"ActionPoint were experts in developing a reliable solution that catered for high volumes of entries into the Second Chance Draw. As a team they are always proactive in problem solving and recommending a best in class approach for our development process."

Eric Sexton, Senior Product Manager
National Lottery

Our Story

The National Lottery has been an integral part of Irish life since it first launched over 30 years ago in 1987. One reason for the National Lottery’s longevity and success has been its willingness to adapt to change and to focus on innovation. This is demonstrated in the way the National Lottery has developed its online play offering, including the development of the online services such as the National Lottery App.

The National Lottery, along with its marketing partners, are leaders when it comes to innovation and creative marketing. Together, they sought ActionPoint’s technical expertise to help turn one innovative idea, “Crackthecode” into a reality. This game required a robust and highly secure back-end system, which ActionPoint successfully delivered.

The Challenge

Following on the success of the ‘Crackthecode’ game, the National Lottery approached ActionPoint to assist in developing software for an online Christmas themed draw – the National Lottery’s ‘12 Weeks of Christmas’. For this game, users had to enter a 13-digit code found on a range of Scratch Cards into a second chance draw. This code was entered online into a weekly draw for a chance to win one of five €1,000 cash prizes. Each code gave multiple entries into the same draw, depending on the Scratch Card. Along with entering the 13 digit code, users were also required to provide personal details and optional opt-in for marketing communications.

This game ran for 12 weeks with draws each week in the lead up to Christmas. At peak season, the National Lottery expected high volumes of traffic and couldn’t afford any downtime.

There were several challenges:

Outstanding User Experience

The National Lottery is immensely popular with a wide-ranging demographic. The application needed to be responsive, stable and accessible to non-digital savvy users.

Airtight Security and Data Collection

Much of the success of this marketing project was dependent on gathering large quantities of personal information. Added to that, each week an independent facilitator required entry to the back-end to carry out the prize draw. Both factors meant that security had to be airtight.

Highly Scalable Application

The application needed scalability and the ability to withstand high levels of traffic. As the draws were to take place at the end of the week, spikes in traffic caused by last minute entries had to be considered.

The Solution

The National Lottery’s 12 Weeks of Christmas game was created to provide a fun new way for users to experience Scratch Card games, in doing so introducing the retailer player to the online world and allow for further online communications. As such, CRM integration was extremely important. ActionPoint created a link from the 12 Weeks of Christmas online game to the National Lottery back end CRM system. This allowed the National Lottery to leverage their CRM system for the purpose of recording and storing the details of the draw participants. In addition, provided that the customer opted in, participant details such as name, address, email etc. were also made available to the National Lottery for marketing purposes.

  • The National Lottery - Christmas Countdown Banner

The Result

The software required for National Lottery’s 12 weeks of Christmas online game was developed on time and on budget, with exceptional results.

  1. 100% Data Capture – Over the course of the campaign there were over 250,000 entries successfully executed, with a 100% data capture success rate.
  2. Zero Downtime – Spanning the entire length of the project there was zero downtime. The spikes in traffic anticipated from last minute entries were handled by the ActionPoint system without incident.
  3. Perfect Execution of High Profile Draws – Each week, an independent facilitator was granted administrative access to carry out the prize draws. These high-profile draws were successfully executed with full audibility.
  4. Microsoft Azure Scalability – Using the power of Microsoft Azure, ActionPoint was able to deliver a highly flexible and scalable system, one that could scale up to as required, 20,000 daily users.

ActionPoint’s mission is to help organisation’s achieve their greatest potential using the power of technology. For National Lottery, an idea that has driven significant brand engagement and revenue, was made possible by collaborating with an experienced IT team in ActionPoint. Through combining expertise and resources with a trusted technology partner, National Lottery can continue to push the limits and exceed their ever-growing potential.

National Lottery

2015

Custom Software Development,

New Product Development for '12 Weeks of Christmas' Draw,

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