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If you use a sweepstakes company or contest platform to run giveaways, you may have questions about the giveaway settings for your promotion. Typically, the contest platform will provide you with setup instructions or you can opt for full-service sweepstakes administration.
These options work best in most cases:
- But what if you don’t have access to 24/7 phone or chat support?
- What if the giveaway platform doesn’t have a good understanding of how your giveaway fits into your overall marketing strategy?
- What if you want to optimize your campaign based on your brand’s own internal marketing data and not the platform’s default settings?
- What if it is a self-service platform that doesn’t offer marketing consultations to DIY platform customers?
These are just a few of the instances where it might be a good idea to get the opinion of other marketers outside of the sweepstakes or social media contest platform’s support.
Self-serve sweepstakes platforms can help you save time, but you still may need the answers provided here.
Article Contents
IN THIS ARTICLE:
- How do you setup a giveaway?
- How to use a giveaway platform?
- What giveaway settings to use?
Giveaway Settings: What You Need to Know
To help you better select the right giveaway settings for your promotion on a contest or sweepstakes platform, here is a step-by-step giveaway settings guide.
These are the most common questions that marketers have about how to create your own sweepstakes or contest on a self-serve contest platform.
Follow this step-by-step giveaway settings setup guide to get the answers that you need to common sweepstakes marketing questions.
Sweepstakes or Contest General Settings
The General settings are where you select a name for your giveaway. If you plan to host the giveaway on the platform, then you will also need to select a subdomain name.
Giveaway Name
As far as names, sweepstakes and contests names should make clear the value of the sweepstakes, the type of promotion, and the sponsor. All three elements combined will make it easier for your existing customers to connect with your promotion.
Giveaway Description
Write the description for your giveaway. It should be written as a description meta tag to help with SEO.
Domain or Subdomain
When it comes to selecting a domain name for your sweepstakes, it is a good idea to choose one that you can use again and again. By using the same subdomain or domain for sweepstakes and contests regularly, you’ll build up residual organic traffic as your sweepstakes or contest entry form link gets shared on social media and ranks in the search engines.
If you unsure which option is best, a subdomain of your brand’s domain or a domain with your brand name and the word “sweepstakes” or “giveaway” are the popular options for sweepstakes domain names.
Here are two examples of ideas for reusable giveaway domain names:
brandsweepstakes.com
brand.com/sweepstakes
The key to keeping the traffic flowing? Make sure that after the sweepstakes or contest ends, you redirect URL away from the entry form to a new signup page or brand page!
Official Rules: Drafting Sweepstakes Rules
The official rules for a sweepstakes or social media contest need to be custom written for your unique promotion. We strongly recommend that you have a sweepstakes attorney review your official rules and any template abbreviated rules provided by the sweepstakes platform.
Giveaway Settings: Design Layout for the Entry Form
The design of your sweepstakes entry page will determine the entire look and feel of your giveaway.
Here are some tips for each section of your page:
The layout of your page is where you can determine where the the description and images appear on your sweepstakes landing page. A self-service platform will provide you with high-converting options. If you don’t care about the default design just choose one of their highest converting pages.
Custom Sweepstakes Entry Form Page
If you decide that want a custom page designed for your sweepstakes or contest entry form page, follow these tips:
- Keep it clean and simple and try to avoid adding animations that will increase the load time of the page. Not only will you have a ton of organic visits to the page in a short period of time, you may also want to run PPC ads.
- Integrate your page with your tracking and analytics tools so that you have deep insights into how users are interacting with the page. This is one of the biggest benefits of using your own custom giveaway entry page.
If you run recurring sweepstakes or contests, make sure that you optimize your entry forms using data from the previous campaigns with each new promotion launch so that you can maximize your results.
Display Your Brand
Make sure that your brand logo, colors, and fonts are on prominent display in your giveaway entry form. This will help participants associate the promotion with your brand and extend trust to the page by extension.
Free Advertisement Maker with Templates
Canva lets you create eye-catching advertisements with their free ad maker. Customize your sweepstakes, contest, or raffle ads with trending images, fonts, and high quality design assets.
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However, with the proliferation of trademarked logos being illegally used in scams, this is why it’s also important to use a branded domain for your sweepstakes or contest.
Email Verification
It is very important that you register email addresses on the domain that you plan to use for your sweepstakes or contest. If you will use the subdomain from the platform, then use the default emails provided by the platform.
It is very important that you check the sending domain and the Sender Name for your sweepstakes and contest emails before they go out. The trust factor needs to be demonstrated there otherwise you could face low open rates and your emails being marked as spam.
Furthermore, you should make sure that confirmation emails are being received and are not ending up in the spam folder by using a reliable SMTP service.
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Sweepstakes or Contest Email Notifications Settings
Most giveaway platforms have built-in templates for various email notifications that will be sent to the participants as well as the contest administrator during the campaign.
For best results, make sure that you personalize all of the messages that are intended to be sent your participants. This will help to increase engagement and make your giveaway promotional emails stand out.
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Contest Entry Success Redirect
This is a page that you can redirect participants to after they complete an entry for your sweepstakes or contest. Choose the page that you set for this URL based on the purpose of your campaign. If you plan to use your sweepstakes or contest to increase brand awareness or boost sales, you can redirect participants to a sales letter, product page, or video message to help them begin to engage with your brand.
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Social Login Integration
These days, people pick and choose which social platforms they prefer to use when it comes to interacting with brands. As a result, opening your sweepstakes or contests to as many social login options as possible is recommend.
That said, if you don’t have a social media presence on a particular platform, it is a good idea to skip that one. While you might be able to start building an audience, inviting participants to an empty platform is only going to lead to disappointment.
Make sure to build up your social media presence prior to the start of your sweepstakes or contest for best results.
Privacy Policy
If you plan to use your sweepstakes or social media contest to build a customer list, you need to make sure that your privacy policy has the proper disclosures. Most giveaway platforms will provide you with a template or will have you enter the URL of your privacy. To ensure that you are covered, have a lawyer review your privacy policy.
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