As a rule, Stonemaier Games does not contribute to product giveaways. Despite that, I recently tried an experiment to see if I was missing something, because I see so many creators and publishers running giveaways these days. The results taught me a lot about how giveaways can be an asset (among many other methods and techniques) for marketing your product or your brand.
Why I’ve Generally Avoided Giveaways
Here’s the primary reason I’ve been anti-giveaway for so long: When “free” becomes the a possibility for a product or service, it greatly decreases a person’s willingness to pay for it. I don’t want to ever condition people into thinking that our games (or the resources and time spent to bring them to life) are free.
My hesitancy for giveaways specifically–in addition to the above–is that you end up with 1 winner and a bunch of people who feel like they could have won but didn’t (and thus may be even less likely to buy the product than before the giveaway).*
Also, even though giveaways can provide a boost in followers, those follows aren’t an indication of interest in my content. I want people to follow me on, say, Instagram because they’re genuinely interested in the content I post there. My goal isn’t more followers; rather, my goal is better community. I’d rather have meaningful connections with 10 people than superficial associations with 100. This is the nature of relationship-driven marketing versus transactional advertising.
As people have mentioned in the comments, there are also other issues with giveaways: They often inspire copycat accounts, there can be legal issues, and sometimes it can take quite a bit of time to track down the winners.
The Goodwill Argument
I’m adding this after seeing some opinions that giveaways are an integral part of a publisher’s goodwill or their general contributions to the hobby as a whole. There seems to be a bit of a sentiment that if you don’t give away games for free, you’re not appreciating your success as a publisher.
The core value we offer to people is that we try to make great games. We’re able to do that because people are willing to pay for those games. If either side of that breaks down–if we stop making great games or if people stop buying them–the business ceases to exist. This is the inherent pact between company and consumer.
There are many forms of goodwill that extend beyond (perhaps well beyond) giving away a few random games from time to time. Here are a few examples from the Stonemaier Games portfolio:
- Each year, we send thousands of free products to reviewers who are committed to sharing their unbiased opinions with people of the world. This helps potential consumers decide if our products are a good fit for them without spending a cent.
- In non-pandemic year, we send hundreds of games to play-and-win sections at conventions so people can try our games and potentially win them during the convention.
- Each year, we host a charity auction featuring 10 content creators we love and their charities of choice. We contribute the prizes, and we match the winning bid for each of the auctions. Our total charitable donation via these auctions to date is $72,773.
- For several preorders, we’ve donated $1 for each person who signed up for a launch notification to a related charitable organization. This includes a $7,439 donation to a wildlife rescue organization in Australia and $10,724 to the American Civil Liberties Union.
- We are committed to an ongoing effort to elevate actively include and elevate BIPOC people in Stonemaier Games and the gaming industry/community. So far (as of March 2021) this has included contributions of 235 games and over $57,000.
- I write 100 blog posts each year about entrepreneurship and crowdfunding to add value to other creators.
- I post 150 videos each year on my game-design YouTube channel to add value to other designers (and the designers/publishers of the games I feature, whom I also elevate on Instagram).
There are many ways to share your appreciation for the community and the industry. Choose what feels right to you and respect the choice of those who use different methods.
The Experiment
Despite my reservations, I noticed that Instagram extraordinaire Carley (@gnarleycarleygaming) recently held a giveaway for a game on Kickstarter called Doomlings. I shared my thoughts with her and asked for her opinions about giveaways, and she explained that giveaways generate excitement, brand awareness, and provide a mutually beneficial boost.
She also said that they can simply be fun. That’s the whole point of this tabletop game business, right? So I asked her if she would be willing to work together on a giveaway for one of our newest products, Wingspan speckled eggs.
However, I wanted to find a direct way to (a) encourage more participation than just liking/sharing and (b) make everyone feel like winners, even if they didn’t win the giveaway. Also, Carley added the additional goal of contributing to a good cause thanks to an anonymous person who pledged to donate $1 for every giveaway story share to the American Bird Conservancy. When I heard about that, I offered for Stonemaier Games to match the donation.
So here’s how the giveaway worked:
- I sent Carley two sets of the speckled eggs, which she used to create the photo shown here. It was her idea to fill an ice cream glass with the eggs, which I thought was a clever touch.
- Carley posted the photo and asked people to guess the number of eggs in the glass, noting that if anyone guessed the correct number, everyone would get a promo code to save 25% on a set of speckled eggs on our webstore (if not, they’d save 10%). On the same day, I posted the photo as well, followed by a story share. Carley also asked participants to share the post on their stories for the donation match.
