In the same week that Bounty Competitions turned over 72,000 tickets for a 4 bedroom property in Aberdeen and drew the winner in less than 48 hours, we also say goodbye to the property prize draw platform Cloverhut. Visitors to the Cloverhut site are now being redirect to Raffle House and presumably any sales made via that link will earn the owners of Cloverhut commission, although that’s no consolation to anyone who spent money on their prize draws for the chance to win holidays, cash and a Mediterranean Holiday Home. However the writing has been on the wall for Cloverhut for sometime now. Their social media pages stopped updating at the end of January and their affiliate program closed without any notice. They also started sending out emails advertising Raffle House. In fact they sent out several emails with many coming thick and fast at the closure of the last round of Raffle House’s million pound house promotion. So how can a site like Bounty turn around property prizes in 48 hours but Cloverhut, who launched in 2021 end up joining the likes of Frog Hopping and Raffique in the win a house dustbin?
Win A Spanish Holiday Home
Cloverhut actually arrived in September 2020 but were known as Sesortsea. The first competition offered the chance to win a Spanish Beach House in Vera Playa, Almeria. The property was guaranteed to be awarded regardless of ticket sales and in March 2021 a Sergio C.G was named as the winner. In July of the same year Cloverhut arrived with a La Manga Apartment as the prize. Although the site mentioned guarantees of a property winner, this actually would only happen if at least 35% of the tickets had been sold. Sadly this draw didn’t conclude with a winner as they had “not arrived to the foreseen objective in order to offer a significant benefit to help our charity partner”. As a result of this refunds were offered but entrants could use what they’d spent and instead receive 2 for 1 tickets on a new draw that gave them the chance to win a Villa in Andalusia. Our advice was to take the refund because this La Manga draw had failed. Why leave money in a platform that was showing signs of struggle? From what we understand some entrants didn’t manage to get a refund, but surprisingly Cloverhut did (or apparently did) giveaway the villa to Margot T in October 2023. Strangely this house win didn’t get much publicity and we actually reported in our next review, Win A Mediterranean Holiday Home, that we were surprised to see Cloverhut back for another round. The Andalusia draw was poorly advertised and emails few and far between to encourage late sales. However a new British Director was reported to have come onboard to help guide them back to sunnier shores. It would seem that didn’t work.
Subscribing To Win
Subscription models are popular when it comes to prize draw platforms. Omaze are a great example and Raffle House are trying to replicate the approach. Good Life Plus and Day Made are also two prize draw services that rely heavily on subscriber volume over one off purchases here and there. Cloverhut also aimed to be a subscription service and offered those who signed up the chance to win cash and holidays. If you joined the CloverClub you’d pay a monthly fee and then be included in various draws including the property. From what we can remember the prizes were £1000 a week and a holiday in Spain bimonthly. However we don’t recall seeing any winners and there’s no indicator of any winners published on Cloverhut’s Facebook Page. In fact their Facebook page gives a very good indicator of why this platform has ended up with closed doors. At time of writing it has just 328 likes and 366 followers. For a company offering big prizes that’s not good. Of course that could simply mean that Cloverhut didn’t push their social media pages, but Bounty Competitions have 181,000 likes and 217,000 followers. Guess which site has created a millionaire and produced their last two house winners in 24 and 48 hours respectively? Now Bounty don’t rely on subscriptions but are able to mobilise their captive audience. Cloverhut it seems just didn’t have an audience – at least not one to engage with regularly on social media.
Too Much Competition
The biggest issue for Cloverhut, and indeed any other prize platform, is competition. Bounty are one of the biggest prize draw platforms and can quickly turn over huge prizes. Other sites like McKinney and That Prize Guy also fair well, but for each big gun in this sector there are tens of small fish. They either have to bide their time to grow, opt for the fake it til you make it approach, accept their limitations and stick at the lower levels or throw money at advertising in an attempt to join the big boys. Likewise when it comes to trying to compete in the win a house competition sector. Omaze are advertising every month to draw in customers attracted to potentially winning a million pound house. Tramway Path are a bit like Bounty and rely more on an established audience. But everyone else needs to figure out how to get in more and more subscribers. All the while entrants are being offered different ways to spend their cash to potentially win prizes. A £10 subscription here, a £10 subscription there, a few pounds on the lottery perhaps and maybe a ticket or two play on a pay to enter prize site all starts to build up. People have a lot of choice but they can’t spend money on everything. The pay to enter prize sector is super crowded and only the best will survive long term. But if entrants don’t know about you then that makes it tougher to spend cash with you. A quick look at Cloverhut’s mention in the news and the last time they appear (at least according to a Google search) is 2022. Almost two years! Two years of platforms like Bounty establishing an audience, creating property winners and building reputation.
No Cash Alternatives
Owning a holiday property is a dream for many people and that’s who Cloverhut were targeting. But not everyone wants an apartment in La Manga. Running any kind of property prize draw is difficult but overseas prizes adds an extra element of difficulty. Taxes, legalities and costs – with respect to ownership, renting and perhaps selling on – have to be considered. We think that for million pound villas in Majorca most wouldn’t worry, but Cloverhut’s properties were always worth less than £150,000. Still nice to win but perhaps they didn’t have the “wow” factor you get from Omaze. Furthermore cash alternatives weren’t offered so the winner had to accept the apartment. Surely you wouldn’t enter a prize draw for something you don’t want? Of course, but you get more interested entrants if there’s a choice of property or cash that you often see with the likes of Bounty and McKinney. Whilst the idea of dedicating the Cloverhut platform to winning a place in the sun is a nice one, it just limits the audience – and as we’ve mentioned above having a big and engaged audience seems to be a pretty important element when it comes to pay to enter giveaways. Of course this analysis doesn’t help anyone who’s spent money with Cloverhut under the expectation that they’re entering to win a holiday home by The Med. We’re unaware of any emails being sent out to either entrants or subscribers. Our advice would be to firstly cancel any CloverClub direct debits you may have and then contact your bank to request refunds for goods not received as the company is not operating. Whether that actually results in a refund is unclear, but it may be the only chance you have of getting anything back.