A subscriber who wishes to remain anonymous went the extra mile and sent Marden-Kane a message with some questions regarding entries. Here are her questions with Marden-Kane's responses. Thank you! We appreciate you sharing this information with everyone. Their responses are very interesting!

Q. How do you determine a winner when there are online and mail-in entries. Does it matter/would you advise me to mail-in entries considering the costs involved?
A. As per the official rules that Marden-Kane publishes for all of its online sweepstakes: "winners will be selected from among all eligible online and write-in entries received." Therefore, we combine all entry data (online and write-in) *before* the drawing takes place. It is entirely up to the entrant whether or not they choose to invest in postage and stationery to submit write-in entries. Most entrants prefer to use the online method since it is so streamlined and less costly, and the odds of winning are just the same as if they submitted a write-in entry.

Q. If all online, coupon redemption, mail-in entries are converted to online entries (guess someone processes each entry electronically), how is a winner or winners chosen? Is there a electronic selection? How does it work?
A. What you're asking for is proprietary information. We believe every promotion agency has their own methods for establishing randomness. Unfortunately, we are not at liberty to share our methods with the public.

Q. Do you foresee sweepstakes to become solely online in the future? Is this beneficial cost-wise to the sponsoring agency? Are our chances better or less than mail-in?
A. The odds of winning in an online sweepstakes are no different than odds in a traditionally-delivered sweepstakes. Odds always depend upon the total number of entries received, so it's very subjective, you see. We expect to see more and more online promotions in the coming years since more and more advertisers are adopting the Internet as a marketing tool.

Q. Why do some sweepstakes limit their entries per person or household and others have unlimited entries? Is it purely arbitrary or are there some other reasons why they would encourage ballot stuffing?
A. Again, it is totally subjective to the sponsor and the nature of their business. You will tend to see more limitation on online sweepstakes, because sponsors want to discourage hackers from building robots or trying to break into the entry system in order to enter themselves thousands of times.

Q. I heard that in mail-in entries most entries are received during the last two weeks of the deadline. Is this true? Then it stands to reason that many will not be selected if the sponsors pull only a few entries out of each mail bag.
A. That's subjective, too. If a contest club finds out about a promotion, that's usually when a whole dump of write-in entries arrive. So you folks may be shooting yourselves in the foot by sharing contest information.