- After two days, a few people had correctly guessed the quantity of 105 eggs. Carley then randomly selected 5 other participants and did what she does with giveaways: She ran a Super Smash Bros tournament in her house on behalf of those 8 participants, streaming it on Instagram. We’ve sent the winner their free set of eggs, and we ran the 25% discount code for a few days last week.
The Results
I’m grateful for the experiment, and subjectively, I thought it was fun. Carley’s post generated 1,588 likes, 557 comments, and 307 shares (for a total donation of $614). I think her follower total climbed by around 700 people, which is great, because I think her Instagram is worth following.
My goal was to sell eggs, and we can track that via how many times the discount code was used. 40 people used the code for orders that totaled $1,172.14 (including other stuff they added to their order).
Conclusion
Overall, I’m happy with the experiment. Would I do it again? With a similar format, sure, on very rare occasions. There isn’t really much benefit for us to do these on a regular basis. I’ve actually done two similar giveaways in the past (Scythe metal coins and Viticulture metal coins), and I just ran them by myself.
Therein lies the question: If you find a way to run a giveaway that feels right to you, do you run it yourself or work with a content creator? I think the answer greatly depends on your reach and engagement. This is a marketing expense, after all. If you have 500 followers and you’re looking to share your product with 10,000 people who have never heard of you, partner with a content creator with 10,000+ followers. Or perhaps if you have 20,000 followers who follow you for your posts about board games but you’re looking to share your new role-playing game with the RPG community, partner with someone like @criticaldice.
Just to be clear, by “partner,” I mean at the very least give them some free copies of the product for them to keep. You can also pay them for the promotion and/or offer something like a donation match like we did.
Flipping this around, though, if you’re a content creator looking to use a giveaway to expand your audience, the marketing expense is yours to incur. Just buy a copy of the product for your giveaway–don’t use a publisher for a free product unless you’re using that product for something mutually beneficial (like a review) before you give it away.
I’m not exactly sure where this fits in, but I wanted to mention one other benefit of certain giveaways if designed well: They can inspire people to learn about a product or service that they otherwise knew nothing about. An example of this is I saw a friend share a post on Facebook about a luxury resort in Fiji. One person who shared the post would get an all-expenses paid trip to Fiji. When I saw the photo of the resort, even though I knew it was way beyond my price range, I was incredibly curious to learn more.
I had to Google around to find reviews, which was fine, but the giveaway could have been designed around the idea of making you learn more about the resort instead of just blindly sharing it. Like, maybe the giveaway involves answering 5 survey questions that are written to inform you about the 5 most amazing aspects of the resort (with accompanying photos). That way, even if you don’t win, they’ve planted a substantial seed that someday if I really want to splurge on a vacation, I have a specific resort in mind and 5 good reasons to go there.
Final Conclusion
Well-designed, selectively used giveaways can be an effective tool in a broader toolbox of marketing strategies for publishers and content creators.
*Addendum
There were some interesting comments about the psychological impact of losing a giveaway: “The possibility of winning a contest puts an image of owning the product in their imagination. When they find out they’ve lost, they’ve already imagined owning the product, and are more likely to buy it than before to satisfy that image they’re holding.”
This is really interesting, and it seems I’ve overlooked something important here, particularly this: “giving people the chance to imagine winning a prize and picturing themselves as that winner is a crazy powerful tactic. I’ve used it often over the last few years (even this last week) with great success every single time.. and have tested the impact on conversion and engagement against control groups.”
So my question is: Do *all* giveaways actually accomplish this goal, or only *some* giveaways designed for that purpose? Like, I want a copy of Dwellings of Eldervale. If Breaking Games did a giveaway for a copy where all I need to do is like or share a post, I might do that and then not think about it again. I haven’t actually spent any time imagining myself playing the game.
But instead, what if to enter the giveaway I needed to post a comment selecting the faction I want to use in my first game and saying why I’m excited about that faction. It takes a little more time, but (a) it requires me to perhaps scroll through some photos of various factions (I’m learning more about the game) and (b) I’m literally picturing myself playing the game with that faction as a result. In that case, I can definitely see the giveaway prompting the psychology you described.
***
I’d like to hear your thoughts about giveaways, whether it’s as a fellow skeptic, a participant, a content creator, or a publisher. Thanks!
