Writing an Office Sweepstake Email People Actually Read

Before the last big football tournament, our office manager sent a sweepstake email that ran to 640 words. It explained the history of office sweepstakes, three different ways the draw might work, a paragraph about responsible fun and, at the very bottom, the only thing anyone needed to know: pay five pounds to Sam by Friday. By Thursday afternoon, eleven people out of forty had paid. Most of the rest said they had not seen the email or had not got to the end of it.

A sweepstake email is a small thing, but it is a good test of workplace writing. It has one purpose, a deadline, a small amount of money and a mixed audience, some keen and some barely interested. Getting it right uses the same skills as any practical announcement.

What the email actually has to do

Strip away the enthusiasm and a sweepstake email has four jobs:

Say what it is, in one line.
Say what people need to do, and by when.
Say how the draw and prizes work, briefly.
Make it easy to say no without feeling awkward.

Everything else is optional. Our 640 word email did all four, but it hid them inside a lot of text that most readers skipped. The fix was not adding clarity. It was removing everything around it.

The rewritten version

For the next tournament, I offered to write it. The whole email came to 94 words:

Subject: World Cup sweepstake, 5 pounds, pay Sam by Friday 3pm
We are running a sweepstake for the World Cup. 5 pounds gets you one random team. Pay Sam in cash or by bank transfer by Friday at 3pm. The draw is Friday at 4pm in the kitchen, and we will post the results in the team chat. Prizes: 60 percent of the pot to the winner, 25 percent to the runner up, 15 percent to the team that finishes last. Entirely optional, no reminders after this one. Questions to Sam.

Thirty four people paid by Friday lunchtime. The subject line did most of the work. Anyone who read only the subject knew what, how much, who and when.

The advice I disagree with: make it fun and personal

Much of the advice on internal communications says that informal emails like this should be warm, chatty and full of personality. It builds culture. It makes people feel included.

I think warmth is fine, but it should never sit between the reader and the action. In a busy inbox, a chatty opening paragraph is not read as friendly. It is read as something to skim past. The friendliest thing you can do for a colleague is let them decide in five seconds whether they are in.

If you want personality, put it after the key information, or in the draw itself. Our office manager is still in charge of the sweepstake, and she now makes the draw an event, with a bowl, folded paper and dramatic reading of the results. The email is short. The occasion is fun. The two jobs are kept apart.

Handling the people who are not interested

A sweepstake email goes to everyone, and not everyone wants it. Some colleagues do not follow football. Some prefer not to take part in anything involving money and chance, for personal or religious reasons. Some already spend their weekends on pools or prediction sites like ankertoto and have no interest in an office version. All of those are fine.

A good announcement makes opting out effortless. Three small choices help:

Say it is optional, clearly and once.
Promise no follow up reminders, and keep the promise.
Never publish a list of who has or has not joined. It turns a bit of fun into social pressure.

The same principles apply to any voluntary workplace activity: collections for leaving gifts, charity runs, social events. People respond better to requests they can easily decline.

A template you can reuse

For any short announcement with an action and a deadline, this structure works reliably:

Part	What goes in it
Subject	What, the cost or effort, who to contact, the deadline
Line 1	What it is, in plain words
Line 2	Exactly what to do and by when
Line 3	Any detail people need to decide, such as prizes or format
Line 4	That it is optional, and who to ask

This is a short version of the approach in the email that gets answered in one reply: put the ask where it cannot be missed and remove anything that delays it. It also works for status updates, which fail for the same reason, as covered in why your status update gets skipped.

Our office now uses the 94 word version as a template for every sweepstake, charity collection and team lunch. Nobody has asked for the old, longer style back. More on writing for busy colleagues is in the Workplace Communication section.