Customer Success Story: How a regional home builder gained over 59,000 leads in 30 days

Big ticket prizes go a long way to boosting the visibility of your promotion and building your list of potential. I mean, who wouldn’t give their name and email address in exchange for the chance to win a house or a truck? However, the bigger the prize, the larger your investment in your contest, so the leads you collect need to be relevant. That’s why it’s important to make sure the prize you choose makes sense.Iowa Realty presented the Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T Series Dream Home Giveaway. The goals of the campaign were to promote brand awareness, boost social and digital engagement and stimulate customer data acquisition (leads). The giveaway included a $250,000 Destiny S.M.A.R.T. Series home, a 2019 Chevrolet Silverado and a $10,000 cash prize. Being a home builder, giving away a house as a grand prize makes a lot of sense. But wait a minute! A brand new house? That’s a huge investment to collect some leads and raise brand awareness. This is where smart partnerships with NASCAR and the Iowa Speedway came in.

Iowa Realty 's the Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T Series Dream Home GiveawayNationally, NASCAR has a viewership of around 31 million people. In 2013, NASCAR purchased the Iowa Speedway; however, no NASCAR Cup Series races have been held there, though they do hold other events with the NASCAR Xfinity Series, NASCAR Gander Outdoor Truck Series, IndyCar and others. For their contest, Iowa Realty chose to leverage Iowans’ love of racing while making sure the conditions of the prizes they were giving away were being met. If Brett Moffitt and the #24 Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T. Series race team won three specific NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series races, then all three prizes--the house, the truck and the money--would be on the table.This customer success story explores how Destiny Homes leveraged a smart partnership, as well as how they implemented time-based visibility settings to run a successful lead-generation campaign. Plus, you’ll learn the results of the giveaway--did someone win a brand new house?!

Contest Basics:

Destiny Homes created their S.M.A.R.T. series homes to help bring affordable new construction housing to the Des Moines area. With these homes, buyers choose the community, the style of home they’re interested in and the finishes they want from a set of choices provided by Destiny Homes.The Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T Series Dream Home Giveaway ran from May 22 to June 21, 2019. It relied on three different NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series events and the race results of Brett Moffitt to help determine which prizes entrants were eligible to win: Texas Motor Speedway, Iowa Speedway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. Brett Moffitt is a native of Grimes, Iowa and 2018 NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series Champion who races the #24 Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T. Series truck in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series. The conditions were as follows:

 If Brett Moffitt won

Race(s)Grand PrizeFirst PrizeSecond PrizeTexas Motor Speedway on June 7th, Iowa Speedway on June 15th and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway on June 22nd$250,000 S.M.A.R.T. Series home;2019 Chevrolet Silverado$10,000Iowa Speedway and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway2019 Chevrolet Silverado$10,000World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway$10,000To enter, people simply visited the contest landing page and filled out the entry form. At that time, they could choose to opt-in to email communications from Iowa Realty, NASCAR and Iowa Speedway. These opt-ins help create qualified leads for each organization. If someone checked the Iowa Realty box, then it’s likely they were interested in buying or selling a home in the near future. If the NASCAR or Iowa Speedway boxes were checked, then the entrant is likely a racing fan.

Entry form for the Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T Series Dream Home GiveawayEntrants could return to the campaign and enter again once every 24 hours. After submitting an entry, an autoresponder was sent with the campaign details. This email helped to once again clarify the conditions for which prizes would be awarded. Plus it included links for ways folks could follow along with race results to see the potential of winning a prize.

Campaign Elements:

Although the hurdle to win a prize in this contest was rather high, the setup was very straightforward. The campaign included:

• An entry form to collect contest submissions;
• Time-based visibility settings to start and stop showing campaign content automatically;
• A thank you message;
• The option to share the campaign; and
• An autoresponder sent to entrants after form submission.

Beyond basic contact information like name and email address, the entry form contained some additional questions that would help marketing teams learn more about potential leads. Entrants were asked for their physical address, the number of people in their household and the number of kids under the age of 18. The contest was open to people in all states (except Florida and New York) so the physical address can help to further qualify potential leads for both Iowa Realty and Iowa Speedway. Plus, asking for the number of members in a household can inform Destiny Homes and Iowa Realty about the type of home folks might be interested in.After form submission, a thank you message displayed, encouraging folks to share the contest with friends. An autoresponder was also sent, containing valuable contest information and links to help entrants follow along with race results.

Autoresponder email for the Destiny Homes S.M.A.R.T Series Dream Home GiveawayTime-based visibility settings were implemented to start showing the contest entry form at 00:00 on May 22, 2019 and stop showing it at 23:59 on June 21, 2019. Implementing these settings ensured that entries only came in during the time period outlined in the contest rules without the contest administrator staying up or getting out of bed to manually change the settings.

The Results:

First, the race results. As you know, prizes were only awarded if Brett Moffitt won. And guess what? He did win a race. He won the Iowa Speedway on June 15th. Moffitt originally came in second, but the original winner, Ross Chastain, was disqualified due to his truck’s front end being lower than NASCAR’s allowable standard. However, Moffitt didn’t win any other races. That means no prizes were awarded.Iowa Realty collected mega leads during this contest. Over 30 days, they racked up 59,800 leads. Of those leads, over 20,000 resulted in email marketing opt-ins for the promotion partners. The campaign received 97,824 views. 78,720 of those views, over 80%, were unique views. Plus, the campaign received over 1,444 shares directly from share buttons on the platform. However, sharing isn’t the only way the campaign was promoted.Heather Rohr is a representative for US Sweepstakes & Fulfillment Company, the company that helped Destiny Homes pull of this campaign. She explained that the success of this campaign had a lot to do with the campaign partners. According to Rohr, “Social and digital engagement really took off with promotional efforts from the athlete (Brett Moffitt) and race team (GMS Racing) creating excitement and awareness of the campaign that was directly tied to their performance on the race track.” In fact, nearly 1 million social media impressions were recorded for the campaign across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Rohr said, “Traditional press releases and other paid media efforts through social provided a respectable launch, but the amplification really took off once fans who are passionate about the sport and engaged with their favorite athletes began interacting as well.”

Nearly 1 million social media impressions were recorded for the campaign across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Want to know what’s crazy about these numbers? No prize was awarded in the end. Just the chance of winning a house, a truck or $10,000 racked up these big numbers. That’s a great ROI for Destiny Homes and Iowa Realty.

Important ShortStack element: Time-based visibility settings

The time-based visibility settings were essential for the success of this campaign. As you can imagine, especially with big prizes on the line, fairness is important. The time-based visibility settings allowed for strict entry periods that matched the contest rules--there was no potential for error having a contest admin change the contest manually and sleeping through the start or stop time. Plus, the added automation allowed by the time-based visibility settings enabled the contest admins to “set it and forget it,” which is especially useful with simple campaigns, as it gives the marketing team time to focus on more complex promotions.

Time-based visibility settings were used to automatically hide/or show content on certain dates and times.

Big prizes for big results with a simple giveaway

Giving away big prizes can set you up to receive massive numbers of leads. However, it’s important to make sure prizes are relevant to your target market and the contest is fair. Whether you’re a beverage company giving away a truck with your branding on it or a home builder giving away a house, big-ticket prizes can be worth the investment if they allow you to collect quality leads. Big prizes can bring about sore losers, so it’s important that your contest is fair by using contest automation options like visibility settings to keep in accordance with your rules. These two concepts will help to ensure your simple contest with a big prize will bring you a good ROI.

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