Sweeping the Stakes
For pretty much my whole adult life I have ignored the siren song of sweepstakes promotions. You know, those "You may already have won..." come-ons that literally defined the term junk mail decades ago. But recently I decided to enter one. Here are Five Things about it.
1. Who's sponsoring the promotion?
Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), the parent company of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, etc., is running this promotion from mid-November to mid-February. The awards include bonus points, free nights, and gift certificates. I'm part of the IHG's elite program and I stay at their hotels many times a year, so this promotion appeals to me because the rewards are actually things I would use.
2. Everyone's a winner!
This is one of those contests in which "everyone's a winner." You've probably heard that slogan a thousand times before. It's used so often it's trite. But it's also literally true. The catch in such contests is that the most common prize isn't worth much.
Here, the basic prize, the one that more than 80% of all entries will win, is 500 IHG rewards points. I value that at $3. That's based on the fact that I already have a pile of IHG points, though, and use them several times a year. If I didn't have an active relationship going with IHG these points in small quantities would be pretty much worthless.
3. No purchase necessary
Ahh, "no purchase necessary." That's another one of those disclaimers you hear so often in sweepstakes that the phrase seems to lose meaning. It's actually there for a reason, though. Under various state and federal laws contests are a form of illegal gambling if you have to pay for a chance to win. So to avoid that trap all well-organized sweepstakes offer some way to enter without buying a product.
The "no purchase necessary" loophole is significant in this sweepstakes because what IHG wants you to do to enter the contest is stay at a hotel. You stay at one of their hotels and, sometime after checkout, you get an electronic gamepiece. Suddenly that $3 prize seems really insignificant. I mean, if a guy were standing on the sidewalk passing out stacks of dollars, no strings attached, you'd take it. You'd take it as many times as you could. But pay for a hotel stay to win a prize that will probably be worth only $3 and isn't even in the form of cash? Feh.
4. Entering by mail
So, the way you enter with "no purchase necessary" is via mail. You simply send in- stop me if you've heard this before- a 3x5 card with your name, address, phone number, blah, blah, blah. Yes, you've heard this before. Hundreds of times, probably. Yet another element of these contests that's so common it seems to have lost all meaning. But read the fine print and it's literally the instructions for how to enter without spending lots of money on hotel stays.
My first 30 contest entries, ready to goThis contest allows entering up to 94 times. I've decided to max it out. Sending in that many entries gets tedious, so first I've decided to break it up into batches of 30. I did my first batch of 30 entries today.
Writing out even 30 entries gets pretty tedious. All the stuff on the 3x5 cards- name, mailing address, phone, email, etc.- had to be hand-written (contest rules). Doing that manually reminded me how tiring it is to write since I rarely write for an extended length of time anymore.
To keep the task from being even more tedious I did employ some automation. The contest rules say nothing about hand-writing the address on the envelope, so I tried running envelopes through my printer. Oops, my printer doesn't like envelopes, I found out. Fortunately I still have several sheets of printer address labels from years ago, so I dug those out of mothballs and ran a few sheets through my printer. Success.
Finally I pulled it all together, assembly line style. Peel and attach address stamp to each envelope, 30 times. Peel and attach return address stamp, 30 times. Peel and attach postage stamp 30 times. Insert 3x5 card, 30 times. Moisten envelope flap (I used a damp sponge for this) and seal shut, 30 times.
5. Expected ROI
I figure with 94 entries if I get the basic prize each time I'll haul in $282 worth of points. That's a worst-case scenario as some (small) percentage of all entries win a larger prize. Doing a bit of quick number crunching on the prizes and odds listed in the contest rules (again, the fine print is like an instruction manual) I figure my expected value at $350.
That's the gross value, though. The net will be a bit lower, because even with the infamous "no purchase necessary" terms there are still costs to enter. Postage stamps sure as hell aren't free. At $.49 each, 94 of them cost $46.06. Add to that the cost of 94 envelopes and 188 address labels. Call it $50 as a round number for materials.
Materials are easy to attach a cost figure to because they're a hard cost. I actually go out and buy them. There's a defined market and going rate for them. But there are also soft costs, things for which there is no clear market. The obvious soft cost is the value of my time. But here's where I look at the spread between the gross value ($350) and the hard costs ($50). It's $300. I don't have to figure out, what do I value my time at per hour? I only have to answer an over-under question: Is it worth me fiddling around for a few hours on a weekend to earn $300?
