by ticketprinting on May 16, 2012
Upload Your Own Images to Create Fabulous Raffle Tickets
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.
by ticketprinting on March 14, 2012
Tactics to Increase Raffle Sales
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.
by ticketprinting on April 15, 2011
Having printed your customised raffle tickets online, you are now ready for the most difficult part of your big educational prize draw to support your school: selling all those tickets. Once those tickets are delivered, you can begin distributing them to your pint-sized sales force and send them out to sell.
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
by ticketprinting on April 7, 2011
Selling Raffle Tickets without a License
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!
by ticketprinting on March 28, 2011
Educational Fundraising Success
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!
by ticketprinting on March 22, 2011
Ready to print your own raffle tickets? If you’re uncertain, the advent of filling out your raffle ticket template is the perfect opportunity to determine whether or not you have taken care of the necessary details. An online ticket template, which prompts you to fill in all the required details, can help you identify any missing information.
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!
by ticketprinting on March 14, 2011
At a local fair last weekend, a pair of young boys approached me as I was talking to a fellow I knew from my gym.
“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.
by ticketprinting on March 13, 2011
Fundraising is always a gamble, but learning more about the successes and failures of those who have come before you can help ensure that you choose the correct path for your own financial accomplishments. Do you know others who have printed their own raffle tickets online, or organized their own prize draws? If so, have you not learned something from their experience? If not, would it not be helpful to find out how others have succeeded?
Coming soon, UK Ticket Printing will devote this space to sharing the stories of our customer’s successes (and failures!) for all to learn from. We’ll profile the best and worst prize draws you’ve ever seen, learn what to print on a raffle ticket, and see top fundraisers in action.
Have you a story you’d like to share? We’ll be contacting potential customers for future features, but if you have something to say right now, why not let us know through this blog? We’ll write an article about your group and your raffle, sharing links to your websites and pages for your upcoming activities, plus pictures of your event, your prizes, or your logo. There may even be some extra incentives for your future draws involved.
Keep checking this space for more top idea and the freshest thoughts on local and regional trends to make your upcoming activities more profitable than ever!
by ticketprinting on February 28, 2011
It may seem like a distant dream on a dreary day, but spring shall soon arrive, and with it, sunshine, flowers, and a mass migration to the out-of-doors. Your supporters have been holed up all winter. Why not provide them with a little taste of fresh greenery?
Printing colorful, vernal Raffle Tickets for your next fundraiser is the perfect way to welcome Persephone back from the Underworld while increasing your funds! Spread the joy of spring with the lush images of new life. Pictured above, one of UK Ticket Printing’s Nature Series, the Green Leaves Raffle Ticket, along with one of two Spring Fling designs. Both work wonders in providing some much-needed light after a gloomy season.
Consider giving your prize draw a festive name that summons the idea of new life and new possibility. Ensure your sales team maintains a sunny outlook as they go about selling tickets. Be sure to remind potential supporters that the weather is about to turn, the season will change, and that now is the time to support new ventures and nurture fresh shoots.
Your spring renewal starts with luscious, green Raffle Ticket designs, a splendid way to capitalize on the human heart’s hope for the new dawn of a new day.
by ticketprinting on February 22, 2011
Prize draws are a popular way to earn a little extra money for your business, club, or organisation. The simplicity of the prize draw, which can be easily arranged with nothing more than a roll of raffle tickets, or, if you are feeling ambitious, some lovely stapled booklets, perhaps printed with the name of your group or cause, and even customised with your logo.
If you’ve found success with a one or two day prize draw or raffle conducted within the auspices of your event (considered a “small lottery” under the law), it might seen logical to take it to the next step. Why not increase your profit by increasing the size of your prizes?
The answer to that is, of course, that this may be illegal. The law restricts small lotteries to prizes of with a value of 250 GBP or less, and forbids the awarding of a cash prize in such situations. You may already be aware of some of the other laws pertaining to small lotteries, lucky dips, tombolas, and sweepstakes. For instance, you may only sell these raffle tickets during the event, and you must choose the winner during the course of the event.
Cash Raffles may be arranged, but they require special licence and oversight. If you wish to maintain your fundraiser as a small lottery, you must avoid cash prizes. Otherwise, you must register with the Gaming Council and be subject to other rules and oversight.
If you’d like to learn more about using a prize draw or raffle as a fundraiser, you can ring the Institute of Fundraising on 020 7840 1000.
