Re: Door prizes for meeting
Re: Door prizes for meeting
- Subject: Re: Door prizes for meeting
- From: Daniel East/MaMUGs <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 16:51:52 -0400
On Monday, August 11, 2003, at 09:08 AM, Lorene S Romero wrote:
>
>
What is your group doing? -Lorene
A few thoughts but let's start at the beginning...
Basically, I have found that many shareware developers (especially
startups with good ratings) are willing to offer a raffle and a review
copy of their products. I try to stick with the ones that I know to be
better quality and of some value. Putting together some of those with a
little t-shirt or other "swag" item makes for a nice door prize.
If you simply don't have the time and/or resources to go after some
vendors (although I believe that is rare - please make that effort), a
great thing to offer is something like a "date pack" to your local
movie theater or even some kind of arrangement with your local ice
cream parlor, etc.. ANY gift certificate worth having so that you might
put it on the proverbial block in order to raise some funds for your
groups. Do remember that "raffles" are considered gambling in some
states and counties so check your local applicable laws. "Door prizes"
may be a better term. This is seldom enforced but I thought it worth
mentioning.
Another great way to get vendors to help out is to (and I'm sorry if
you guys might be tired of hearing me say this) get your groups
together for a combined meeting. You'll reach more people, the vendors
get a bigger audience and, in turn, are more likely to send cool stuff
to raffle off. Only a little extra planning and emailing is needed.
Sometimes you have enough left over to give each group something to
raffle after the fact. You could even mention such a plan to the
vendors. Nice follow-up to such an event, I think.
MaMUGs uses MailDrop from FreshlySqueezed Software
(
http://www.freshlysqueezedsoftware.com) to keep our vendor list and
emails in a friendly format. Much like one that is mail-merged and
looks nice and personal. It doesn't get addressed as "bcc" and is far
less likely to be filtered out by spam filters. Of course, you could
just send a note to each vendor as well.
In my experience, if you send your very simple and positive message to
a TON of vendors explaining what you (very realistically) can do for
them with just what you would want, you will get a response.
A few good points to mention when contacting a vendor (which you may
already know):
- ACTUAL number of members in your group
- ACTUAL number (between x and y) that really attend each meeting
- will the product info and URL appear in your newsletter (if you have
one)
- will the product info and URL appear on your group's website (if you
have one)
- when you plan to present this software and will it be a part of a
presentation
- any materials and/or special offers for your group that the vendor
can provide (mention quantities - you don't want too many or too few)
- If you have the resources, maybe suggest that they send you a PDF for
your group to print locally to save them the expense (great if you only
have a smaller group size)
- Invite the vendor to actually attend or send their local
representative to visit your group - even if not to present!
If I can be of help to any group (in our region or elsewhere), feel
free to find me via iChat. "MaMUGs Team" MaMUGs mission is to help user
groups with this exact question and our services are entirely free. We
work hard to find the best products and information before we recommend
it so that MUGs have access to what really might work best for their
leadership and membership.
I think this is a great question and I'm really enjoying hearing about
what everyone is doing in this regard.
Personal regards,
Dan
_____________________________
A message from:
Daniel M. East, President
The Mid-Atlantic Macintosh User Groups Team (MaMUGs)
co-host, "PC Talk - Mac Edition" Sundays @ 8pm on WPEN Radio,
Philadelphia
Member, Apple Consultants Network
email@hidden
http://www.mamugs.org
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