Insights & strategies for successful lotteries revealed in new eBook
Melanie May | 9 September 2022 | News
Event, fundraising, and ecommerce platform Eventgroove has released strategies and insights for hosting successful in-person and virtual lotteries in a new eBook.
Eventgroove analysed its platform data and drew on its twenty years and more of business for the eBook, titled Raffle for Success: Insights and Strategies for Successful In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid Fundraisers. [Note: the raffles referred to are known as lotteries in the UK]
It comes as part of a new content initiative to share key histories as well as recent customer results, and saw Eventgroove gather advice from its most successful raffle (lottery) organisers along with insights from nonprofit industry experts.
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Key takeaways:
- In-person raffles/lotteries are the champ of raffle/lottery earnings, but thanks to the pandemic and the speedy adoption of technology, hybrids are an up-and-coming contender.
- The average raffle/lottery ticket price is about $14 (£12), and on average, fundraiser organisers ordered 1,500 printed tickets. However, the secret to pricing tickets lies within your fundraiser’s cost and your audience.
- Virtual raffles/lotteries have a place at the fundraising strategy table because you can run one longer than a single day and repeat it as many times as you want. Some Eventgroove customers have raised over $170,000 in a single online raffle/lottery.
- The length of online raffle/lottery campaigns plays a role in its success — many organisers on Eventgroove opt to run theirs for an average of 56 days. However, depending on your fundraising goals, shorter and/or more frequent ones may be more effective.
- Combining a raffle/lottery with another fundraising campaign is the way to go. When Eventgroove users paired their raffle/lottery with another campaign type, the average revenue per campaign more than doubled. Auction pairings have proven particularly effective.
- 27% of US states don’t allow online raffles/lotteries, and many states have regulations such as credit card use restrictions. Sweepstakes, however, are legal in just about every state. Since November 2019, $2,399,365 has been raised by sweepstakes organisers on Eventgroove. While raffle/lottery fundraisers have made more overall on Eventgroove, the average sweepstakes revenue on Eventgroove is 59% higher.
As well as this data, the eBook provides information on hosting in-person, virtual, and hybrid raffles/lotteries, including examples, best practices, and resources, aimed at helping fundraisers maximise their efforts. It also includes comments and recommendations from nonprofit industry experts who offer their perspectives on the findings.
Topics covered include:
- Which raffle/lottery format (online, in-person, or hybrid) is the most successful
- How to price your raffle/lottery tickets
- Assessing the optimal length of a raffle/fundraising campaign
- Whether a raffle/lottery is stronger on its own or paired with other fundraisers
- The efficacy of other fundraiser campaign types, such as sweepstakes
- Rules, guidelines, and best practices on how to run a raffle/lottery in the US and the UK
Coordinated with the eBook release, Eventgroove has announced the appointment of Ron Fusco to the role of Vice President of Marketing, where he will be leading all global channel marketing.
Fusco worked on the eBook with Eventgroove, and commented:
“Since 2019, raffle organisers have raised over $1.4 billion with Eventgroove. Clearly, raffles are an extremely effective way for nonprofit organisations to raise money, so we are thrilled to offer this free resource to nonprofits. Using it, they’ll make informed decisions with regards to their raffle campaign fundraising strategy and execution, helping them to earn as much for their cause as possible.”
Eventgroove operates in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, where it has been supporting clients over the last ten years. Each year, over 35,000 nonprofits use its platform for their fundraising activity.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.