Tag Archives: Award program

New Feature Makes it Easy to Communicate with Contestants & Judges

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*Click here to access our latest newsletter (April 16, 2015) announcing our new Marketing Manager feature!


groupemailiconBetterBNC is delighted to announce a new feature which dramatically improves the way contest administrators communicate with those involved in their contest.

The platform’s new Marketing Manager feature allows contest administrators to easily communicate with users by sending email from the administrator dashboard to contest judges and contestants from both current and previous contest years.  

TCreate Campaignhe administrator can create and save email templates or create individual emails. You can target judges who have not yet finished assignments, or specific groups of contestants such as those who made entries last year, but haven’t done so yet in your current contest. You can launch campaigns to call for entries, or remind users of impending deadlines.  The feature is easy and intuitive to use and makes communicating with your judges and contestants more productive.  

The new Marketing Manager feature is part of BetterBNC’s 2015 platform upgrade and is available to contests at no additional cost. 

Want to know more about BetterBNC or schedule a personal demo, email karen@smalltownpapers.com today.

BEWARE this Halloween!

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It’s that time of year when people dress themselves up and pretend to be someone they’re not.  It’s all part of the fun of Halloween.

There are other imposters lurking about that can also be a bit scary – companies pretending to be something they’re not.   There are a few of those in our business – contest platforms who are calling around saying “we’re just like BetterBNC but cheaper.”

Well, we’re flattered and thankful to our loyal customers who are telling us about the calls from those businesses but make sure you do know the difference between BetterBNC, which is currently the preferred contest platform for nearly 200 media and PR organizations in the US and Canada, and the other companies, most of which offer generic platforms that they will adapt for media contests.

BetterBNC was designed by media professionals specifically for news, creative and PR awards programs.  It is based on industry contest best practices and provides the security features and high-performance cloud server processor systems needed for today’s journalism and PR contests.

We know that if you shop around and ask the right questions, you’ll see the advantages of BetterBNC.   For example, make sure you can’t just log in and make an entry to a contest without an authorization feature.  If you can do it to another contest, someone could do it to yours.

We had two contests who went to another vendor who promised a cheaper experience but a year later they came back to BetterBNC.  One told us they now know why the other vendor was so inexpensive – they didn’t offer the needed features that are core to BetterBNC.  Another said the other base platform was inexpensive but after customizing it so it worked for a journalism contest they spent more than they had with BetterBNC.   Ask questions and make sure you know what you’re getting.

Have a fun and safe Halloween!