simple to combat with small changes.

On the competition entry page, make it obvious what people are signing up to receive. Don't use vague 'offers from selected partners' language if you can avoid it.
Send the first non-competition email soon after signup. The longer you wait the less likely people are to remember giving permission.
Include a clear permission reminder in each email. It should state specifically that the subscriber signed up by entering the competition (link to the site if it is still available), and also let them get off the list easily.
Make the competition list double opt-in, so people have a second chance to understand what they are doing, and take a positive action to give permission.

If your clients want to run competitions and send to the entrants, you may need to work with them to avoid getting too many spam complaints on your account. These guidelines will help you, and help them only send to people who actually want to get their messages.

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