We built a sweepstakes microsite where fans of a national family-entertainment brand register once, then come back every day to flip cards for an instant-win prize, all tied to a global summer soccer event. One sign-up enters them in the grand prize drawing and hands them a referral link that can earn up to ten more entries when friends join. We engineered the whole thing, the registration flow, the daily game, the sweepstakes, and a viral referral engine, in 47 days from kickoff to launch.
Skyzone wanted a four-week promotion that did two jobs at once: spike daily return visits and grow its marketing list fast. We delivered a sweepstakes microsite that pairs a card-flip instant-win game people can play once a day with a grand prize sweepstakes and a referral program that turns every entrant into a recruiter. The creative came from the brand’s agency. We built the engine underneath it and owned the parts that keep a promotion legal and the entrant data safe.
THE CHALLENGE
A promotion like this lives or dies on two things most teams underestimate. First, it has to bring people back day after day, not just capture one sign-up and go quiet. Second, it collects a lot of personal information from a lot of people in a short window, and it has to do that inside the rules that govern prize promotions. The brand needed daily engagement and viral growth without tripping a compliance wire or mishandling a single entrant’s data. That is a harder build than a one-and-done entry form.
WHAT WE BUILT / OUR APPROACH
We built the sweepstakes microsite on Ruby on Rails with a PostgreSQL database, hosted on Heroku, so it could absorb traffic spikes from social pushes without falling over. Registration happens once. A returning fan just enters their email on the homepage, and the system recognizes them and routes them straight to that day’s game, no password, no friction. The instant-win game is a card-flip mechanic: pick three cards, watch them flip, win or come back tomorrow. We seeded prizes across the full promotion period, capped each person at one instant-win prize for the run, and built four distinct confirmation states so the right message shows whether someone just won, just lost, or is on a return visit.
The referral system is where the growth compounds. Every registrant gets a unique referral link. When a friend signs up through it, the referrer earns a bonus sweepstakes entry, up to ten, and gets an email confirming it. We added safeguards against self-referral and abuse so the viral loop drives real registrations, not gamed ones.
Behind all of it sits a secure admin dashboard: entry search and export, prize seeding and inventory, referral conversion reporting, and daily play and registration counts. The people running the promotion can see exactly what’s happening and pull a clean winner list when it’s time to draw.
COMPLIANCE & DATA SECURITY
This is where the build earns its keep. The microsite age-gates every entrant at 18-plus, requires official-rules acceptance, supports alternate method of entry, and enforces the entry limits that keep a sweepstakes clean: one account per person, one instant-win prize per registrant, capped referral bonuses, and household limits. Winner selection and outreach run through the admin tools, not a spreadsheet.
The promotion collects real personal information from every entrant: name, email, phone, date of birth, and location. Southern Made is SOC 2 Type 2 certified across all five trust principles, so protecting that data is built into how we work, not bolted on after. For any brand that has watched a promo collect thousands of records and then worried about where they live, that matters.
RESULTS & IMPACT
- Built and launched in 47 days, from kickoff to go-live, with a full registration flow, daily instant-win game, grand prize sweepstakes, and referral engine.
- Engineered to scale for social and influencer-driven traffic spikes across the four-week run.
- Compliance handled end to end: age-gating, official rules, AMOE, entry limits, fraud safeguards, and winner selection.
- Entrant PII protected under SOC 2 Type 2 certification across all five trust principles.
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