Your client paid some good money to add an online Promotional Giveaway as part of their splashy, new campaign. Setting clear and reasonable expectations with the client will help you get credit when things go well and will provide added context when it comes time to measure your results.

Objectives – Setting out clear objectives ahead of time will allow you to choose the combination of features to add to your promotion. If the objective is simply to gather emails you will use a different set of features than if the objective is to deliver coupons that drive traffic to a store or a website. Define these objectives ahead of time and use them to determine how the promotion will work. Be sure to share these objectives with the client, so that they will give context to the results.

Activation – Now there is a big topic! Regarding expectations, tell your client that activation is directly related to the success of every promotion. One way or another prospects need to know about your promotion or it won’t get any traffic. “If a tree falls in a forest…” and all that. There are many ways to activate a successful promotion from in-store signage to Social Media, traditional ads to email blasts. You may even consider adding a viral component to enhance your activation strategy. Bottom line: more activation equals more success.

Hoops – Typically, the more difficult you make it to enter (i.e., the more hoops you make a user jump through), the less entries you’ll receive. For example too many field in the entry form can turn users away. Seems obvious, but pointing this out for a client ahead of time, might allow the promotion to gather more entries.