How to win competitions
This is a version of the article I wrote for the Guardian In it to win it: how to maximise your chances in competitions
Winning a competition can be a great feeling. But businesses don’t give away prizes out of generosity. They want as much personal data as possible and not just from lucky winners. You’ll have to give contact details, of course, to receive any prize. You might be asked for other information about yourself.
If you do enter a competition, the amount of data you enter should be minimal and should not be used for any purpose without your consent. For example, a supermarket can’t pass your details to a holiday company without your explicit authorisation. Under the General Data Protection Regulations an organisation can only request information that is necessary. For example, if they request your date of birth that would need to have some relevance to the competition.
The only exception to handing over data would be at an in-person event where you may only need to give necessary details if you win.
Is winning a competition just luck or are there tips and tricks we can use?
Abide by child entry rules
If the competition involves providing personal data then parental consent is necessary for children, depending on various factors. Parental consent will be required for big prizes too. Children are not allowed to enter competitions to win alcohol. HFSS food products should not be targeting those under 16 in any way. There will be an age gate for items like alcohol e.g. entering date of birth. As people can lie there will usually be a verification such as a phone call, to see how old they sound, ask date of birth, request to hold up picture verification etc..
Marketers must not knowingly collect from children under 12 personal data about those children for marketing purposes without first obtaining the verifiable consent of the child’s parent or guardian. There are strict guidelines regarding children and marketing under the CAP Code.
In reality if a company wants details of children they will need to get them via a parental consent form.
Enter many competitions over a long period!
You need to be in it to win it! Think of entering competitions as a cheap and fun hobby, where prizes are bonuses, so don’t lose heart if you are not winning immediately.
Enter competitions with lots of prizes
Big brands may offer many prizes, so whilst more people may enter, you could have more chance of winning a prize.
Enter competitions that require effort
Competitions that need some thinking will attract fewer entries than quick to enter easy prize draws, so increasing your chances of winning. 15 years ago money blogger Emma Bradley started as a serial comper and in that first year alone won £10,000 in money and products. She advises entering creative competitions.
Superlucky Di Coke has £400,000 of prizes under her belt, and is considered the UK’s ‘Competition Queen’, winning an average of three prizes a week. And every prize she wins is featured in her popular monthly Prize Unboxing Videos on YouTube! She suggests competitions such as sharing a selfie on Instagram, an on-air radio quiz, buying a specific product in a supermarket, playing games on the free Coca-Cola app, giveaways from small businesses or creating a TikTok video.
Avoid possibly addictive and expensive competitions that use raffle type promotions and those which require premium rate text entry.
Use competition listing websites
These sites help you quickly and easily enter many competitions at one time. They provide links to prize draws, subscriptions to newsletters, following and undertaking social media activities. For example this could be liking/sharing a post, making a video or following the brand.
TravelScoop links to numerous holiday competitions. The Prize Finder has hundreds of competitions with a huge variety of winning options.
Compers post links to hundreds of competitions on its Competition Time forum.
Enter competitions where you would like the prize
Most competition prizes are non-transferrable, so concentrate your time and efforts on the best competition prizes for you which may not be the most expensive. Think also of prizes as potential presents for others.
Kimba Cooper-Martin is a gamification expert, helping businesses to use games in their marketing. She says
Look for businesses that sell something you want and have a look to see if they’ve run competitions before on their socials. If the prizes offered are the kinds of things you’d like to win then sign up for their email list or to get notified of their posts on that social media channel.”
Share the fun
Di advises joining forces with friends. “They will help you win more, as they will tag you in giveaways and even share prizes with you.” You can join groups for advice, support and collaboration. Di’s free Facebook group Lucky Learners has over 22,000 members.
Establish an email address for entries
If you intend on entering lots of competitions, most if not all will acknowledge your entry by email and send you the newsletters and marketing. Use a distinct email address so that messages won’t clog up your main inbox.
Regularly check junk email and social media notifications, as many prizes go unclaimed!
Consider purchasing a cheap pay-as-you-go SIM to use the number just for competitions.
Use your skills and specialist knowledge
If for example you are good at writing, select a competition covering something you know and are practised in writing about. Cyber and Security Expert, James Bore, won $750 utilising his knowledge of history of the Luddites, the film WarGames, and tech decentralisation!
He advises looking up the people involved in judging and tailoring and adapting your work appropriately. He says:
Practice writing, you don’t need to be a master but do spend some time writing related pieces between entering contests to keep your skills sharp. Pick it up as a hobby to keep your hand in.”
Keep your eyes open
PromoVeritas operates prize promotions for major brands across the world. Founder Jeremy Stern advises looking wherever and whenever you shop. “Look at signs and through your magazines or newspapers”.
Be scam aware
“You have won” emails are common place. In most, if not all cases, unless you have entered a competition you won’t have won anything. Never click on any links in emails or texts where you don’t know the sender. Scammers create fake profiles on social media, fake websites and will often ask you to enter your credit card details to pay for delivery, which is seldom a requirement.
Abide by the rules
Stern refers to people who try and win by breaking the rules as scampers. He recalls one example where they received 385 entries with different names from the same address trying to get round the rule of “one entry per household”. He comments “You could look at it on Google and see it was just a terraced house. The entries were disqualified.”
Watch out for copyright
Stern also advises being mindful of copyright. Veritas once awarded a win for a photograph of a horse but the owner of the same horse argued he should win! This caused some legal difficulties.
Stern warns that whilst the use of AI is becoming more widespread for entries, companies employ software that can strip images down to detect cheating. Avoid complicated legal wrangles. Whether a new copyright free image has been created when using one or more copyrighted image is an issue their legal team regularly deals with.
More help to win competitions
Di Coke – how to win competitions on The Complaining Cow Consumer Show podcast on East London Radio.
Di Coke’s *SuperLucky Secrets: 100 tips for winning competitions, contests and sweepstakes
Di Cook books*
Jeremy Stern on The Complaining Cow Consumer Show podcast on East London Radio Jeremy Stern founder and CEO of PromoVeritas
*affiliate links
Omaze
Omaze is one of the largest competitions in the UK. Buy a raffle ticket and possibly win a house.
Do you know what percentage of the ticket sales go to charity?
Give your answer in The Omaze Charity Percentage poll
