Being a comper isn’t an easy pastime. On one hand you might be investing considerable time and effort liking/sharing and filling in forms whilst on the other you may be creating videos or images for the likes of Insta and Tiktok. All in the hope that out of the numerous other entries that the prize draw or competition receives that you’re picked as the winner. The idea behind a prize promotion is usually part of a brand’s marketing plan. It may be because they want more brand awareness or to pick up new customers. However some brands can be a little bit anti-compers at times simply because they feel that compers are more interested in winning prizes than bothering about the brand or ever becoming a customer. In fact some go as far as saying they’ll disqualify compers as in the case of a Handpicked Hideaways & Boutique Hotels company who have added this note to their current giveaway: “This promotion is run in good faith for bona fide users of xxxxxxx. We reserve the right to disqualify a winner who, according to our analytics, has come to this promotion from a dedicated competition- or prize-finding website or referrer. Sorry, compers”. Let’s rip this to shreds shall we?
Compers Good! Compers Bad!
Basically what this “note” is saying is that if you followed the competition link from Loquax or similar source then you may well be disqualified. As far as we know it’s currently not listed on our site although previous promotions from the unnamed brand have been in the past. The note by the way has only been added to the most recent giveaway and we should acknowledge Lucky Learners on Facebook for initially raising the point. What the note doesn’t say is that if you “find” the competition via social media or Google and go and enter then you’ll be fine. In our view there’s no difference to an individual coming across this link on any platform and choosing to visit the competition to win a stay in Cornwall than if they came via a listing site. And surely if someone who sees the promotion and decides to enter the draw is of the same mindset as a comper who also sees the draw and decides to enter? They’re both keen on winning something. The key fact is that the promoter doesn’t want their wonderful prize to head into the hands of someone who isn’t fawning all over their brand and may not wish to become their customer. Discriminating against people who like to try and win things doesn’t seem like a good plan to gain customers though.
Tracking Compers Down
Now we’ve seen this kind of thing before. Way back a Coronation Street Blog used to post that they’d disqualify compers who entered their giveaways. Except entry was by email and there was no way they could ever know! Websites however can track visitors via their analytics and in theory it is possible to match up entries with where they originated from. In our view most brands don’t give a damn but some do. The easiest way round this is simply ask a listing site not to include their promotions on site as it saves everyone a lot of hassle. Whilst a referral may well tell the promoter that their entrant prefers to find giveaways listed in a convenient way (and as free advertising for them) what it doesn’t tell them is the intentions of the entrant. Will they become future customers? Will they be interested in their brand? This kind of thing does raise the question as to whether compers should use sites like Loquax or try and mask their activity. Firstly most comp links are social media these days so it’s an irrelevant concern. For website comps it could be an issue but then we don’t know. We just hope that all promoters, regardless of where they run their giveaway, play with straight dice. They probably don’t but prize draws and giveaways are unregulated and unless you can prove otherwise it’s impossible to know. So therefore there’s no point worrying about it. If you are worried or believe that using a listing site means you don’t win then the easiest thing to do is not use them.
Share With Up To 8 Friends
What makes the whole “note” thing above incredibly absurd however is the instructions on said brand’s Facebook. The post gives a link to the competition page plus “Tag up to 8 friends who’d also love this prize! For an extra entry share this post to your story”. Do you know the best way for compers to discover competitions? It’s not via a listing site! Post a link on social media and ask folks to like, tag and share and it’ll be quickly picked up. Obviously tagging up to 8 friends is going to attract plenty of people who are interested in said brand and the promotion. Quite! We did contact the brand in question and asked if they could explain their thinking. To be honest they didn’t really make much sense only saying “The objective of running the competition on social media is to allow our followers a chance to enter, grow the reach of the post and create brand awareness with their followers” whilst “The intention of the competition on the website (which is delivered to those that have been browsing after X number of page visits, interested in the hotels etc) is to encourage newsletter sign-ups”. Except this is nonsense because the social media post links to the blog page hosting the competition where to enter you need to sign up for the newsletter. In other words the thinking behind the whole thing is completely rubbish (in our honest opinion). They want to run a giveaway but they want to make sure the prize goes to someone that aligns with their brand. Or in short they want to fix it which is totally against ASA/CAP rules for running promotions.
Rewarding Customers
We have no beef with any brand that wants to run a promo to reward customers or brand loyalty. We did it one year where our daily advent prize draw was just for those who had contributed in the previous year. It sparked some backlash from some users but it was a promotion designed to reward loyalty. Brands can do this in many ways by limiting entry to members of their newsletter, registered users or recent customers. Compers may still enter (and have all the right in the world to enter) but it may limit numbers. Subscribing to a newsletter to enter by the way is a rubbish entry mechanic as it can attract multiple accounts and is easily targetted by auto-entry services which we assume still run. Asking people to tag up to eight friends is also rubbish and simply amounts to spam. In other words do better prize draws and you might find you get a better quality of entry. Ironically the site in question even has a registration section called sitename+. It’s free to join and unlocks extras such as hidden offers and birthday treats. Wouldn’t it simply make sense for them to place their prize draws in that section? No! It’s far far easier to post a couple of lines digging out compers. It’s a stupid approach employed by snobby promoters who can’t get their heads around the fact that if you offer a prize people might want to win it. Just in some of those cases the entrant also wants to win other giveaways. It doesn’t make them the perfect customer but it doesn’t make them someone to ostracise or devalue either.