How to organize a raffle and protect yourself from fraudsters
One of the most powerful tools for increasing brand awareness is sweepstakes. They also encourage purchases and attract new customers. Large companies are raffling off equipment, seasonal gifts, cars, cash prizes, and vacations to warm countries. Not sure how to avoid sweepstakes fraud? Specialists of the event agency share tips on preventing the actions of fraudsters.
First of all, you should decide on the purpose of the raffle, allocate a budget for gifts and deal with the issue of organization. Organizing a safe draw requires a serious approach. That is why it is difficult to cope with such a task on your own, especially if you have no experience in organizing similar events.
How to avoid fraud during the promotion: basic rules
The more sweepstakes your company runs, the more scammers try to figure out and cheat the system. If they figure out the algorithm, the company could lose money and reputation. That’s why it’s important to know how to avoid sweepstakes fraud.
Anton Sadikov, CEO of the Lioncom event agency, tells how to predict everything. Rules for organizing a safe draw:
Choose the right code generation. The coding logic should be difficult to understand. Codes do not have to go in order. Analysts must specifically create multi-level control of code generation.
Do not place codes in easily accessible parts of the package.
Choose a reliable contractor not only for printing codes, but also for organizing the draw. It is important that it is a team of professionals who can be trusted to solve any issue.
Enter control data to verify contractors from the organization in the pool of generated codes.
Schedule test and additional codes to be issued if the customer experiences any difficulty with the code. There should be fallbacks so that the code can be replaced.
Strictly regulate the list of people who have access to the codebase.
The main fraud schemes
Specialists of the event agency remind that fraud is possible during raffles and on the part of the buyer.
To protect yourself, monitor the registration:
from one phone number
from different phones, but one device
from different phones, but the same IP address
batch registrations
If you work in retail and have a database of all employees, then use this database to check your staff for fraud. We call this a silent ban – when a participant registers, but does not get on the general list for the draw.
Track bulk registrations from multiple devices to the same name.
Watch for multiple attempts to register the same code. This is how you calculate the scrambler trying to pick up the code.
Carefully check members who sign up via VPN.
Legal aspects
It is important to take into account nuances that, as a rule, inexperienced organizers are not even aware of:
If the price of the gift is higher than a fourth part of the minimum wage, it is necessary to pay personal income tax, which is 18%, and the military tax – 1.5%.
If the price of the gift is lower than a quarter of the minimum wage, then the gift is given without deduction of taxes.
These taxes must be paid by the company organizing the draw. To make life easier for our client, we do it ourselves. After the raffle, the Lioncom coordinator takes the TIN from the winner and signs the act of handing over the gift. Our client does not need to take on any accounting worries.
Before starting the advertising campaign for the raffle, you need to decide on the format. Based on the goal, you can choose whether to conduct the draw offline or online. To attract traffic to the store and create demand, we organize an offline event. If you need to raise brand awareness and get people to bookmark your company page on their social networks, then the online format is perfect.