Read this blog to discover the different ways you can attract players to your charity lottery, including with the support of lottery service providers!
Charity lottery is on the rise, and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
There are several reasons for this; for charities, a lottery provides increased regular giving income potential, access to a new, diversified player base, and additional ways for their donor base to give, resulting in increased supporter lifetime value.
At the same time, players can enjoy the chance to win a large sum of money whilst supporting a good cause. They can play quickly and easily either online or offline through direct debit signups, and have fun choosing their own numbers, whether at random or with a personal meaning.
However, with so many charities now running a lottery for these reasons, how can you ensure that yours stands out from the crowd, and entices people to play?
Read on to find out!
Here are 6 ways to ensure your charity lottery stands out from the crowd:
1. Offer an irresistible top prize
The main incentive for people to play a lottery is the chance to win something.
If you can offer a significant amount of money to be won each month – particularly if you can offer more than other charities – this will help your lottery to stand out significantly.
For example, here at Woods Valldata, our charity lottery services enable the charities we work with to offer a range of different top prizes.
This includes an insured, fully covered top prize of £25,000 with our Affinity Lottery service, and an insured, fully covered top prize of £25,000 or £20,000 with runners up prizes (more on that below) guaranteed each week provided by the charity through our Aspire Lottery service.
Alternatively, you can offer a smaller prize, but on a more frequent basis – for example, £1,000 guaranteed to be won on a weekly basis. This is a similar approach to the one we take with our Advantage Lottery service here at Woods Valldata.
2. Include additional smaller prizes
Offering one large prize in not always the biggest draw for lottery players. With only one prize on offer, players may be concerned that their chances of winning the top prize are too low.
If you can therefore offer smaller cash prizes as well (and again, more opportunities than other charities), players will feel that their chances of winning are greater, and they will therefore be more incentivized to play.
There are two approaches you can take to this: offering either a significant top prize, plus a handful of smaller prizes, or a lower value top prize, but balancing this out with lots of runner up prizes, increasing opportunities to win.
Both are effective in their own way, and are a sure-fire means of grabbing players’ attention!
3. Celebrate your previous winners
By showing players what your previous winners have enjoyed as a result of winning, this will not only demonstrate that winning is indeed possible, but the potential that winning could bring to them.
You can do this via social media posts and adverts to capture the attention of new players, in your email marketing or in your lottery update communications through direct mail if you are looking to acquire players from your current database of supporters.
4. Craft your messaging appropriately
Keep your target audience in mind throughout all your communications. From your email, print and social media marketing all the way to your charity lottery website. The average age of a lottery player is 55-64 years old, and those who play the most tend to be from high-income households (earning over £40,000 a year).
However, if you are hoping to target younger players, ensure that you amend your messaging and language use to suit. This goes for your design elements, too, such as the range of colours and pictures used.
You can segment your messaging in a range of other ways as well to make it as relevant to your audience as possible; for example, by the amount of time an individual has been playing your lottery.
The more targeted and empathetic you can make your communications, the greater the feeling of trust and alliance you will illicit, the more your lottery will stand out, and the more likely people will be to play, compared to if your messaging is more generic.
5. Remind people of the value of their contributions
While the chance to win a cash prize is a great motivation to play a lottery, being aware of the positive difference a lottery can make is also a great way to stand out from the crowd of other lotteries.
This is because emotions are a huge driver in decision making; knowing exactly what positive difference contributions can make appeals strongly to our human need to feel good about ourselves. In fact, research has found that emotion outranks reason in successful fundraising!
So, when it comes to marketing your lottery, be sure to share the different ways that donations will support your cause to appeal to player’s emotions to make it really stand out.
Social comparison (i.e., our innate drive to evaluate ourselves in comparison to others) has been found to increase charitable giving, so be sure to shout about the impact your previous winners have had when sharing about them, too!
6. Enlist the support of lottery service providers
Running a charity lottery is a time-consuming process – therefore, it can be difficult to find the time to make your lottery stand out from the crowd.
By teaming up with lottery service providers such as Woods Valldata, however, you’ll have the opportunity to really focus on your donor acquisition, as they’ll take over all the administrative and operational side for you.
When choosing a lottery services partner, however, it’s important to ensure that they’re a certified External Lottery Manager, approved and audited by the Gambling Commission and compliant to their License conditions and codes of practice (LCCP).
In summary...
Making your lottery stand out from the crowd is not just a case of what your lottery can offer players, but building a strong relationship with them.
As lottery service providers with a high level of expertise and partnership approach, who care passionately about the success of your lottery and have the strategic wherewithal to really make a difference to its performance, this is exactly what we have helped numerous charities to achieve here at Woods Valldata.
If you’d like to find out more about the different lottery services we can provide, contact us today and we’d be delighted to discuss options with you.
In the meantime, if you’d like further advice and support on growing your charity lottery get in touch with our team for your no-obligation consultation!
