The awards manager’s guide to effective program communications

In this article

• • Set and communicate your mission and message
  • Send regular emails to keep participants in the loop
  • Provide entry and judging status updates
  • Engage your community with multimedia and user-submitted content
  • Get social

A key ingredient for awards program success is a good and effective communication strategy. Not just one that looks good on paper; but the kind of communication that engages and inspires your community to participate, attracts and retains industry leaders as judges, and is perfectly timed to keep everyone organised and on track

Yes, that’s a lot! But so much rides on good communications. It all starts with clearly stating your awards program mission before your program even opens. Who is it for? Who can participate? Who are the judges? What or who are you looking to recognise? 

Then, as your program takes shape, it’s necessary to send regular updates to everyone involved—from sponsors and program managers to judges and entrants. There is a lot to think about when planning your awards communications strategy and how best to avoid any gaps along the way. 

Below, we’ll outline some best practices and common ways to keep your entire awards community in the loop, as well as some effective ways to save time while doing it!

Set and communicate your mission and message

It all starts with a solid foundation. Once you know you want to create an awards program, it’s important to outline its mission. Why are you running this program? What is the goal? Who are you recognising, and why? 

By clearly communicating your mission and/or vision, you build transparency and lay out a clear direction and imperative for the program. This will work to motivate and inspire others to join as well as set clear expectations for program participants.

Award Force client Total Mom Pitch shares their mission on their marketing website

Highlight your mission or vision statement on your awards marketing website and materials so your community can easily read about your program goals, organisation and program.

In Award Force: 

Create an “about page” in the platform to provide additional information about your organisation and mission. You can include photos, videos and more. You can create as many about pages as you need in Award Force and show them to users with specific roles, such as showing judging information only to judges, or instructions for entering only to entrants.  

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Send regular emails to keep participants in the loop

There is a lot of information to disseminate when running an awards program. And it’s important to send any communications in a timely manner, or rather, when it’s most relevant and applicable to each program participant. 

By keeping your community in the loop, you effectively cut down on support calls and emails, increase engagement, keep your program top of mind and potentially increase submitted entries. 

Example emails to send out:

• Program announcement: let your community know about your awards program. Talk about the mission, who it’s for, and what you’re looking for
• Open entry announcement: schedule an email for the moment entries open to let your community know it’s time to enter
• Closing entry warning: let your entrants know ahead of time (one day prior or one week, perhaps) that time is running out. A reminder email before entries close gives your participants one last chance to submit
• Closed entry announcement: announce when entries are officially closed for entry
• Judging assignments: let your judges know that entries are ready to judge
• Winner or shortlist announcements: share the winners or shortlisted entries with your community via award notification emails
• Awards event or gala announcements: let your community know about the awards event or gala to celebrate the winners
• Return entrant invitations: encourage past participants to return by informing them of new categories, offering special prices and other promotions

In Award Force: 

It’s easy to create, schedule and send personalised email broadcasts from the platform. You can send these broadcasts in bulk to multiple, specific users of your choosing, and personalise them with merge tags and headers and footers with your branding. Learn more. 

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Provide entry and judging status updates 

Program participants will expect status updates on their submissions. And judges will want to know when entries are ready for their assessment. 

Consider sending regular program notifications to help keep everyone in the loop. For example, when an entry is submitted, a notification can be sent immediately to that entrant to let them know the entry was successfully submitted. 

Or, when an entry has passed the eligibility or qualification round, a notification can be sent to your judges to let them know the entry is ready for judging. 

 Engage your community with multimedia and user-submitted content

There is more to communicating with your awards community than program updates and notifications. It’s also important to engage them—to attract them to your program in the first place, to help them through the entry process and to promote the program overall to a wider audience.

A great way to do this is by using multimedia such as photos, videos and audio. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Promote your program

• Showcase your awards program with a video about the awards. Highlight previous winners or participants. Use engaging content and keep it short–like a highlight reel. Video is a great way to attract people to your awards program! Then, showcase the video on your awards website or platform.
• Interview your judges. Provide audio or video interviews with your judges to build credibility for your program and visibility for them! Showcase their expertise, their experience in the industry and any tips they might have for entrants.
• Create an online gallery of past winners or shortlisted entries. This is a very effective way to promote your program and attract more entrants, top-notch judges and sponsors. These can even be displayed at a chapter or category level.

Share user-submitted content

• Highlight images or video from your shortlisted entries across your email communications, website or on social media (more on that, below).
• Solicit bios from your judges to highlight on your awards pages, in your program press releases and across your awards management platform.

Create your own help content to guide users through the process

• Create quick and easy how-to videos to instruct users on how to apply and submit an entry or for judges on how to assess each entry. This can significantly reduce support requests.

In Award Force:

Download any user-submitted content to use in your own promotions and share any content via About pages in the platform. You can create as many of these pages as you need, and feature videos, photos, audio and more. Then, create an online gallery to showcase any highlighted entries.

Provide images of sample entries, attachments or instructions for entrants and judges. Learn how to add content blocks in Award Force.

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Get social

One of the best places to share and promote your awards program news and updates is across social media. Whether your audience is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or other social platforms, you can easily create a social media strategy that increases your digital footprint and attracts more people to your program. 

Program growth starts with building awareness. People need to know about your program to participate in it, and social media is a great tool for spreading the word. 

Award Force client BIID Awards shares a post about short-listed entries in their program

To wrap up, effective communications about your awards program can generate buzz, attract entrants and judges to your program, cut down on support costs and help grow your awards program overall.

Want to learn more about how Award Force can help? Watch a demo today.