Which would you prefer to buy: drab raffle tickets that are a bore to look at, or colourful, unique raffle tickets that include logos or pictures? It’s not hard to answer that question, because human nature prefers that which is appealing to the eye.

Put yourself in the average ticket buyer’s shoes. You can’t quite expect everyone to instantly want to buy your raffle tickets just because you’re selling them. You shouldn’t even expect them to buy simply because the cause you’re supporting is important (which it surely is), or even because your prizes are desirable (which they ought to be).

Expect the Unexpected

What you can expect from raffle ticket buyers isn’t rocket science. It’s simple, really. Ticket buyers want the most for their money. The best deal they can get.

So give them what they truly want. Print raffle tickets that are so attractive, even the losing tickets won’t end up in the bin. If you add the right pictures and colours to the mix, your tickets will serve as keepsakes.

Logos and Pictures are Lovely

Have you a fantastic sponsor? A grand prize that’s just to die for? Well, you’re in luck, because you can upload your very own image right onto a raffle ticket templates. Every ticket is printed full colour and full bleed, which is sure to brighten even the dingiest of days.

Combine the best of your efforts. Print beautiful, reasonably priced, high quality raffle tickets, and upload any image that you like. The best part: do it all online, with the ease of a few clicks!

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Don’t be a bother trying to come up with new ideas for which images to upload onto your raffle tickets. One of the primary reasons people will be buying your tickets is to win a prize. Take advantage of this fact. Upload a clear snapshot of the most coveted prize right onto your raffle ticket.

If your head sponsor is popular with the masses, be clever. Upload their logo onto your raffle ticket, and ride on their coattails for a bit (at least until you get the word out there). Once you’ve spread the word to a few people, especially if there’s a big time, well-known sponsor backing your raffle, they will tell their mates, their mates will tell their mates, and you’ll be off to a roaring start.

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Advertising experts know that the three sweetest words in the English language are “win,” “free,” and “money.” Nothing arrests the viewer’s attention more than these delightful concepts, which, when strung together, turn the average person’s thoughts to a positive assessment of any message that follows.

While the cash raffle is an unsanctioned option in the UK, you can still make an impact with your prize draw by taking advantage of the love of winning.

Communication is key: pricing your raffle tickets reasonably and offering prizes that are desirable are the first steps, but your overall sales are determined in great part by your ability to share the potential good fortune you have to offer a few lucky winners. How can you use these words to your best advantage?

Where to Sell Raffle Tickets

• Email subject lines: Don’t mince words. Whether the prize is an HDTV or free housekeeping services, announce it boldly in your online communications. Grab their attention with the wonder of the free prizes in .
• Article titles: Whether you’re writing a press release, a blog post, or an article for a local paper, make your case with a eye-catching headline that informs the world what they can win.
• Word of mouth: Of course, you’re going to talk up your prizes when you’re selling raffle tickets, but you should also consider talking up those prizes when you’re not attempting to sell raffle tickets. That is, the salesperson in you can easily slip references to winning into other conversations, turning any interaction into a potential sale.
• Targeted ads:If you have the funds to do so, you may wish to use ads on Facebook, Google Adwords, or similar platforms to draw traffic to a webpage where you are advertising your prize draw or selling raffle tickets. Employing the important focus words will increase your click through rate.

Sell Raffle Tickets without Fear

Be shameless in your promotion. The more tickets you wish to sell, the more important it is to find supporters willing to take a small gamble on a big prize. Everyone is a potential customer; it’s up to you to promote yourself. If your cause is just, your prize fabulous, and your ability to sell motivated by enough desire, you can sell raffle tickets anytime, anywhere, to very nearly anyone.

Don’t sell yourself short. Find the right words to advertise and just sell!

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We’ve found that when you want to know how to do something right, you ought to ask those who have already done so! For the best advice on selling raffle tickets and making the most money from your prize draw, we turned to our raffle ticket customers, and they surely had some stunning ideas regarding what works.

1) Smarten up the kids. According to our educational, youth sport, and other child-related charity contacts, nothing sells raffle tickets like a group of pint-sized salespeople, and if you can present them dressed in their organisation’s uniforms, colors, or even matching T-shirts, they are even harder to resist. Even if your prize draw has nothing to do with children, adding an adorable tyke to the mix is known to increase your sales numbers.

2) Show off your assets. Another tried and true method of increasing ticket sales is to keep the prizes in public view. We’ve heard of a few successful ways of displaying the goods.