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31 Comments on “Why I Don’t Give Away Our Products for Free (and an Experiment)”
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[…] free games for giveaways isn’t part of our marketing strategy, but we experimented with a very specific version of it earlier this year with positive […]
For me a giveaway entry does not make me buy the game, I usually enter giveaways for games I’m already interested in buying, otherwise it may go to “waste” if it’s a game I’m not interested in. Also I prefer the ones you just share and forget for the same reason that I don’t invest much time on it and do not picture myself winning the giveaway.
I do agree some of them are fun :)
I find this article interesting. I have never felt that a giveaway lessens the value of the product, if anything, I would say that discounts do. Chick-Fil-A, which at this point is my favorite fast food restaurant, never offers a discount on their food for this very very reason. Either you get a coupon of something free, or you pay full price. In this way they I feel that they never devalue their product.
I am interested to know though if either of these too methods actually disincentives people from buying the product they are sold. Thank you for this article. It gave me some things to think about.
I get the downsides to being on the losing end of giveaway, but I think giveaways are nice because they have a valuable call to action. Normal posts don’t have a call to action that others care about because there’s nothing in it for them to comment, like, go to your webpage, etc… But a giveaway that requires you to comment, like, follow, share, and tag others will boost engagement. The winner of one of my giveaways doesn’t really play board games (outside of Hasbro games), she entered because someone tagged her so she was aware of it. And she now engages with my content and has even referred others to my account since.
You said in your post, “I’d rather have meaningful connections with 10 people than superficial associations with 100. This is the nature of relationship-driven marketing versus transactional advertising.” But you chose to do your experiment with someone that has a lot of followers. When reviewers sign up with Stonemaier Games, you want to know about the size and engagement of their audience. You want content creators to have a good amount of reach, even if you don’t want/need that for your own account.
Maybe an approach you could try as a publisher is to support (by sharing) a content creators’ giveaways that they are incurring all the costs for. You get extra chatter about your product they are giving away (and future products that they review), and they would get a “better community” of followers (i.e. followers of yours that now know about them).
Giveaways are just one form of free value. Jamey, your blogs, videos etc. are all free value!
For ex. your YouTube channel has been very valuable for me and surely for many others too. I have recently watched around 100 of your “My favourite game mechanism” videos. Out of interest, but also to get ideas and inspiration to my own little projects.
If I should choose between finding these 100 videos or having few percent chance to win Wingspan (even if I would not have it already), I would surely choose the videos.
Thank you very much for this useful and inspiring content! :D
Hi Jamey!
An interesting topic. I fully understand your policy. Giveaways don’t work equally well with all types of businesses. Value of fast publicity on your field may not be much. Tabletops as giveaways are expensive, yet may not create awareness or sales much.
If i get a new soft drink as a takeaway and I like it, I’m likely to buy it several times in future. Also I’m likely to recommend it to my friends. Soft drinks are cheap and can be given away in large amounts.
If I get tabletop as a takeaway, surely I will not buy a second copy of it! Nor will my friens buy it, because they play it with me, isn’t it? Also it probably will not increase my interest to buy a game from the same publisher. Exception maybe something like mtg or dominion.
As a content creator, I’d like to give away a game once in a while just for the joy of giving and making someone happy. But from a bussiness point of view, I don’t think there is much difference between a giveaway, a reduction or advertisment. You pay as a publisher for more visability of your brand and products. It doesn’t make it a less valuable product; money doesn’t loose it’s value either because of lotteries.
However I don’t think I ever bought a game because I didn’t win it in a contest. Neither do I think I ever bought a coca cola because I’ve seen an advertisement. Let alone that I’d buy whatever is on a team’s jersey. Still generally everyone agrees that advertisements work and companies pay millions for it.
@David Rector: I agree with that. I don’t mind someone winning a game. I do mind more when all people who buy something a week later than me, pay only 60%, 70% or 80% of what I payed before. That feels more unfair.
Even as a kid, I used to sneer at sweepstakes, essay contests and similar promotions – I calculated that more money was spent on stamps than was being given away. Of couse, today the stamps are free.
So pleased to read this post. There is another board game that I won’t mention here where the designers are often seen to give away copies to seemingly deserving people on their social media groups. This is done with all good intentions and is generally positively received. One such example went along the lines of ‘I’m not sure if I’d enjoy this game, what do you guys think?’ Developer: ‘Let me send you a free copy to see if you like it’.
My issue is that the game is quite expensive, and being in a less than ideal financial situation, this does almost sour the game for me? When I’ve worked to save money to be able to afford a specific game, it can be disheartening when it is handed out for free due to a clever comment or just being seen by the right person at the right time. It may be seen as petty jealousy of not winning, but you are exactly right; I end up feeling like a bit of a chump for having paid for it. From a business model perspective, yes it certainly can enhance the customer perception of a company. As a consumer, how can I justify spending $100+ (not to mention expansions) on a premium product when the game’s own creators are willing to give it away for free?
