Contest Opt-In Rates: Subway Canada’s Good Stuff Giveaway

Norma Ramage wrote in today’s Marketing Daily:

Subway Canada’s Good Stuff Giveaway contest generated more than 807,000 entries during its seven-week run and increased the company’s customer database to 250,000 subscribers.

Final numbers when the contest closed Nov. 12 included 109,000 total unique e-mails and almost 21,000 opt-ins.

The contest, which launched nationally Sept. 25, was supported by TV and radio spots, in-store materials and e-mail marketing, all from Calgary’s Venture Communications. The TV campaign featured a fictional Subway “sandwich artist” resigning because he’s ineligible for the contest.

Bill Anderson, marketing director for Subway Sandwiches in Canada, says the campaign “allowed us to engage with our customers in a relevant way, inciting them to interact with the brand.”

Among the prizes were trips to Costa Rica, Kia Sorento SUVs, Columbia sports gear, electronics from Sony and Subway gift cards. Customers were encouraged to enter as often as once per hour for the gift cards, providing multiple engagement opportunities for the brand.

That is indeed a great opt-in rate, although a few points lower than we’re accustomed to seeing with our clients. Our kudos to Subway!

Contest Opt-In Rates

One of our readers is searching for contest opt-in rates, according to our blog stats.

Indeed, we know what these opt-in rates are across different on- and off-line contests. At this point, we haven’t sufficiently aggregated or analyzed data to fully commit to the numbers we have rolling around in our heads.

So before we actually declare these metrics to be true, we’re going to do a little research first. Stay tuned.

P.S. To our reader who is looking for these numbers, please call or write.

One Reason To Run A Contest

A well-known client of ours recently ran a well-promoted contest. They used a good mix of radio and print media, as well as POP, for promotion. The key to participation in the contest was product purchase. Naturally, we developed a method of entry for consumers to participate without having to purchase anything.

Since the contest was highly visible, we expected a large number of no-purchase entries and indeed we did. No doubt the message did reach the target market.

However, we were delighted to see that 26.1% of contest entries we tied to purchase. And that, folks, is one of the fundamental reasons to hold a contest — to stimulate sales.