The winner of the latest home competition to complete, Win My Dream Home, has been drawn. In an event shown live on Facebook the winner was announced as Alison Bellamy from Telford. Alison, a key worker with West Mercia police force, was phoned with the news that she’s now the new owner of Grafton Farmhouse as soon as her ticket was drawn. You can watch the video on Facebook but note that it runs for over 20 minutes. As well as the win a home winner, three referral prize winners were also announced. Ceres Brunning, Matthew Pearce and Leah Mussell all picked up prizes.
Transparency
As is standard for every win a home competition, whether it completes or not, there’s always a few “issues” that upset some entrants. Grafton Farmhouse was incredibly fast to complete but they’ve always been transparent in their conduct. Some posters on Facebook have been disappointed to discover that the draw date was moved forward without sufficient notice. However it was made clear on the website and social media that they intended to get things done asap after all tickets were sold. Another issue surrounds the way the draw was held. If you watch the live stream then you’ll see that the draw was conducted with no camera on the laptop.
Personal Data Of Entrants
The owners have explained that this was done as “the personal data of entrants” could not be shared on the screen. To make the draw as fair as possible they did utilise the paid for service offered by Random.org and a lawyer was present to oversee events. That said we know that many raffle sites can do online draws live without showing personal data. From what we’ve seen from these kind of sites, ticket numbers are loaded into a draw program – such as random.org – and then cross referenced to a database that can’t be seen. If other promoters are looking to learn from the Chaloner’s experience then full visuals on the draw is a must.
Free Entries
Win My Dream Home did share the winning ticket screenshot on their Facebook page to prove that the draw did take place. This ticket showed the time, winning number and also revealed that 611,769 tickets went into the draw. The maximum number of tickets the competition could sell, as mentioned in the terms, was 550,000 (increased from 500,000 at launch). Therefore 61,769 tickets must have come from free entries – presumably generated by NPN entries and/or referrals. The number of referrals attained by the three winners but it would be nice to see their numbers or show a regularly updating leaderboard. Raffle House did something similar in April and regularly posted the top three on Facebook.
A Fascinating Home Raffle
Overall Win My Dream Home has been a fascinating home raffle. It launched on 10th April, sold all it’s tickets in record time and picked a winner in just over a month. If other property promotions ran in the same way then more people would possibly look to this mechanic for selling their homes. Most certainly future competitions can learn from this raffle. Transparency is key – at all stages of the promotion – as is building momentum and making full use of media outlets and the local area. A cheap ticket price is attractive and referrals do help sell tickets and spread the word.