Prize Draw best practices

Keep everything in one place (Recommended)

Where possible, manage your entire prize draw on Emma.

Why this matters:

• Clear and quick participant journey: Participants can enter, track, and engage with the prize draw in one consistent experience. We recommend enabling Guest Checkout (participants do not need to create an account).
• Reduced admin: Avoid manual data handling or merging participant lists.
• Real-time insights: Easily monitor entries, engagement, and performance.
• Centralised data: Keep all participant information, entries, and communications in one place.

A unified approach helps minimise errors and ensures your team can focus on promotion and delivery rather than administration.

Use Ticket Bundles to Increase Engagement

Offering ticket bundles is one of the most effective ways to drive higher participation and increase entry volume (how to set up ticket bundles help article).

Recommended approach:

• Offer tiered bundles (e.g. 1 ticket, 5 tickets, 10 tickets, 25 tickets).
• Provide better value per ticket at higher tiers to incentivise larger purchases. This works particularly well for Gala Dinners, where a guest may want to buy tickets for their table.
• Use Emma’s Most Popular bundle banner to guide user behaviour.

Run One Prize Draw with Multiple Prizes

Instead of running multiple separate draws, we recommend hosting one prize draw with a list of potential prizes.

Recommended approach:

• Clearly list all available prizes in the prize draw description
• Highlight top or “headline” prizes prominently
• Be transparent about how winners are selected and how many winners there will be

Be Clear and Transparent with Terms & Conditions

Clear Terms & Conditions are essential for building trust with participants. You can create a custom page to list Ts & Cs clearly for participants.

Include:

• Eligibility criteria (age, location, restrictions)
• Entry method and any costs involved
• Opening and closing dates
• How and when winners will be selected
• How winners will be notified
• Prize details and any limitations
• Any applicable legal or regulatory information

Communicate Clearly and Consistently

Good communication keeps participants engaged and reduces confusion.

Recommended approach:

• Ensure you have the Payment Confirmation email enabled so participants receive confirmation after they enter
• Send a reminder email and text before draw closes (how to send manual communications help article)
• Follow-up communication for winners and non-winners (how to close the prize draw and notify winners help article)

Selling Prize Draw Tickets outside of Emma (Alternative Option)

If you choose to sell physical prize draw tickets, Emma can still support with promoting the draw.

Recommended approach:

• Create a custom page on your microsite
• Add a clear title and subtitle explaining how and where guests can purchase tickets at the event
• Use the Text Box and Image page element to showcase the prizes on offer (how to build a custom microsite page help article here)
  

Combined approach (online and physical tickets) (Alternative Option)

If you are running a combined approach with both online and physical ticket sales (including postal entries), you can manually add externally sold tickets into Emma to ensure all entries are included in the final draw (how to add prize draw tickets manually to Emma).

This allows you to make use of Emma features such as drawing the winner(s) and sending winner/loser communications to participants.

Following these best practices will help you deliver a smooth, engaging, and trustworthy prize draw experience with Emma.