Caffeine Is Nearly Here

The all new SweepsXpress is nearly here. Now called Caffeine", the idea-that-never-dies behind this new branch of ePrize is the creation of DIY (do it yourself) sweeepstakes that tie into the pooled... well, here; I'll let Shaun McCormack and Christopher Heine explain back from their March 8th, 2001 article in the Detroit News titled "ELotto Program Dangles $1 Million Carrot":

Marketers can showcase tickets on their home pages, in banner ads, in pop-up boxes, through e-mail messages or on e-commerce pages.

SweepsXpress lets marketers launch a fully licensed and legal sweepstakes promotion on their site in 24 hours.

"This normally takes 30 to 60 days," Linkner said.

SweepsXpress is a prepackaged Internet promotion designed by ePrize. Marketers need $950 to launch a sweepstakes as well as one line of HTML code in order to integrate it with their site, Linkner said. The cost includes technology, sweepstakes licensing and prizes.

With SweepsXpress, several marketers take part in the same promotion and can share the cost of one expensive prize. Sweepstakes entrants can come from any Web site, but there is only one winner.

"Odds of winning are spread across multiple sites, so it reduces the cost to marketers," Linkner said.

SweepsXpress promotions run for 90 days and attract consumers using a three-year lease of a Porsche Boxster, a cruise for two to Hawaii, a Sea Doo GTI personal watercraft or a year of mortgage payments up to $1,500 per month.

"We feel the best way for marketers to break through the clutter is to offer big, sexy, exotic prizes," Linkner said.

The key difference appears to be that Caffeine will run on Flash rather than HTML. I wouldn't be surprised if the good brains of Terry May are behind the architecture there as he's frighteningly smart. Going through one of these promotions for Fathead.com, I would only advise that the page loadtimes even on a T1 are pretty darn slow. Hopefully that gets addressed before the official launch.

Though Caffeine has been in "Development Hell" for ages, it looks like key players are pulling it out of the Stygian depths for an immenent and successful launch. Congrats!