Sorry if this just sounds like jealous whining, I’m willing to accept that it may be just that.
Sam: I can definitely see how that form of marketing–while it puts on a good show–can devalue the experience of those who spent their hard-earned money on the game.
I’m a very small and new content creator primarily focused on Instagram and a personal blog site. I’ve utilized giveaways personally as well as entered several myself.
As a potential winner, I love the idea of getting a game that I’ve been interested in for a while but haven’t picked up, mainly due to trying to stick to a reasonable gaming budget, or something that’s relatively new and I’m learning about for the first time. I have actually been quite lucky and have won several giveaways. My most recently won game was actually Euphoria! As a result of winning Euphoria, I ended up visiting the Stonemaier website and purchased the expansion (so I could play solo) as well as the updated game board. So, the result for me was that I got a fantastic game while also supporting the publisher personally. I’ve also won a game that I already owned and gifted it to my brother and sister-in-law since it was one that we’ve enjoyed playing remotely through Board Game Arena and I thought they’d love the tactile experience of the marbles in the physical version.
I only enter a small fraction of the giveaways that I come across and never feel poorly if I don’t win. As others have commented, you have to look at giveaways as a lottery where the odds are generally not in your favor.
As a small content creator, I have held a number of giveaways with the primary goal being to share games with others in the community. A secondary goal is to gain visibility to my content. Many times I’ve hosted giveaways for games that we enjoy and focused my sites on content related to the game throughout the week including a full written review. I have seen that giveaways are successful to expand your reach and exposure to a new audience. Although not all will stay around long term, it does bring more in the door to see what we’re creating and if it interests them.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Alli! For the record, I’ve enjoyed following your Instagram channel, and what drew me to your Insta was your content, not giveaways. But I agree that a well-designed, occasional giveaway can improve visibility.
Thanks Jamey. I’m humbled to hear that you enjoy our content. We certainly do focus more on simply sharing our love of games and only just the occasional giveaway. Typically we use them to celebrate a fun milestone along the way.
Another anecdote to consider regarding reduced perceived value – I have not personally experienced this as a consumer. I have definitely learned of products that I didn’t otherwise know about this way.
If a couple of people get free cars from a game show it doesn’t change the value of a car for me, at least not in a way I’m consciously aware of.
I can tell you my giveaway experience…
Over the years I’ve entered quite a few BGG giveaways, never won, but no hard feelings and it hasn’t affected my game buying behavior, I see it as a lottery type thing that I don’t really care about but would be cool if I won.
But, my brother-in-law won Deadwood 1876 from BGG a couple years ago, and I played his copy of the holidays with all the nephews etc. It was such a fun game, and I was so taken by the design and production, that I bought my own copy soon after.
So, by giving one game away, they got at least a purchase from me, since I had never heard of the game before that. I had never heard of the publisher either, and now Facade games is on my radar and I’ve checked out their other games. So for my anecdotal single datapoint, it’s led to increased sales and increased publisher awareness.
Jamey,
Interesting points…I had a similar exchange with Paul Grogan a few months back when we were discussing proofreading and editing, a service that both he and I provide to our respective clients. In the beginning, before I had worked with a number of publishers (including Stonemaier Games), there were many times I provided pro bono support to new designers. However, as my time is quite limited (and precious), I began to provide the service at a cost. As Paul mentioned, if designers can get the service for free, why would they ever pay for it…by doing so, they clearly do not respect the time and talent that you invest into the undertaking. There are still the folks for whom I’ll provide an hour or two of my time gratis, but this is often with a very well known publisher or designer, for which the compensation isn’t monetary but instead a way to build a relationship.
Cheers,
Joe
“I’ve always felt the opposite of your conclusion as to what losing a contest does psychologically. The possibility of winning a contest puts an image of owning the product in their imagination. When they find out they’ve lost, they’ve already imagined owning the product, and are more likely to buy it than before to satisfy that image they’re holding.”
100% agree with Chad here. This was the only part of the excellent post that didn’t chime with me, Jamey.
I’ve been a keen student and practitioner of behavioral economics and neuromarketing for many years working at ad agencies and for brands…. and human behaviour is amazing to behold. Some call it manipulation but I try to use nudges and behavioural tricks to offer customers and colleagues a more suitable outcome. And not use the ‘magic’ on anything unethical or against my moral compass.
