Awards Management

mBLAST Streamlines Awards for Organizers, Entrants and Judges

Awards programs are incredibly valuable to Influencers such as Publishers, Associations, and Event Organizers. Awards can:

• Generate new revenue from entry fees and sponsorships.
• Add cache to your organization.
• Open the door to speaking with participating companies about other opportunities with your organization.

Awards programs are highly labor intensive and require a lot of coordination. Calls for entries need to be distributed to prospective entrants. Application forms must be filled out by entrants and submitted with paid entry fees. Judges must be recruited to review entries and submit their ratings. Then someone has to review all the ratings, calculate scoring, and determine the winner(s). These steps often take place via Excel spreadsheets, faxes, e-mail, and even mail. The details are overwhelming.

mBLAST's Awards Management solution automates the entire awards process end to end via an online platform that is available to entrants, judges, and Award Organizers 24/7. Our clients tell us that the mBLAST Awards Management solution has eliminated up to 80% of their manual labor, time, and expenses that were previously required for the administration of their awards programs.

mBLAST's step-by-step process simplifies the creation and execution of Awards programs.

Key features of the Awards Management platform include:

• An entire Communications System that allows your customized e-mail messages to be sent to your entire audience or specific subsets of it.

  Communications are built right into the mBLAST system, and Awards organizers can quickly and easily distribute customized Call for Entries, Reminders, Deadline Extensions, and more to their entire contact list. mBLAST's Communications area also allows you to target just a specific subset of your list, such as those entrants that started an application but never completed it. This functionality allows your team to target these users individually or as a group, contact them for a follow up, etc. You will not find these feature in systems developed by in-house IT departments; unless users submit an entry, you don't know about them and cannot do an appropriate follow-up.

• Customizable Forms that let you create your awards based on your specifications. Those details can easily be copied and/or modified from year to year, saving you even more time on subsequent awards.

  The "look and feel" of an Awards program is important to an Awards Organizer. You want your Award to have your branding and contain just the questions you want to ask. mBLAST's extensive Preferences section asks you a series of questions that help you personalize your Awards program with your Awards logo, the specific terminology you use to describe your awards, the number of judging rounds you conduct, and much more. You can even allow your entrants to establish embargo dates for their entries. mBLAST really helps you make your awards all your own!

• A comprehensive Payment System that interfaces with all of the top payment gateways and supports multiple types of pricing requirements, such as early bird discounts, late fees, member discounts, exhibitor discounts, multiple entry discounts, and more.

  Different Awards programs set up their entry fees in dozens of different ways. mBLAST makes it easy to customize the fee structure users pay to participate in your Awards. So, whether you give an early bird discount or charge a late fee after a certain date, you're covered. mBLAST also interfaces with all of the top payment gateways, so your payments flow through mBLAST directly to your account.

• A complete Judging Portal that facilitates the recruitment of judges and allows them to easily access, view and rate entries, suggest re-assignments and disqualifications, and submit their final results quickly and easily.

  mBLAST's Judging portal help judges speed through the judging process in a step-by-step fashion, maximizing their valuable time. They can easily score entries based on your specific scoring requirements, leave and return to score more entries, see an overview page with all their entries and their scores, make modifications, and set all entries to Final and Submit with one mouse click. Our judging portal was designed by a consultant who judges more than a dozen awards programs each year, so it includes a lot of little touches that judges really appreciate. Plus you, as the Awards Organizer, can track the progress of each judge and send reminders via the Communications System accordingly right in the system.

• A complete Awards Support System that is available via online chat, e-mail, and phone to answer any questions your entrants might have about the process.

  Our clients rave about the professionalism, expertise, and promptness of our customer service staff. Users contact customer support for a variety of reasons: deadline questions, category choices, payment questions, and other assorted queries about Awards programs. mBLAST's professional support staff is available 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., EST Monday-Friday via live chat on the site and telephone, as well as via e-mail outside these hours. More than 95% of the questions from users are answered within 5 minutes, and all users are responded to within 24 hours.

• A robust Reporting System that automatically tallies results and tracks various parameters, such as overall scores for entrants, total dollar amount of entrants, total number of entries, and more - allowing you to easily track the success and profitability of your Awards program.

  If there is one thing that all Awards Organizers dread, it is the number crunching that happens when all entries are submitted and judged. Who are the winners and who are the runners up? Who received the highest overall scores and should win "Best of Show?" How much revenue did my Awards program generate and how does that track against my goal? Against last year? Which category was the best revenue generator for me, and which did not receive many entries?
  mBLAST's Awards Reporting System calculates all of these factors for you, so as soon as your entries are closed you know how much revenue was generated; and as soon as the judging for your Awards is closed, you'll know who won. You can then contact finalists or winners via the Communications System and give them further instructions.

• All the Extras your awards program may require, such as downloadable shipping forms, purchase of winners logos, and more.

  Your program may include a mail-in component, where entrants are asked to supplement their entry with a physical submission, such as a physical copy of magazine or product. You may want to have winners fill out shipping forms and payment information so you can return products to them. You may even charge winners for high-resolution copies of your winners' logos. Extras like these are covered easily via mBLAST's Awards Management system.

• A simple User Interface that walks users through the Awards process step by step.

  mBLAST's simple registration process includes a user name and password to ensure security. Users simply register, fill out their basic contact and company information, and begin their entry. For subsequent awards programs, users can log in and immediately begin filling out just their entry information, speeding them through the process. Two very popular features of our Awards solution include the ability to save their entries in Draft form (eliminating any potential data loss) and the ability to grant other users access for collaboration on entries.