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Gamify old promo inventory with a sweepstakes to reactivate lapsed customers at zero marginal discount cost.
$250
in product
90 to 180 days
Subject line
14 days
After close
15% off
reactivation offer
Bed Bath & Beyond ran a sweepstakes asking customers to submit photos of old coupons they had lying around, according to Retail Dive. The mechanic was simple: find an expired or unused coupon, photograph it, enter the contest. Winners received gift cards. The campaign targeted lapsed customers — shoppers who had received coupons but never redeemed them, or who had stopped engaging entirely.
The move worked because it reframed a sunk promotional cost as an engagement asset. The retailer had already distributed millions of coupons via direct mail and email. Most went unused. Instead of writing off that promotional spend, the sweepstakes converted old coupons into a reason to re-enter the brand's orbit. The customer sorted through junk drawers, remembered the brand existed, and submitted an entry. The act of finding and photographing the coupon required engagement with both the physical artifact and the brand's digital properties. The sweepstakes created a low-friction reactivation path with no incremental discount.
The underlying mechanism is behavioral: gamifying a passive asset. Coupons typically fail when they require immediate action or when the discount feels insufficient. A sweepstakes removes the purchase decision entirely. The customer engages for the chance to win, not to buy. That engagement reopens the relationship. Once the customer is back in the email flow or on the website, the brand can retarget with inventory-specific offers or lifecycle messaging. The sweepstakes also generated user-generated content — photos of coupons — which doubled as social proof that the brand's promotional history was wide and deep.
A small physical-product brand can run the same play with old promo codes, abandoned cart emails, or unused referral links. Build a simple sweepstakes landing page using Typeform or a Shopify app like ViralSweep. Ask customers to submit a screenshot of an old discount code, an unboxing photo from a past order, or a referral link they never shared. Set the prize at $100 to $250 in product — enough to motivate entry, low enough to stay profitable. Email your lapsed segment — anyone who hasn't purchased in 90 to 180 days. Subject line: "Find your old code. Win $100." Body copy explains the mechanic in two sentences and links to the entry form. Run the sweepstakes for 14 days. After close, email all entrants with a 15% off reactivation offer, time-limited to 7 days. Tag entrants in your CRM as reactivated and move them into a regular send cadence. Total cost: the prize value, the landing page tool subscription, and the email send.
The pattern extends beyond coupons. Any dormant promotional asset can become a reactivation hook if you reframe it as a contest entry. Old loyalty points. Unredeemed referral credits. Past purchase milestones. The sweepstakes mechanic converts a sunk cost into a second touchpoint, and the second touchpoint rebuilds the relationship without requiring an immediate sale.
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200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
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