The latest in Upland Second Street Contest Software Capabilities from 2025 and What’s Next

In 2025, smart media companies stopped treating promotions as “page fillers” and started building revenue systems. To keep pace, the Upland Second Street crew shipped 160+ updates—over half in the last six months—to help you sell more, save hours, and keep audiences coming back across ballots, sweepstakes, quizzes, polls, surveys, and photo contests with UGC (user generated content).

If your plan is to grow promotional revenue without growing headcount, start here.

The Shift We Saw in 2025

Promotions used to be campaign‑by‑campaign sprints. In 2025, they became programs—always on, measurable, and sponsor friendly. Four themes drove it:

1. Self‑serve commerce so advertisers can buy when you’re off the clock.
2. Operational hygiene so one editor can run a calendar that used to take three.
3. Audience loops that move people from site → email → site, week after week.
4. Governance at scale so national brands act locally without losing control.

Let’s unpack the releases that made this possible.

Sell More, More Often (While You Sleep)

Ballot Ecommerce

Imagine your Best Of running a parallel storefront—placements, prices, and availability displayed like products. Stripe handles the payment. Buyers search, choose, and check out. No decks. No scheduling ping‑pong. No “got a minute?” calls.

Why it works

• It’s always‑on prospecting that converts the long-tail advertisers your team rarely reaches.
• In one Best Of, 40% of ecommerce buyers were net‑new—proof that passive buying taps fresh demand.
• Combined with ad phases (Nomination → Voting → Winners), inventory stays relevant without cloning ballots.

Get live fast

1. Configure Stripe + inventory (placements, pricing, caps).
2. Map placements to phases.
3. Launch the storefront and drive traffic from site, email, and social.
4. Watch new names—and new revenue—arrive outside office hours.

Self‑Service Packages

Standardize your offers once; let advertisers purchase without waiting on a rep. It’s the promotional version of “order ahead”—and it adds up.

Syndication for Sweepstakes

Run a single promotion at corporate, syndicate to markets, and monetize everywhere. One build, many tills ringing.

Work Faster (and Saner)

Advertiser Asset Portals

A secure login where buyers upload correctly‑sized creative (cropping enforced) that publishes directly to the ballot. Translation: no more email tennis.

Bulk Updates

Change entrant titles, descriptions, links, videos once, and propagate everywhere. Perfect for those “the sponsor just changed their tagline” days.

Scheduled Winner Publishing

Set precise publish times by category, group, or entire ballot. Your team keeps their evenings; your audience still gets the midnight reveal.

Local Controls That Cut Edge‑Case Chaos

• Google Places radius controls keep entries genuinely local.
• UGC vote import / manual adjustments handle ties and offline tallies without spreadsheets.
• Fraud bypass improvements protect experience without punishing real voters.

Net result: small teams run big calendars without the wheels coming off.

Engage Deeper (and Keep People Coming Back)

Revamped Quizzes

• Cleaner UI with image‑only answers
• Randomized questions/answers for replay-ability
• Video/audio inside questions
• Timers with shortest/average/longest time
• Expanded results: personal outcomes and community aggregates

Coming soon: intro/transition pages, multi‑select questions, outcome emails, advanced styling, and quiz ecommerce (recommend—and sell—a product at the end).

QR Code Generator

Brandable codes (shape, color, logo) with short links and scan tracking—perfect for print, on‑air reads, events, and signage.

Enhanced Promotion Feed (+ RSS)

A redesigned, customizable feed with featured items, images, descriptions, and promotion‑type filters. Add the RSS to auto‑build a weekly promotions newsletter and you’ve got a durable flywheel: site → email → site.

Create Smarter with AI (Without Looking Like AI)

• AI Tagging: Auto‑apply interest tags to ballot categories and email links so your segments build themselves.
• AI Image Generation: On‑brand visuals from prompts (orientation included) for headers, email modules, and social teasers.

Together they cut setup time and lift creative quality—that rare win‑win.

The 30/60/90‑Day Revenue Plan

Days 1–30: Foundations

• Turn ballot ecommerce on for your next Best Of; define three packages (Good/Better/Best) and map to phases.
• Launch the Promotion Feed + RSS newsletter; commit to a weekly cadence.
• Enable Asset Portals on all active ballots.

Days 31–60: Acceleration

• Add QR codes to print, on‑air, and venue signage with memorable short links.
• Standardise Bulk Update workflows (titles, links, videos) and Scheduled Winner Publishing.
• Use AI Tagging to build segments from ballot and quiz behaviour; start targeted sends.

Days 61–90: Monetization Levers

• Productize SMS keywords: offer text‑to‑vote/nominate as an à‑la‑carte add‑on; tier pricing by category volume.
• “Campaign‑ize” quizzes and UGC with timers, multimedia, and ecommerce bundles for premium sponsorships.
• Roll out sweepstakes syndication to two additional markets and centralize reporting.

What to Measure (Beyond Pageviews)

• Revenue & sponsor count (by campaign and by program)
• Lead quality and opt‑in rate
• Replay rate (quizzes) and phase fill (ballots)
• Scan‑to‑visit for QR codes
• Earned media value from cross‑channel promotion

Proof it works: national campaigns can move the needle. One USA TODAY program generated $2.2M on Second Street (case study available).

What’s Coming in 2026

• Text‑to‑Enter (Sweepstakes) – Mobile users enter by keyword; choose frictionless auto‑entry or send the full form for deeper lead‑gen. Works across syndicated markets with consistent keywords.
• Text‑to‑Nominate/Vote (Ballots) – Assign keywords per entrant to boost participation and create a compelling upsell.
• Daily Polls with Rounds – One embed, multiple rounds, single dashboard.

Plus: Form Designer refresh, Leaderboards/Gamification, UGC Ecommerce Bundles, and a new WYSIWYG.

Your Part in the Roadmap

Stay involved

• Submit your best campaigns for upcoming awards
• Subscribe to the Product Update newsletter
• Want detailed Feature Release Information or enablement content? Get in touch and we’ll plug you in.

Final Word

The old game was brute force: more calls, more emails, more manual work. The new game is systems: self‑serve buying, automated fulfilment, and audience loops that never run dry. 2025 gave us the momentum. 2026 is where we turn it into a flywheel.

Let’s build the promotional program that sells itself, gives your team their time back, and keeps sponsors renewing because the results are obvious.

Here are some revenue success stories to learn more.

About Upland Second Street

Second Street is a software that provides audience engagement solutions designed to help organizations run interactive campaigns such as contests, quizzes, polls, and ballots. The software supports organizations in gathering first-party data through customized promotions, which can be leveraged for audience segmentation and targeted marketing efforts. Second Street facilitates user participation by offering intuitive management tools for campaign creation and analytics features to help organizations assess engagement outcomes and campaign performance. The software addresses business needs related to boosting audience interaction, increasing digital revenue, and deepening understanding of consumer preferences through structured data collection and actionable insights.

Get the latest insights right in your inbox

Sign-up for our monthly newsletter for the latest email marketing news and best practices. No spam, just actionable insights.