Strategies and best practices for using entry levels

You can boost raffle and sweepstakes purchases by using entry levels to encourage donor participation. Find out how below.

Givebacks (formerly MemberHub) provides a lot of flexibility for structuring your raffle or sweepstakes experience to help you optimize donations. One of the primary methods you can use to do this is with “entry levels,” which allow you to encourage higher purchase amounts.

This article covers the following strategies for applying entry levels to raffles and sweepstakes:

Tiered pricing
Merchandising
Quantity-limiting
Time-limiting

Tiered pricing

Tiered pricing means that you price entry into the drawing so that increased purchase amounts have a lower per-entry cost. This incentivizes donors to participate at higher levels.

For example, buying 10 entries for $10 equates to $1 per entry. If you also offer, for example, 30 entries for $25 and 75 entries for $50, the per-entry cost is much lower. People are often willing to participate at a higher level to gain additional entries at a lower per-entry cost.

You can create as many entry levels as you like and customize the number of entries associated with each price. The system provides default values that we’ve found to work well, but you can also adjust them in the setup as you see fit.

Here is a list of the default entry levels:

10 entries for a $10 donation
30 entries for a $25 donation
75 entries for a $50 donation
200 entries for a $100 donation

Merchandising

Providing merchandise of some type (wrist bands, t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.) at higher donation levels can substantially increase donations. And it’s simple to do.

For example, you could offer a wristband to donors who enter at a $25 level, a t-shirt at a $50 level, and so on. The type of prize should ideally be something that’s branded with your organization or cause.

With this option enabled on your experience, donors will see the number of entries and merchandise that you are offering at each level:

Quantity-limiting

Limiting the quantities of merchandise available at various entry levels can help you reach your fundraising goals sooner. For example, you may only offer 50 “Autographed T-Shirts” for donations at a $500 entry-level.

This option is also useful when you want to limit the number of donors who can purchase a specific entry-level. For example, you may offer a double-the-entries bonus for the first 100 donors to buy at a specific level.

Once a quantity-limited entry level is sold out, no further entries will be accepted at that level.

Time-limiting

Offering certain entry levels for a limited time only can be a useful technique for getting people to take action quickly. For instance, you can use this option to jump-start donations during your experience’s first few days by offering discounted entries during that time.

In addition to these “early bird” discounts, you can also offer exclusive merchandise on some entry levels during a limited time period.

You can use time-limiting to keep the momentum going on your experience as well. For example, during the last week of your fundraiser, you could have a new entry-level that offers exclusive merchandise only available during that time. This can help you bring in more funding during the final push to close out your experience strong.

Conclusion

Utilizing these strategies mentioned above can go a long way towards meeting your fundraising goals. We invite you to experiment with them to see what works best for your experience! Click here to learn how to set up these entry levels.

Check out these other articles from our help center for additional promotional ideas: