Social Sweeps Promotion: RAMA & Friends Holiday Mixer Sweepstakes

I first used the term Social Sweeps in early 2008 when I wrote a post on this blog which was about interactive promotions combined with social media. Today I define Social Sweeps as any interactive promotion, such as a sweepstakes, contests, giveaways, or coupons that integrate with at least one social media platform to help create awareness and buzz.

I spoke about Social SweepsTM, interactive promotions that help to generate buzz, at the ROC Linked Live event this past week where I lead some roundtable conversations. Today I launched a Social Sweeps interactive promotion by utilizing a special promotions builder application developed by Wildfire Interactive, a company that I’ve partnered with.

The RAMA & Friends Holiday Mixer Sweepstakes is giving away 4 tickets for one lucky winner and 3 of their friends to attend their Holiday Party on Dec. 3rd at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. People can enter the sweepstakes on Facebook by visiting the RAMA (Rochester Chapter of the American Marketing Association) fan page: www.facebook.com/RAMA.Rochester.AMA. They will fill out the online entry form and if they’re not already a fan of RAMA the tool will invite them to become one. Once completed, they will then be prompted to invite 3 of their friends to also enter the sweepstakes. Those that are successful at recruiting three of their friends to enter will be eligible for the drawing.

The sweepstakes kicked off on October 30 and ends on November 20, 2009. RAMA will announce the winner on or about November 23.

This marketing initiative was developed as a way to ultimately increase RAMA’s membership. One of the objectives this year of the organization is to walk the talk and expand the use of social media to communicate events as well as all the membership benefits.

RAMA started a Facebook page last year and started out with 265 fans. Now not all of these “fans” are RAMA members since anyone can become a fan of a Facebook page. However by just becoming a fan the assumption is that they have an interest in RAMA. The goal now is to identify these fans, as well as continue to add new fans, so that they can be placed in the proper bucket of the database as either a member or a prospective member and then provide each with more relevant information. This should be a win-win for all.