Prize Hunters and Fake Signups: Better Lead Quality from Competitions

"Competitions only attract prize hunters." If you work in performance marketing, you have heard it, and you may have seen it: a giveaway brings in thousands of sign-ups, and a month later most of them have never opened an email. But it does not have to be that way. Lead quality from competitions depends far more on how you design the campaign than on the fact that there is a prize. This guide covers why competitions attract prize hunters, and the practical steps that bring in fewer fake signups and more future customers.

Why competitions attract prize hunters

A competition offers something for nothing. That is the appeal, and also the risk. Three design choices make the problem worse:

• A generic, expensive prize. An iPad or a cash prize is attractive to everyone, including people with no interest in your brand.
• No connection to your products. If the campaign could belong to any company, so could the people who join it.
• No friction or checks. If people can enter again and again with made-up email addresses, some will.

Get these right, and the same mechanic that attracts prize hunters starts attracting your future customers.

Relevant prizes beat expensive prizes

The single most effective lever for lead quality is the prize. A prize from your own range attracts people who want your products.

POWER, the Nordic electronics retailer, chooses popular products that are frequently featured in its own marketing as prizes. People recognise a product from a TV ad and then discover they can win it in the game. POWER's Black Friday wheel brought in 60,000 new email permissions in two weeks, and POWER's Group Omnichannel Director says that, in his experience, generally over 50% of those who engage in a Scratcher game convert within a reasonable period.

Some practical tips:

• Use your own products or gift cards instead of generic electronics or cash.
• Give everyone a small, relevant reward, like a discount code or free shipping. It turns participation into a reason to visit your shop.
• Match the prize to the audience you want. A furniture shop that raffles a recognisable piece from its own range attracts people who like that style.
• Spread the prizes out. Daily or weekly draws keep people coming back, rather than one big draw that attracts a one-off crowd.

You decide exactly how many prizes there are, when they can be won and how often each person can win. See how prizes and winners work in Scratcher.

Qualifying questions and quizzes

Add a little effort, and you filter out people with no interest.

• Ask one or two qualifying questions on the form, such as "Which products are you interested in?" or "Are you planning to buy in the next six months?".
• Use a quiz instead of pure luck. People who answer questions about your brand learn something about you, and their answers tell you how interested they are.
• Use a product finder or personality test that ends with a recommendation. Only people who care about the result will finish.

Toyota Denmark built its campaigns around educational quizzes about electric cars, with the chance to win a new car. The quiz and survey answers feed personalised email flows, and Toyota reports a conversion rate of about 7% for competition-sourced leads, close to the roughly 9% of its standard "get a quote" flow. The team deliberately adjusted messaging and mechanics over time to trade some volume for quality.

Email validation and duplicate checks

Not every fake signup comes from a prize hunter. Some are typos, some are bots, and some are people entering a friend's address to play again. Scratcher has several settings that help:

• Limit how often people can play and whether they can win more than once.
• Choose what makes a participant unique: their email address or phone number.
• Double opt-in (Email module, included on Professional or as an add-on), so only people who confirm their email are counted as subscribers.
• A verification code during registration, so people prove they own the email or phone number before they can play.
• reCAPTCHA to keep bots out.
• Block lists for specific email addresses, email domains and IP addresses.

Not every campaign needs every check. A quick pop-up for existing visitors can stay light. A competition with a valuable prize and paid traffic should be stricter.

Be clear in your communication too. Make it as easy to see that people are signing up for marketing as it is to see what they can win. That is good practice for lead quality: people who know what they signed up for are more likely to open your emails. How consent must be collected differs between countries, so check the current rules for your market. In Denmark, the Consumer Ombudsman publishes guidance on email marketing (in Danish). Read more on our page about collecting sign-ups with consent.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Rules differ between countries and change over time, so check the current rules and get legal advice before you launch a campaign.

Where the traffic comes from matters

The channel you promote a competition in shapes who enters it. Websites and groups that list giveaways send people who enter everything, whatever the brand. Your own channels send people who already know you.

• Start with owned channels: your website, a pop-up, your newsletter, your social media profiles and your stores.
• Target paid ads at your customer profile, not at "people who like competitions".
• Use a separate link for each channel, so you can see which sources bring sign-ups that later open, click and buy, and switch off the ones that do not.

Measuring lead quality downstream

The number of sign-ups is the easiest metric and the least useful on its own. Measure what happens afterwards.

• Confirmation rate, if you use double opt-in.
• Open and click rates for competition sign-ups compared with other sources.
• Unsubscribe rate in the first month.
• Purchase rate within 30, 90 and 180 days.
• Average order value compared with other subscribers.
• Still subscribed after three or six months.

Whiteaway, Denmark's largest online retailer of white goods, measured exactly this after an advent calendar campaign. Six months later, 82% of the new subscribers were still active, 2.35% had made a purchase, and participants had a 20% higher average order value than people who had signed up for the newsletter in another way.

To make the comparison possible, tag every sign-up with its campaign and source. Use a separate link for each channel, and Scratcher's analytics show visits, players and sign-ups per channel in near real time. Send the campaign name with each sign-up to your email tool or CRM, so you can follow each group over time.

Re-engagement and cleanup

Even a well-designed competition brings in some people who lose interest. Plan for it.

1. Start with a strong welcome flow. Deliver the prize or consolation code quickly, and introduce your brand while people still remember the game.
2. Segment by engagement after 60 to 90 days. Separate people who open and click from those who have never opened.
3. Send a re-engagement email to the inactive group: a new game, a small offer or simply "Do you still want to hear from us?".
4. Remove people who still do not respond. Sending to inactive addresses hurts your deliverability and your sender reputation.
5. Use your next campaign to reactivate. A new game sent to quiet subscribers can wake many of them up.

Summary: competitions that bring in customers

• Pick prizes from your own range, and give everyone a small, relevant reward.
• Add a question or a quiz to filter and qualify.
• Use play limits, double opt-in, verification and reCAPTCHA where the stakes are high.
• Be crystal clear about consent.
• Measure what happens after the sign-up, not just the sign-up.

Want to see how a competition with better leads could look for your brand? Book a meeting and we will help you pick the prize, the format and the checks. Or start a free 14-day trial and build your first campaign today.