• The Prize Table With the permission of a local merchant, or at a fair or other gathering, set up a table where you display the prizes. Potential donors who admire the HDTV in front of you are far more likely to purchase a ticket. Larger items, such as motorcycles or cars, parked in front of the table, are excellent draws as well.
• Evocative Imagery Perhaps you are raffling off something that won’t fit on a table, such as a Caribbean vacation or a years’ worth of housekeeping services. A poster-sized image of a lovely beach or sparkling-clean dining room, perhaps mounted on a piece of foam board, can be created for a small fee. It becomes an image of a picture being worth far more than a thousand words.
• Thumbnails For simplicity’s sake, you may simply choose to add the images of your top prizes directly to the ticket template. Many tickets offer free image uploads: spaces where you can add a small photograph of the telly, island, or other prize. If you are unable to set up a prize table or large images, this is an ideal solution.

3) Make It Mandatory Certain organisations, such as schools or churches, have found that requiring members to sell a certain number of tickets (or to purchase those tickets themselves if they can’t be bothered) guarantees that they always reach their sales goals. Enforced participation is a wonderful sales tactic, provided your members truly believe in your mission and wish to help you reach your quota.

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Whether you’re holding the draw at a school dance, a reception, or a fundraising carnival, you can increase attendance with a celebrity appearance. Perhaps someone on your staff knows a true celebrity who can be persuaded to show up, but if not, consider that you do know someone whose presence will encourage others to attend: this might be a local sportscaster, a popular teacher, or even a popular older student.

Advertise the big event with posters and flyers. Print out invitation and event tickets to help your students and their friends feel special. Spread the word in any way you can. Use your social networks, website, and any other online forum where you can advertise the event.

Whatever the event, be sure to have students circulating with the remaining raffle tickets so you can keep selling right up to the last minute. Then, make a production of it! Use a microphone and an emcee. Gather a crowd. Find a drummer and get a drum roll. Draw out the moment: announce the number of tickets sold, the amount of money raised, and explain how this money will help your school. Then, have your celebrity draw the lucky winners and announce them. While the crowd cheers and the winners mount the stage, you can relax, knowing you’ve held a successful school fundraiser.

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Some things to keep in mind: how will you track sales? You need to decide in advance, but you should keep a record not only of how many tickets you’ve sold, but the names and contact information of everyone who purchases one.

While your students can certainly ask their friends, families, and neighbors to buy tickets, for maximum impact, you’ll want to use every tool in your arsenal. Other schools have had success with some smart ideas.

Consider finding a business or a festival that will allow you to set up a little table where your students can sell to passersby. If they have uniforms or costumes, they should wear them: the more adorable they look, the more tickets they will sell. Displaying the prizes prominently helps fuel sales. If this is not possible, at least have photographs of the prizes available.

Prepare your students by coaching them. You don’t want them to sound as if they’re reading off of cue cards, but they should be able to explain to potential customers where their money will be going. Let the students know why raffle ticket sales are important to their education. If they understand the meaning of the raffle, they can tell ticket buyers how their contribution will enrich the lives of children.

Next week: The Big Draw

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Long-term prize draws for nonprofit organisations such as your school can be fun, but they require a lot of hard work. Start planning in advance and make a success of the occasion. Choosing the appropriate prizes, proper sales strategies, and turning the final draw into an exciting event can all translate into success.

First, know your supporters. To whom will you be selling raffle tickets, and for what prize are they most likely to open their wallets? Ask around, or use an Internet quiz feature like Facebook Questions to get the best intelligence. Your draw will be a bigger success if people are excited about your prizes.

Next, prepare your sales force. Consider a separate prize draw for students who sell the most tickets, or else offer them their own tickets for a student raffle based on the number of tickets they sell. Get them excited to start selling, and teach them the fundamentals of sales. Be sure to teach them how to be safe as well as how to be polite and be good salespeople.

Then, set a date for the big draw. If you can incorporate it into a larger event such as a carnival, performances, or dance, you can increase interest and continue selling raffle tickets right up to the moment of the prize draw.

Once you know what prizes will be offered, how much they will sell for, and when the draw will take place, it’s time to print those raffle tickets. Choose an appropriate design online, fill out the ticket template, and print those tickets. They’ll be shipped to you so you can get your kids to start selling.

Next week: The big sales drive

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Games of chance fall under Gambling Act 2005: in most cases, your fundraiser will require a licence and some degree of government supervision if you intend to sell raffle tickets and hold a prize draw for a large, multi-day raffle open to the general public. One way to circumvent this oversight is to transform the game of chance into a trivia contest.

