The OpenWater Blog

Communicating with Your Judges During Your Awards Program

You’ve done the work to find your perfect awards judges, have begun to build the prestige of your program, and…now what? While you might feel like your preparation is complete, you’re really just getting started.

Maintaining momentum is key once your awards program is up and running, and dealing with your judges is one of the main ways to do so. As is the case with the rest of your program, planning and preparedness are the keys to success. But, what does it take to prepare your judges and keep your program rolling? Just a few key practices.

Getting Started After Acceptance

Once you’ve selected your awards judging candidates, maintaining contact is critical to the success of your program. Email is the simplest way to do so, and by preparing simple documents and information, you can keep judges informed and organized.

So, what should you prepare to send to your judges? Some essential information, including:

• Additional information about your program
• Your judging criteria, with your judging timeline and expectations
• Important dates, like the call for entry, deadline, and awards gala
• Efforts to schedule a training time for your judging criteria
• Information about the awards gala

During the Call for Entry Before Judging Begins

People are forgetful, even leading industry experts. This means that as important dates are approaching, you should use email to stay in contact and keep judges informed as to what is going on with your program.

Ideally, you should send this email during your call for entry before judging begins so judges can brush up on criteria and information that they need to know to do their job correctly.

During Judging

While you might think that preparing for your awards judging is over once judging begins, it’s actually not. Luckily, most of what you need to do during judging is composing reminder-based emails to track important aspects like:

• What entries are judged, and whether they’ve been judged partially or fully
• When the judging process is coming to an end, especially if judging occurs over multiple days
• Reminders if a specific judge hasn’t yet finished processing all entries

Post Judging

Post judging can be one of the most important aspects of your preparation, especially because it can set the tone for next year’s awards program. When you do your awards program review, it’s important to remember the simple effectiveness of thanking all of your judges with a simple note.

Additionally, sending a thank you email is an effective way to remind judges about your awards gala and details like the time, date, and any other important information. Then, you can finally take a deep breath, because the celebration can begin!

Miriam Hancock

Miriam Hancock
Miriam is the Marketing Coordinator for OpenWater. When she isn't writing and designing content she paints and cooks for her own personal blog.

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