Decision bias is a powerful thing. Like the research that discovered people waiting in line for something in a cafe ended up spending more than they intended to when it was their turn to order, purely to compensate for the value of their time spent in line for a few more minutes. Make it worth the wait. Irrational but true.
Similarly, giving people the chance to imagine winning a prize and picturing themselves as that winner is a crazy powerful tactic. I’ve used it often over the last few years (even this last week) with great success every single time.. and have tested the impact on comversion and engagement against control groups. You can link it to cognitive dissonance about trying to appease your brain who had already (optimistically) chalked up that you were going to win. There is a mental imbalance and so the way to sort it? Get the thing you were hoping (and your brain was expecting) you to win. Sounds nuts but we humans can’t help it. Especially if the context and setting is positive.
: )
Anyways. Sorry.. got a bit carried away. I love to try and inspire people every day with examples and tales of ‘magic marketing’ through behavioural science – and thanks to COVID, it’s been a while since I’ve sat down with friends and socialised and waffled on about this type of stuff.
Thanks for indulging me. And thanks for another great, honest and transparent post.
Oh and thanks for Red Rising the game. I can’t stop playing it.
: )
Take care, Steve.
This is really interesting, and it seems I’ve overlooked something important here, particularly this: “giving people the chance to imagine winning a prize and picturing themselves as that winner is a crazy powerful tactic. I’ve used it often over the last few years (even this last week) with great success every single time.. and have tested the impact on conversion and engagement against control groups.”
So my question is: Do *all* giveaways actually accomplish this goal, or only *some* giveaways designed for that purpose? Like, I want a copy of Dwellings of Eldervale. If Breaking Games did a giveaway for a copy where all I need to do is like or share a post, I might do that and then not think about it again. I haven’t actually spent any time imagining myself playing the game.
But instead, what if to enter the giveaway I needed to post a comment selecting the faction I want to use in my first game and saying why I’m excited about that faction. It takes a little more time, but (a) it requires me to perhaps scroll through some photos of various factions (I’m learning more about the game) and (b) I’m literally picturing myself playing the game with that faction as a result. In that case, I can definitely see the giveaway prompting the psychology you described.
Hiya Jamey. The engagement factors you mention are spot-on.
In my experience, how you frame or set up the giveaway is almost as important as the timing and how you handle the announcement of the winner(s). Do it too late and people illogically think they won’t buy something ‘just in case’ they win it. Do it too early and without a well thought out plan for engagement and follow up… and it’s wasted. Plus you may attract too many of the so-called compers or people just in for freebies.
The announcement and follow up is also important. Stay true to your brand personality, demonstrate you care about and understand your fans/customers and remind them they can still benefit from the purchase despite not winning. Or give them added value through content or simply showing you’re grateful and acknowledge their involvement.
The stuff that costs nothing often ends up creating stronger brand adulation and respect. No heavy sales, no value erosion, just a good old fashioned mix of human empathy and commercial thinking.. they can work together in my experience!
I know I’m preaching to the choir here somewhere, so I’ll be quiet now hah. Thanks again and keep on doing what you do.
All the best, Steve.
A great read, quality over quantity 150%. After reading David’s comment I can understand the frustration when after something you purchased for full price then in a week or two it becomes discounted or is part of a sale. Its certainly now helped me not to rush into purchasing anything media (music, books, video games <- these are the worst) related anymore. See what games you'd love to have and don't let the FOMO monster get you (The red rising FOMO monster is a beast lol) .
Anyways I truly appreciated how much effort and detaill you went into coming up with a win-win type giveaway and you did it on your terms :) Although I don't produce games, but I'm quite interested in marketing, and learning how other industries tackle it.
When I buy the next stonemaier product I know the kind of investment I'm making in (even if I have to wait for it to go on sale,or I use my champion discount) I got lots of time left haha).
I understand your point about not wanting to devalue your brand and have a fear of people not wanting to pay for the prize if they lose. But that doesn’t apply if you’re reaching an audience that didn’t even have it (or your brand) on their radar. That is what makes giveaways a successful form of marketing, but it only works if it’s done right. As you mentioned, running it outside your normal audience and channels is important.
