How Free Prize Draws work — and how your business can sponsor one for free

Free Prize Draws are one of the features on the site aimed squarely at local businesses, and it's worth explaining properly rather than assuming it's obvious. Here's how it actually works, and why it might be worth putting your business behind one.

A Free Prize Draw is exactly what it sounds like. A local business sponsors a prize, residents who've opted in are automatically entered, no purchase necessary, and we pick a winner on a schedule the business chooses, weekly or monthly. There's no "enter now" button for residents to click. If someone's signed up and opted in, they're in every active draw, which means far more entries than any raffle or competition post could get on its own, and no admin overhead on your end either.

Sponsoring one is genuinely one of the easiest ways to get your business in front of people who live locally. The draw appears on our prize draws page, gets its own detail page linking back to you, features in our weekly digest email, and gets picked up automatically on our Facebook and Instagram pages once it's approved. If a prize goes unclaimed, you choose what happens next, whether it rolls over into a bigger prize, an extra winner gets drawn, or it simply runs again.

Sponsoring a prize draw is one of the perks of our Premium tier, which is normally a paid upgrade. If that's put you off before, this is where Founding Business status comes in. We're currently hand-picking a small group of local independent businesses to become Founding Businesses, and it comes with 12 months of Premium completely free, prize draw sponsorship included, along with featured placement, unlimited offers, and a badge that stays on your listing for good, even after the free year ends.

Setting one up takes a few minutes from your business dashboard. Choose the prize, how often it's drawn, and what happens if nobody claims it, then submit it for approval and we take care of the rest.

If you'd like to sponsor a Free Prize Draw, or want to be considered for Founding Business status, message us here or email hello@warwickandleamington.com and we'll get you set up.