Feature showcase - SMS lottery and prize draws

If you're a Cymba user, you'll know our platform offers many features, all of which have been designed to make mobile payments and messaging more efficient, flexible, and appealing for charities.

But do you know everything the platform offers? We've launched Cymba's feature showcase – an ongoing series highlighting the system's functionality – to show you everything we offer.

If you're not already a Cymba user, this series will help you better understand why you should be. This edition will cover increasing donor lifetime value and diversifying your supporter base with SMS prize draws and lotteries.

A look at SMS prize draws and lotteries

Lotteries and prize draws offer an excellent opportunity to foster engagement and raise additional funds from your current supporters. With seasonal draws and regular lotteries, your existing supporters are typically eager to participate, and these initiatives can generate extra revenue for your cause.

Regular giving via SMS is easy with Cymba. You can send or schedule messages and connect your website or application to our API. With a 98% open rate, SMS messages are three times more likely to get read than emails.

With our charity SMS lottery platform, Connected Lottery, supporters can buy tickets to win one or more prizes. Our platform enables charities to recruit more lottery players, manage compliance through SMS, and process payments.

SMS donations vs the lottery product

There are notable distinctions between regular giving platform SMS (RGPSMS) donations and our lottery product:

RGPSMS donations: 

• Supporters can make varying monthly contributions, including £3, £4, £5, and £10.
• Supporters can't choose the 'skip' options with RGPSMS donations.
• We have abundant numbers short codes for RGPSMS promotion. But there are restrictions on the short codes that can be used to promote the Lottery.

Lottery platform:

• Lottery players can make a fixed payment of £5. Typically, this enters them into one draw for five weeks.
• The frequency of payments is every five weeks.
• There is no skip.
• We export the lottery players’ details to the external lottery managers, who are responsible for running the actual lottery draw. They also hold the client lottery database and communicate with the winners. We work with four leading ELMS.

Cymba case study

For a real-life example of how Cymba can help you manage regular giving via lottery, read our case study on Cats Protection, the UK's largest cat welfare charity.

The case study explores how the charity used our solutions to increase the number of people participating in its weekly lottery, Win With Cats.

Explore the world of SMS lotteries and prize draws with Cymba

Want more information on how Cymba can help you manage SMS lotteries and prize draws? Contact our team today.

Call 0845 08 29622, email our team at enquiries@cymba.co.uk or text CYMBA to 88008* and we will call you back.

*Texts charged at your standard network rate.