I've decided to go with, "Yes".
1. Who's sponsoring the promotion?
Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), the parent company of Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, etc., is running this promotion from mid-November to mid-February. The awards include bonus points, free nights, and gift certificates. I'm part of the IHG's elite program and I stay at their hotels many times a year, so this promotion appeals to me because the rewards are actually things I would use.
2. Everyone's a winner!
This is one of those contests in which "everyone's a winner." You've probably heard that slogan a thousand times before. It's used so often it's trite. But it's also literally true. The catch in such contests is that the most common prize isn't worth much.
Here, the basic prize, the one that more than 80% of all entries will win, is 500 IHG rewards points. I value that at $3. That's based on the fact that I already have a pile of IHG points, though, and use them several times a year. If I didn't have an active relationship going with IHG these points in small quantities would be pretty much worthless.
3. No purchase necessary
Ahh, "no purchase necessary." That's another one of those disclaimers you hear so often in sweepstakes that the phrase seems to lose meaning. It's actually there for a reason, though. Under various state and federal laws contests are a form of illegal gambling if you have to pay for a chance to win. So to avoid that trap all well-organized sweepstakes offer some way to enter without buying a product.
The "no purchase necessary" loophole is significant in this sweepstakes because what IHG wants you to do to enter the contest is stay at a hotel. You stay at one of their hotels and, sometime after checkout, you get an electronic gamepiece. Suddenly that $3 prize seems really insignificant. I mean, if a guy were standing on the sidewalk passing out stacks of dollars, no strings attached, you'd take it. You'd take it as many times as you could. But pay for a hotel stay to win a prize that will probably be worth only $3 and isn't even in the form of cash? Feh.
4. Entering by mail
So, the way you enter with "no purchase necessary" is via mail. You simply send in- stop me if you've heard this before- a 3x5 card with your name, address, phone number, blah, blah, blah. Yes, you've heard this before. Hundreds of times, probably. Yet another element of these contests that's so common it seems to have lost all meaning. But read the fine print and it's literally the instructions for how to enter without spending lots of money on hotel stays.
My first 30 contest entries, ready to goThis contest allows entering up to 94 times. I've decided to max it out. Sending in that many entries gets tedious, so first I've decided to break it up into batches of 30. I did my first batch of 30 entries today.
Writing out even 30 entries gets pretty tedious. All the stuff on the 3x5 cards- name, mailing address, phone, email, etc.- had to be hand-written (contest rules). Doing that manually reminded me how tiring it is to write since I rarely write for an extended length of time anymore.
To keep the task from being even more tedious I did employ some automation. The contest rules say nothing about hand-writing the address on the envelope, so I tried running envelopes through my printer. Oops, my printer doesn't like envelopes, I found out. Fortunately I still have several sheets of printer address labels from years ago, so I dug those out of mothballs and ran a few sheets through my printer. Success.
Finally I pulled it all together, assembly line style. Peel and attach address stamp to each envelope, 30 times. Peel and attach return address stamp, 30 times. Peel and attach postage stamp 30 times. Insert 3x5 card, 30 times. Moisten envelope flap (I used a damp sponge for this) and seal shut, 30 times.
5. Expected ROI
I figure with 94 entries if I get the basic prize each time I'll haul in $282 worth of points. That's a worst-case scenario as some (small) percentage of all entries win a larger prize. Doing a bit of quick number crunching on the prizes and odds listed in the contest rules (again, the fine print is like an instruction manual) I figure my expected value at $350.
That's the gross value, though. The net will be a bit lower, because even with the infamous "no purchase necessary" terms there are still costs to enter. Postage stamps sure as hell aren't free. At $.49 each, 94 of them cost $46.06. Add to that the cost of 94 envelopes and 188 address labels. Call it $50 as a round number for materials.
Materials are easy to attach a cost figure to because they're a hard cost. I actually go out and buy them. There's a defined market and going rate for them. But there are also soft costs, things for which there is no clear market. The obvious soft cost is the value of my time. But here's where I look at the spread between the gross value ($350) and the hard costs ($50). It's $300. I don't have to figure out, what do I value my time at per hour? I only have to answer an over-under question: Is it worth me fiddling around for a few hours on a weekend to earn $300?
I've decided to go with, "Yes".