Use A Vehicle Giveaway To Market Your Store At A Fraction Of The Cost – Shared Sweeps

Few things get consumers more excited than a life-changing giveaway. Part and accessory consumers especially get excited about a chance to win a race-prepped Porsche, a collectible modern classic, a custom resto-mod Chevy square body, etc. and so on.

Parts and accessories buyers are car “nerds,” after all, so a cool vehicle giveaway is all but guaranteed to get them excited. Unfortunately:

1. Most retailers can’t afford to give away a vehicle
2. Complying with all the legal requirements involved in a free giveaway is expensive and complex

We recently learned about Shared Sweeps, which has an innovative (and affordable) solution to both problems. And when we learned about the connection between Shared Sweeps and Gas Monkey Garage? We had to talk to them.

Here’s our interview with Craig Martens from Shared Sweeps about how it all works.

Can you describe your service as if we nothing about it?

Shared Sweeps launches a sweepstakes that multiple brands “share” by individually marketing it to their customers. Here’s how it works:

1. Ecommerce brands partner with us, gaining the ability to market the giveaway.
2. When a customer buys something from their website, the customer receives entries to win the giveaway.
3. We collect a small fee for each giveaway-related purchase, which we then use to cover the cost of the giveaway, legal, etc.

The beauty of this setup is that there’s no risk. Brands only pay when they sell a product that is purchased because of the giveaway.

The company was founded out of Gas Monkey Garage. After seeing the success of sweepstakes marketing first-hand, we realized that not everyone could afford to run large, grand prize sweepstakes. So, we developed a new approach that allows brands to benefit from the sweepstakes, without being on the hook for the cost.

What’s your standard ‘elevator pitch’ for your company?

Shared Sweeps is the first and only company that allows ecommerce brands to benefit from large sweepstakes marketing without a large investment of time and money.

Your customers can get entries to win a life-changing prize for purchasing on your site, which will dramatically increase your conversion rate.

Can you tell us briefly about your experience in the auto parts industry?

Despite working with e-commerce companies in every category, Shared Sweeps is full of wrench turning, race car driving, gear heads.

Are there common misconceptions people have about your products or services?

Most people don’t realize how big of an impact a sweepstakes can have on their business. When you combine great products with the chance at a life-changing prize, the sky is the limit.

What is your favorite part of the job?

This is an easy one – changing people’s lives. At Gas Monkey Garage we have ran 10 sweepstakes with well over $1,000,000 awarded. Winning $100,000 can allow people to buy that dream car, put a down payment on a house, or pay off debt. We are excited to keep adding to our list of winners.

What are the 3 most important things people need to know about your company?

1. Sweepstakes work.
2. The easiest way to run a sweepstakes is by working through us.
3. Our pricing is performance based, so you have nothing to lose!

How do you see the market for your service changing over the next 5 years?

In the next 5 years we are planning on expanding into the nonprofit space to help with fundraising and international markets for e-commerce giveaways.

Summing Up

Shared Sweeps is an interesting solution to several problems:

• Promoting a sweepstakes is a great way to increase revenue and first party data collection
• A sweepstakes is also great content for social media that will get a response
• A sweepstakes will give customers who are “on the fence” a reason to buy

Shared Sweeps tells us that the brands they’ve worked with have seen higher email list and social media engagement, as well as higher conversion rates. While we haven’t worked with Shared Sweeps yet ourselves, we think it’s a good experiment for the right brand.

If you’re interested in trying it out, you can find out more about the program here.