To do so, rather than simply selling the ticket, you are selling an opportunity to answer a trivia question, which may lead to a prize. In general, this is done by selecting a question that most of your contestants should be able to answer. For the most part, asking this question eliminates the need for a licence, and in general, there should be no problems.

However, there have been cases wherein organisations with higher profiles have been held under suspicion for asking questions that were too easy: common knowledge versus trivia. According to the law, the question must be complex enough to “deter a significant proportion of potential participants, or to eliminate a significant proportion of entrants.”

Don’t court trouble! Protect yourself by choosing a question that is not dumbed down. For instance, “Name the Prime Minister,” might be considered a no-brainer. Depending on your supporters, you might instead ask donors to solve a math problem, or answer a question that would only be common knowledge only within your group.

Naturally, there will be a number of correct answers. All these raffle tickets go into the hat, and from there, you may hold your fully legal prize draw!

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Selling Raffle Tickets to support your local school is perhaps the simplest way to help earn more money for education. You need not organise food, drink, and entertainment, as you must for some charitable events, and no one need sort and delivery boxes of biscuits, candies, or other popular fundraising sales items. I might point out that such fundraisers also mean that a large percentage of your money goes to the organisation that sells the biscuits and candies to your school, whereas all prize draw profits stay at the academic institution.

The key to successful school prize draws is to motivate the salespeople: that is to say, your children. Small children may not be able to visualize the outcome of a successful draw. Perhaps they don’t understand why you need the money, or the long-term benefits they will receive. But they can certainly visualize winning a prize on their own.

You may choose to offer a large prize to the top salesperson, but an even better way to motivate them is to instead set up a second raffle for the kids, but they cannot buy tickets to this draw. Instead, they must earn those tickets. For instance, for every ten pounds of money they raise, they earn one ticket for a prize draw to win something they really want: such as an iPod or a new bicycle. Take a survey and determine what prize will best motivate them, and then watch them start selling!

Here’s a new tip for earning more money: the “fill in service.” If supporters buy a large amount of tickets, your students can fill in their names and contact information on the tickets for them. Make it a number worth your time: say, twenty-five pounds. You’ll be surprise how many people will buy more tickets to earn this free service!

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Finding the prizes is your first step. Since you must identify the three largest prizes in your draw directly on the raffle ticket, it’s best to take care of this issue prior to considering the other details. What can you offer? The more attractive the prize, the more raffle tickets you can sell.

You must also identify the time and place of the actual prize draw. Don’t have this information? Figure it out immediately! If you do not already have a venue in mind, perhaps you can make a deal with someone who does have a space (such as a the owner of your local pub) and would appreciate the extra business your crown might draw. Choose a time and place.

How about prices? Typically, you’ll want to sell your raffle tickets for one or two pounds. Work out the sums: how many tickets will you need to sell at various prices to reach your sales goal.

Finally, if your raffle is to require a licence, go get it! This information must be printed on the body of the ticket, so you’ll need the licence number prior to ticket printing.

Review the information. If you’ve filled in all the blanks and it all makes sense, then you’re ready to print your own raffle tickets online and start selling!

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“Buy a raffle ticket?” the bigger one said, waving a single ticket in my face.

“Um…” I replied.

“What’s it for?” my friend asked.

“For our school.”

But what would that ticket do for his school? The little chap couldn’t say. He didn’t know anything about the cause for which he was raising money. All he knew was the name of his school, but he couldn’t say whether they needed to raise funds for a new gym floor, to send the band to a competition or (as is the case with some schools) to purchase base essentials like paper and pencils!

“You can win $500!” the kid continued. “And the ticket is only $1!”

“But how many tickets do you think you’ll sell?” I asked. “How many did they print?”

The child didn’t know. And while $500 is a fair sum, the odds of winning depend only the number of tickets sold. For a cash raffle with a prize of $500, they would need to print at least 1000 raffle tickets and sell them all to make an appreciable profit. A “50-50″ cash raffle is the standard, although, by selling enough tickets, one could offer a large prize and still keep an even larger profit. In the case of a $500 50-50 cash raffle, that $1 ticket has a 1 in 1000 chance of winning.

But I couldn’t calculate the odds. I simply wasn’t given enough information to be moved by the child’s pitch, and these boys were old enough that there were no adults kept handily about to answer my questions. (Meaning, of course, that they were old enough that I wasn’t moved by the cuteness factor of their pitch, either.)

This underscores the need to prepare your sales team, whether they are seasoned professionals or 10 years old. Make a list of all the questions someone might conceivably ask about your raffle before you start selling booklets, and coach your crew to memorize the answers.

Needless to say, those kids didn’t sell me a raffle ticket that day.

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