Alchemy3’s proprietary loyalty program, also referred to as Collect ‘N Win (CNW), is designed to encourage lottery purchase and play with tangible player rewards. Over the course of five years, Alchemy3 has worked with multiple lotteries to execute second-chance promotions that range from eight-week projects to two-year programs. The flexibility of CNW allows it to be tailored to a lottery client’s specific strategy, be it short term promotions to long term loyalty.
When the New York Lottery first launched CNW, the goal was to engage and reward its most loyal audience—daily game players. Based on the program’s success, New York Lottery players will be eligible to enter tickets from all products in the New York Lottery’s draw games portfolio beginning with their New Year’s Rockin’ Eve promotion this August.
“Lotteries use Collect ‘N Win as a convenient tool to provide broad consumer reach/appeal and offer desirable prizes,” said Alchemy3 President Jeffrey Schweig. “It’s easy to customize based on a lottery’s short and long-term goals.”
Lottery players scan or manually enter their tickets into CNW to collect symbols on virtual play cards. Once a play card is complete, the player receives an entry into daily, weekly or monthly drawings. The program can reward play from multiple game types including both draw games and instant tickets and can be utilized to generate entries for traditional drawings as well as offer instant win experiences. “A lottery can also leverage the Alchemy3 portfolio of popular brands to theme a Collect ‘N Win promotion. The design is so versatile it can be applied for any holiday or any time of the year,” said Schweig.
New York Lottery
New York Lottery players can enter eligible NUMBERS and WIN 4 tickets into CNW for a chance to win cash, gift cards, coupons and more. And, the promotion has recently expanded to include all draw games in the New York Lottery portfolio. In March and April of 2019, New York enhanced CNW prizing with StubHub™ rewards, offering sports, music and theater ticket prizes, doubling its player database.
“We anticipate that New York will do at least two specialty promotions (like StubHub) per year,” said Schweig. “With that, we are starting our next promotion which will launch in October-November. It is going to feature room and home makeovers as prizes under the umbrella of a Home Depot theme.
Florida Lottery
The Florida Lottery uses its Collect ‘N Win app specifically for its terminal generated draw games. This includes POWERBALL®, FLORIDA LOTTO®, FANTASY 5®, Fast Play™ and JACKPOT TRIPLE PLAY™. “We have plans to also utilize the app for a MEGA MILLIONS® and daily game promotion,” said Sarah Stanford, Product Manager, Florida Lottery.
The strategy for using the Collect ‘N Win app will vary for the Florida Lottery. “Some of our dedicated Collect ‘N Win promotions are aimed at increasing sales or participation while others may be an avenue to continue increasing awareness of a new game,” said Stanford. “And often, all of these coincide. Overall, broad reach and appeal are important as well. We send marketing emails to all registered users when announcing a new promotion. This can help to promote cross play with players who have participated in past promotions featuring other games.”
The Florida Lottery’s most recent completed promotion using CNW was for a new draw game. “Our most recently completed promotion, Cold Hard Cash featured our new jackpot game, JACKPOT TRIPLE PLAY®, which launched in January,” said Stanford. “The promotion gave players the chance to win prizes up to $10,000 and the chance to win instant cash prizes just for entering.”
Stanford said the Cold Hard Cash promotion had 75,324 unique players enter tickets during the 8.5-week promotion. In terms of other key performance indicators (KPIs), “when measuring performance, we typically track total tickets entered, average tickets entered per day, the number of unique players and tickets entered per player. Additionally, we look at sales and average/estimated spend per player. During the 8.5-week period, 28% of all tickets sold were entered into CNW.”
Delaware Lottery
Delaware Lottery has used CNW as the lottery’s loyalty program since March 1, 2019. “We offer 60 monthly cash and non-cash prizes each month,” said Barbara Miller, Assistant Director, Traditional Games at Delaware Lottery.
“We have over 10K registered players and 9K active players. All draw games (Play 3, Play 4, Powerball, Mega Millions, Lucky for Life, Keno, Multi Win Lotto, Lotto America) and select instant tickets (Moo Loo and Adams Family in the fall) use CNW,” she added.
Miller said the program will be featured in ongoing one-year promotions with monthly drawings. “We ran a full launch campaign which included TV, radio, out of home, digital and retailer point of sale. We ran a full 2019 summer campaign which included the same components. We will also be running a full fall campaign,” she explained.
