Text to Win sweepstakes | Text sweepstakes

What is a Text to Win sweepstakes?

A Text to Win sweepstakes is a text messaging contest where contestants enter by sending a keyword to a phone number or SMS short code. Text to Win contests are easy to set up and allow contestants to enter with a single text. Just ask customers to text a keyword to your phone number to enter your SMS sweepstakes.

They’ll receive a confirmation message and be added to your contact list. SimpleTexting automates the whole contest process for you.

Benefits of hosting a Text to Win sweepstakes

Everyone loves free stuff, and you love growing your customer base. With text message sweepstakes, all you have to do is pick a prize and let your target audience know they can win it by texting in your keyword.
Engagement and growth aren’t the only reasons to host a Text to Win contest:

Quick Set-Up

You can get your contest set up and running in just minutes. The best part is it’s all automated.

Participant Friendly

It’s easy for your participants too. People can enter your contest with a single text.

Grow Your Audience

You can easily gather more customer information once someone has entered your text to win contest.

It's Efficient

Winner selection is automatic and built right into our text to win system. No picking a name from a hat.

On-Brand

Unique, branded opt-in keywords are available, so your SMS contest will fit right into your marketing strategy.

Stay Connected

By collecting phone numbers with Text to Win sweepstakes, you can use them for future follow-up texts.

Text to Win sweepstakes use cases

Customer appreciation

New Leaf: Thanks for a great year! We’re giving away a $100 gift certificate for our online store. Text THX24 to our number to enter before 12/17!

Creating hype around an event or product launch

Faraday: It’s almost here…we can’t wait to share our upcoming winter gear line with you, so we’re giving away a free pair of snow boots to one lucky winner on 11/18! Text WINTERCHILL to our number to enter ❄️

Growing subscriber lists

As a welcome to our text family, everyone who texts AMYEATZ to [your number] before 3/16 to join our list will be entered to win our collection of cake pans!

Holiday campaigns

SweetSadie: We’re giving away $50 to help with your holiday shopping! Text XMASTREAT to our number to enter before 12/8 💖

"I was familiar with text-to-wins but I had never done one or created one…Our keyword WIN was added on October 23rd and our first contest was on October 25th. It was such a quick learning process and once we had it set we were able to just let it go on its own to accumulate contacts."

Zak DeBeaussaert

VP of Communications, Colombus River Dragons

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How Wine Hooligans runs its Text to Win contests

Damian Davis and the Wine Hooligans team are Text to Win pros, and their sweepstakes continue to be fan favorites among their subscribers.

Let’s break down how they run their real-life Text to Win contests.

First, Damian sets up a campaign announcing the contest and connects it to a keyword (in this case, “BLACKLETTER”).

Then, he sends out a campaign that looks like this:

Note that the campaign includes:

The prize to be won
How to enter to win
A way to order more products
The name of the brand
A compliance message telling recipients how to unsubscribe

On your selected date, we select the winner(s).

Then, all Wine Hooligans has to do is notify the winner(s).

How to set up a Text to Win contest

You can get the same results in minutes right from your SimpleTexting account.

Head to the Apps tab on your main account screen.

The navigation tabs in your SimpleTexting account

Choose Text to Win Contests.

Click create new contest.

Name your contest (this is just for your reference) and choose which keyword to connect it to.

Fill out your auto-confirmation message. This is a good space to let your subscribers know what you’re giving away and tell them they can reply to your text to enter the contest.

Set any age restrictions necessary for your giveaway and save your contest. We’ll randomly select a winner from those who enter.

Why choose SimpleTexting for your Text to Win sweepstakes?

There are a lot of Text to Win companies out there. What makes our text marketing platform different?

We’re easy to implement

Once you’ve created your campaign and keyword, our clever system will do the hard work for you! Our system will randomly shuffle through the entrants and pick a random winner for you. Write the perfect congratulations message for your lucky winner and our platform will send it out.

Stay connected with our autoresponder feature

By combining Text to Win with our Autoresponders feature, you can use your Text to Win promotion as an opportunity to automatically reconnect with customers. When a customer enters your sweepstakes, you can add them to a messaging flow. Send entrants automatic messages days, weeks or even months after they enter.

We’re experts in texting for multiple industries

We’ve seen businesses across several different industries use our text contest software. Here are a few more common use cases:

Radio stations ask listeners to text in a keyword to a short code, registered local number, or verified toll-free number to win a prize
Restaurants use sweepstakes promo texts to give away free meals or vouchers
Salons and spas offer a chance to win free services
Sports teams use it to give away season tickets, team gear, or other merchandise

Compare our texting platform

Easy and intuitive

It’s very easy to get started. Their user interface is intuitive, and I really enjoy their segmentation features so you’re only sending text messages that appeal to specific groups in your list. It helps us increase engagement on our live trainings and keep our customers in the loop of new features & content they’re paying for.

Kim J.
G2

Great for our small business

For our small business looking to share quick reminders re: events and updates about severe weather with our employees, Simple Texting fits the bill perfectly. We wanted access for multiple administrators, ease of use and mobile syncing. Simple Text checked all those boxes and has been working great for us.

Brad
Trustpilot

Reliable texting service

Reaching customers by text is more effective than email for certain types of campaigns and this gives us easy ability to draft texts, send, report and respond to individuals extremely easily. This tool was super easy to use and implement. The customer support is superior and extremely responsive.

Rebecca C.
Capterra

Amazing texting service and support

We looked at many Texting platforms when first looking into text engagement and SimpleTexting beat the rest! It’s easy to use and implement. We engage those that are requesting food assistance from beginning to end. The moment they apply, are funded for their box of heart healthy items, to the second that box is delivered to their home to measure outcomes. This tool has been amazing!

Alexandra R.
G2