At the same time, it shouldn’t be taken lightly as there is a LOT of work involved if you want to do it successfully. There is more to running giveaways than simply offering a prize to your readers. Not only with respect to the marketing tactics and reasons but also the legal stipulations that must be followed. We are often asked to run giveaways but are very restrictive about it. We mainly offer them over the holidays for brands that participate in our annual charity drive for the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital (and local charities) and the sheer nature of that massive promotion drives traffic that we wouldn’t normally reach. But we’ve had many people say they came for the giveaways and returned for the quality content, learned about products they hadn’t heard of and discovered brands they wouldn’t otherwise have considered.
Kudos for being open minded enough to give it a shot!
Talking about free products and experiments… I thought this post would have been about the Clash of Deck Kickstarter campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grammesedition/clash-of-deck-a-real-free-to-play-living-card-game). Have you seen it?
It’s a free game. The only cost is € 2 per copy for worldwide shipping. It’s an interesting experiment. They currently are at over 8000 backers, and nearly € 30,000. :-)
I have! It’s an interesting model, to establish the baseline value of their product as $0 and then hope (presumably) that people will buy expansions.
I’ve actually had conversations with other gamers on the subject of giveaways before. Personally I only enter a giveaway if the game is something I’m actually interested in but not sold on enough to buy a copy. I have met and talked to gamers who enter everything they get the chance to even if they already own the game. I love our hobby and think it’s great publishers share the chance to win games. In all honesty I don’t get upset I almost never win- I’ve won 1 game after decades in the hobby which happened to be a children’s game I wasn’t sure if my young children would like… they loved it.
If you give away eggs, that’s cool. If you sell them for 25% off just after I paid full price, I’m a little pissed that you can afford to sell them for that much less but still sold them to be for “full price”. I always feel a little ripped off when a product starts selling for a lot less than what I paid just a few days or weeks earlier. The question in my mind is this: “Did I pay more so you could afford to give them to others for a cheaper price?” or “Is the value of these things really 25% less than I paid and I got ripped off?”
I think give aways are great because they show that you are losing something, not me. But I find sales to be a little annoying and now I sort of want to return my full price eggs and get the cheaper ones instead. Well, I would want to do that if I wasn’t very comfortable financially and can afford to throw away money on full-price items.
Dave
P.S. I was thinking of jokingly asking for a free game then thought it was in bad taste to do so. The question is, how many people actually do write and ask for free games knowing how unlikely it is to get one but also hoping you’ll do it just for the hell of it?
David: Hopefully you’ve gotten $5 worth of enjoyment from the time you’ve already spent with the eggs, but if not, we would be happy to give you that discount (in addition to the Champion discount you already benefitted from) if you participated in the giveaway. While unfortunate, I understand that there is the risk of a response like this when I transparently write these types of posts for the benefit of other creators.
“My hesitancy for giveaways specifically–in addition to the above–is that you end up with 1 winner and a bunch of people who feel like they could have won but didn’t (and thus may be even less likely to buy the product than before the giveaway).”
I’ve always felt the opposite of your conclusion as to what losing a contest does psychologically. The possibility of winning a contest puts an image of owning the product in their imagination. When they find out they’ve lost, they’ve already imagined owning the product, and are more likely to buy it than before to satisfy that image they’re holding.
I could be entirely wrong about that! As a result, have you bought a products after not winning giveaways?
I sometimes enter the free game contests on BoardGameGeek. Those contests have you answer questions for entries, so you have to look at the product’s website or Kickstarter page. I only enter contests for games that look like they might be fun. But quite frankly, I don’t give those games a second thought after I complete my submission. I often forget to even look if they announced a contest winner.
Yeah, me and my group of boardgamers enter all of those. At least from our group’s experience I can say we dont give 2 thoughts about associating giveaway with “looking into buy it”. For us give away would be an opportunity do trade/sell a free game, pure and simple.
Hiya Karen. To be fair, you shouldn’t need to remember to check if they announced a contest winner. The organiser could (and should) make it their mission to make you feel aware and engaged about the entry, what they were promoting and confirm the contest result – even if it was a simple click or minimal effort in the first place.
There are lots of ways for them to do this without appearing spammy or annoying too.
Simple human behavioural reasoning would suggest that if you (and your brain) received the ‘reward’ of the prize or some courteous follow up, etc in response to taking time to enter… you’d almost certainly have some subconscious link with the game or product that would otherwise not have been there, had you not entered.
Sure, it certainly doesn’t mean you’ll buy your own copy if you don’t win, but hopefully you will at least have a little more fuzzy feels for the brand or company regardless.
So yeah. Some of those giveaway organisers need to work harder (without being intrusive) to make the most of recognising and being grateful that someone has bothered to enter their giveaway, however little time was needed.
Just my 10p worth of opinion.