In terms of KPIs, Miller said “our key performance indicators include percent of eligible tickets entered and percent of eligible players registered. Also, the growth of registered players and percentage of registered players versus active registered players.”
CNW will be used in September when the lottery launches the Alchemy3 licensed Addams Family scratch ticket.
SCEL
South Carolina Education Lottery (SCEL) first used CNW in the summer 2018. “SCEL has completed one promotion with CNW in Powerball Power Cruise where we gave away cruises and cash,” said Ammie Smith, Senior Marketing & Product Development Manager at SCEL.
“Our approach was to give our terminal-generated game players, in this case Powerball players, an interactive experience to enter a second chance drawing,” she added. “We do a great job with engagement on the scratch side but not as much on the draw side. CNW’s flexibility gives you that opportunity to engage with terminal-generated game players.
Smith said Power Cruise ran from 6/2/18-8/25/18. “During that time, we had over 3,000 unique players and over 40,000 tickets entered. Of those unique players, approximately 50% of them used either a mobile phone or tablet to interact with the program,” she stated. “We were happy with the results in such a short period of time. That is why we are using CNW for Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve.”
Smith doesn’t think Powerball’s sales will increase as a result of participating in the holiday promotion. “In comparison to what a jackpot run will do for sales, no,” said Smith. “But if your goal is to give something back to a very loyal player base, I think you may see a slight uptick when normally that player may be playing more infrequently during lower jackpots. Much like measuring second chance instant game success around seasonality it is hard to measure success for games like Powerball second chance promotions when you can’t control the jackpot amounts. Again, we were very pleased with the engagement and feedback we received from Powerball players.”
New Jersey Lottery
The New Jersey CNW program was introduced in July 2017 with the intention of providing New Jersey Lottery players with engaging promotions. Players participate by entering any non-winning eligible New Jersey draw game ticket. Over the course of two-years, the NJ team has been delighted with CNW’s performance resulting in another 2-year extension of the program. The player engagement has been consistent with an average of one million ticket entries per month. “Our research demonstrates that the program registers strongest with two distinct groups in New Jersey—daily and jackpot players ”said Vitalina Nesvetailov, Account Director, Alchemy3.
New Year’s Rockin’ Eve
Select lotteries will be using CNW for the upcoming New Year’s Rockin’ Eve promotion. Lotteries vary in what games are eligible for entry into this national promotion. “It is different with every state,” explained Nesvetailov. “Florida is only accepting Powerball tickets while the New York Lottery is opening the program to all its draw games.”
The Florida Lottery announced the launch of the new POWERBALL® New Year’s Eve Promotion on August 1. All Florida POWERBALL and POWERBALL with Power Play® tickets purchased August 1 through August 31, 2019 can be entered into the promotion for the chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime VIP trip to New York City to ring in 2020.
The Florida Lottery’s goal was to simplify the process for players to enter the second chance promotion. “CNW provides a simple and easy way for players to enter their tickets,” said Stanford. “By saving time in the ticket entry process, players are more likely to feel incentivized to return again. We are also randomly awarding BOGO coupons to players who enter, giving them an additional incentive to participate in the promotion.”
“Collect ‘N Win provides a positive and stress-free way for players to enter their tickets. All of their ticket information is automatically logged so that they can refer to it later if desired, and by using the scanner, there is never the concern of whether all 19 digits were entered correctly. Players can scan their tickets in just a few seconds and move on to other tasks in their busy day,” she added.
SCEL is also using CNW for Powerball’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve promotion since it was very successfully employed for Power Cruise in summer 2018. “We chose CNW because our goal is to capture quickly those 3,000 plus Players’ Club members that played Power Cruise. We are pushing New Year’s Rockin’ Eve heavily on social and in the digital space to try and bring a different player into the promotion because this experiential prizing should appeal to a different demographic than Power Cruise,” said Smith.
On August 23rd, SCEL launched Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve using CNW as the mode to enter for a chance to win trips to NYC and play for $1 million.
New York Lottery widened the parameters of the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve promotion. Players can enter any New York Lottery draw game ticket purchased from July 30 through September 29, 2019 and earn entries for a chance to win a VIP trip to NYC for the New Year’s Eve celebration. In addition, players can continue to enter their New York Lottery NUMBERS and WIN4 tickets in the Collect ‘N Win promotion for a chance to win in monthly prize drawings.
Flexible execution, tangible player rewards—Alchemy3’s CNW program continues to be a powerful tool for maintaining player engagement and encouraging play among lotteries across North America.