3 Tips on Hosting a Successful Raffle
If you want to maximise returns from your raffles, you need to sell more tickets. Here are 3 tips.
1. Pictures
Pictures are the be-all and end-all of online shopping, auctions, sales, or raffles. A good picture is what sells the product. However, most Raffle sellers use secondary stock photos, copied, and pasted from amazon to market their items. This may get some ticket sales, but it reeks of a quick cash grab amazon drop-ship.
If you have the product at hand, take a primary photo yourself. This helps potential contestants visualise owning this product, and if they want it, they’ll compete for it.
2. Marketing and Advertising
Unfortunately, just listing the item on FunGiraffle isn’t good enough to get enough ticket sales. Even if your raffle is unique, listing an original product nobody else is raffling, there will not be enough traffic searching for it.
You must get your raffle in front of potential contestants. The easiest way is to publish a link to your raffle on social media. You’ll be surprised how many sales a simple Facebook post can generate. But you can elevate this even further by posting over multiple platforms; including the right hashtag or sharing with the right groups will help you reach markets outside of your own Friends and Family.
If you have a high valued raffle, and really want to bolster your sales, you can take your marketing to the next level, such as printing posters and asking to put them in public spaces (shops, barbers, bulletin boards, universities, accommodation buildings). This will be easier if you specify which charity will be receiving a portion of the proceeds too.
Extra suggestions are flyers, adverts in public forums, or even your local newspaper. Remember, there is no limit to the number of tickets you can sell.
3. Pricing
Of course, contestants will be more likely to buy tickets when prices are cheaper. But users tend to have a set budget in mind for specific products, about 1-5% of the prize value. If the ticket value is below their budget, they’ll simply buy more tickets. So, target your pricing towards the thriftier contestants, as you’ll still get more value from the lavish contestants too.
For example, if you are Raffling a £300 bike, you can expect contestants to pay£3-15 on tickets. In this scenario, we would recommend you list your ticket prices at £3. This way you capture the thrifty contestants who will only spend the minimum and get additional ticket sales from the high-value users who are willing to spend more.
These are our 3 big tips, but some notable additions are:
Description– A good description can place the product in the contestants’ imaginary possession (even detailing its faults).
Realisticreserve price – A high reserve price is less likely to be reached if approved.
RaffleEnd Date – The longer a raffle is running, the more tickets you will sell. But there is a point of diminishing return as the longer it is the less likely a contestant willing to wait, during which time competing raffles have got your custom. We recommend a raffle time between 3-6weeks.