A new service called Amazon Giveaway sees the online retail giant handle all aspects of prize giveaways, making it easy to set up a sweepstakes.
It’s a simple tool, and will remove heaps of stress for companies, organisations, and average citizens looking to hold a prize giveaway.
The caveat is that the prize will need to be an item sold by Amazon, although that’s not exactly a hard criterion to fill – Amazon UK had 153 million different items up for grabs back in August 2014.
Your prize will also need to be valued below an upper limit of $5000, although this cap could potentially be increased at a later date.
Users who want to hold a competition simply select a prize, and Amazon handles the rest of the process.
Once the set-up is complete, you’ll receive a unique link via e-mail. That links is then shareable via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, or whatever means you prefer.
Entrants can then enter and either win or lose, with winners assured to receive their spoils via post directly from Amazon itself.
The giveaways can be handled in two different ways. The first is a first-come, first-served approach that will see prizes doled out to the quickest contenders.
The second is a ‘lucky number’ model, whereby a number selected by you chooses the winner. ‘5’, for instance, would result in the fifth entrant winning the goodie(s).
You can also set it up so that entrants have to follow your Twitter account before entering, which marks this as a valuable marketing tool.
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Steve Shure, Amazon’s VP of Consumer Marketing, said: “The idea of running giveaway promotions is easy. They are a really effective way to attract attention and build engagement, but giveaways often come with hidden costs and complexities which makes the reality of running one hard.”
“Amazon Giveaway is the first self-service tool that takes care of all the hard work of a giveaway, from setting up all of the rules to shipping prizes directly to winners.”
To run a competition, you’ll need an Amazon account in ‘good standing’, as well as a valid debit/credit card to purchase the prizes.
Unfortunately, the entire program is US-only at present, so we’re stuck with manual doling-out of prizes in Blighty until Amazon launches the service on this side of the Atlantic.
