DARTMOUTH Business Improvement District has made changes to its Keep It Local campaign.

It has replaced a competition to win £1,000, including a first prize of £250, with a free raffle for monthly shopping vouchers worth £100.

The winner of the March £100 prize was Alison Crozier.

New-look mailings profiles have also been developed that it hopes will be more flexible, simple to change and will allow businesses to promote themselves better.

The online feature will flag up specific loyalty card offers and enable promotion of any aspect of businesses with added web links. The BID says the campaign’s ‘new look’ has come about after speaking with businesses in the town.

The aim is to make the Keep It Local campaign more appealing and provide one of the best and free marketing platforms in Dart­mouth, its says.

The BID say demand for loyalty cards remains high and because the TIC now has limited opening hours, a new distribution point for shoppers to collect cards has been set up at Browns Hotel in Victoria Road.

The new competition replaces an older promotion that was launched in December and came to an end at the beginning of April, with no winners announced.

BID chairman Peter Conisbee said: ‘To clarify, there is only one competition. As part of a relaunch of the scheme, this was amended in March to a monthly prize of £100 as this was felt to be fairer to cardholders, and much easier for participating retailers to administer.’

He said that following a review with participating retailers after Christmas it was found that the original prize draw was not being effective. ‘Retailers found it time consuming to administer and, as a result, were not promoting it, plus the minimum spend was considered to be too high,’ he said.

As a result, the BID reduced the spend threshold, made the administration far simpler, and amended the prizes, while spreading the period of the promotion beyond the original end date of March 31.

‘Effectively therefore, the original prize draw had never got off the ground,’ he said. ‘No cardholders had registered for the original prize draw and we were able therefore to change the prize draw without any card holders being disadvantaged or affected.

‘The changes were put on the BID website as soon as they took place and cardholders advised by newsletter, but unfortunately, due to the problems encountered by the TIC and its lack of resources, changes were not made to the Dartmouth Every Time website until earlier this month.’

The draw will run all year, offering any shopper spending over £20 free entry into a raffle with a monthly prize of £100 worth of free shopping vouchers.