Sweepstakes – Harvesting the Evergreen Vertical
Sweepstakes — one of the so-called evergreen verticals in affiliate marketing, as almost every affiliate worked with it once or twice before moving to something new or choosing it to scale and actually make it their vertical of choice.
But how does this vertical actually work, what’s behind every creative, and how can you monetize your traffic with such offers?
Let’s take a closer look at the sweepstakes vertical, its ins and outs!
The classification
All the sweeps are united by one thing: they offer a chance to win something universally appealing. However, what makes them different and where does the money come from?
Well, that’s a question only an advertiser can answer, but long story short — it’s all about the leads and information people submit on the landing page.
Sweepstakes models are somewhat similar to dating with SOI & DOI, but have a unique model of their own: CC Submit. So just like every vertical, they too have different CPA, and thus require a different approach and expertise (we’ll get to it a little later), but let’s have a closer look at the offer types:
SOI — Single Opt-in. The CPA here is a submitted e-mail or a mobile phone with some personal data, such as first and last names, and no verification is required. The simplest (funnel-wise) model of the sweepstakes verticals with the lowest payout per lead.
DOI — Double Opt-In. This model is similar to the SOI but with an addition of an extra step. A person has to verify the info. Extra step for some extra cash in the payout!
CC Submit — Credit Card Submit. A type of offer that basically subscribes a user to enter a prize draw. CPA is a user submitting their credit card details. This one requires more experience and expertise with traffic, but the payouts are worth it as they are generally much higher than its SOI/DOI “relatives”.
In some variations of CC Submit offers the card will be charged immediately, in some after a few days of “Trial period”.
Making the user see the appeal
Sweepstakes are all about the giveaways and prizes, that’s the idea, the appeal, the core approach. Call it however you want, but the fact remains: every sweepstake offer is a giveaway, and you need to choose the one that will attract the most people.
The most proven categories of giveaways are vouchers and electronics. They are on the landing page and they are the thing people are signing up for.
The thing to bear in mind is pretty simple: if you run an electronics giveaway make sure that the offer is the flagship device of the manufacturer. Be it the latest iPhone or console, or maybe the best fridge by Bork, people want to get cool and expensive stuff, and if they can get a chance to win it just by leaving their email, they will.
Vouchers are a big thing to consider, as everybody goes shopping, and the thing is: you just have to match the voucher in the offer to the GEO and audience. Walmart in the USA, Marks&Spencer in the UK and Auchan in France. Do the research as every store offers different things to different people and build your funnels accordingly.
Not so fun fact: about a year ago the hottest sweepstake was toilet paper, masks and hand sanitizer.
Experience giveaway
But before you jump into the world of different giveaways and relatively free stuff let us share some advice from before:
- Always check the images, optimization and make sure that every part of the funnel is optimized for mobile;
- Always use the prelander, it helps further motivate people to make the CPA, but let them do it easily, so make sure that the pre-lander provides the opportunity to enter all the necessary data as easily as possible;
- Pay close attention to CTR and Zones. After 2-3k impressions check the creatives and zones. If the CTR is less than 2% — Change the creative, and if the zones don’t show any result send it to the blacklist right away!
- In any traffic source: run RON campaigns first and then switch to whitelist (that you absolutely should be gathering);
- Ask your affiliate manager about the performance of the sweepstake on given Geo and ask for approach tips;
- If you can get the specific data — use it in your creatives and prelanders! Service provider, Geo, version of OS and everything you can get your hands on.
Always there
As we’ve said before sweepstakes are eternal, as people like free stuff and the sweepstakes vertical is built exactly around this idea. A simple approach and flexibility of the vertical create a great option for affiliates looking to start their career or to broaden their expertise.
Despite being relatively low-payout offers sweepstakes provide you with the product that has been tried and tested and is known to work with decent traffic. And one of the best features of this vertical is the choice, there are so many sweepstakes for you to choose from, and there are a lot (and we mean a lot) case studies on sweepstakes offers with almost every traffic source there is, so you can access the information on them to use to your advantage. From our side we are always ready to provide you with the best-performing sweepstakes offers, as Yep Ads works with the largest sweepstakes advertisers in the world, paired with the expertise and experience of our affiliate managers and years of experience with this vertical — you’ve got the best terms an affiliate could wish for!
We hope that this article will be of use to you and that your first profitable campaign comes sooner rather than later!