How to choose and notify winners, and update your page.
Before Choosing Your Winners
What prizes do you need to fulfill?
Do you remember what your prizes were for the month? Check your page before the end of the month to make sure you know (1) what you’re giving away (2) how they’re being awarded and (3) how many you’re giving away.
Here’s how it works in practice: “Two sweepstakes winners will earn a sweatshirt.”
How do you want to internally track your winners?
Because you don’t want to be choosing the same winners every month, we recommend that you track your monthly winners in the form of a Google Sheet or other similar spreadsheet. This gives you an easy place to reference if you need to view past winners. This also allows you to save addresses in a streamlined format for prize fulfillment.
Pull & Notify Your Winners
Choosing Winners:
Go to Dashboard > Reward Your Users > Winners > Manually Choose Winners. Make sure you have waited until the end of your current contest to choose winners.
Choose the correct contest period (you should be picking winners at the beginning of the next month so always choose the previous month)
Do not include previous winners
Winner criteria: Sweepstakes
Putting in the amount of winners:
we recommend putting in more winners than you are awarding. This way you will have a couple of users to choose from. (ex: if you are awarding 1 user, put in 10 for the amount of users. This will NOT notify 10 people)
Entries for: Points
Points per entry: 100
Entry for participation → since users earn 100 points just for signing up, they earn an entry into the sweepstakes. If you uncheck this box, our system will pull users that actively participated.
Entries limit → if you leave this box blank, users will have unlimited entries into the sweepstakes.
Click go.
A list of eligible users that meet the winner criteria will populate in your email inbox. You can then look through the users and pick a winner.
Notify the winner(s)!
Once you receive the shipping address from the winner(s), make sure to put them in the Winners Circle. This ensures that you will not pull previous winners until they are eligible to win a prize again.
Dashboard > Reward Your Users > Winners > Winners Circle.
Put in the winner’s email address, description (ex: November Winner), and how long they will be ineligible for.
Notify Your Winners
You have two options for notifying your winners that they have won and collecting their shipping information
Send them an email through your personal email account.
They can respond directly to you with their shipping info.
Here’s how it works in practice:
Dear (name),
Congratulations! You have been selected to win a [insert prize] due to your awesome participation in the [insert campaign] contest.
Please respond to this email within 72 hours with your shipping address and cell phone number, and we will promptly mail you your prize. Please allow for up to three weeks to receive the prize.
Thanks and we look forward to your continued support!
Send them an email through the SocialToaster dashboard.
You can email as many winners as you’d like at the same time, letting them know they have won a prize. Users cannot respond to this email, so you will need to use alternate method of receiving shipping information. You can do any of the following for this:
Ask users to email you their info:
Ask users to fill out an online form with their information such as Google Forms
Here’s how it works in practice:
Dear (name),
Congratulations! You have been selected to win a [insert prize] due to your awesome participation in the [insert campaign] contest.
Please [email [email protected] or fill our xxx form] within 72 hours with your shipping address and we will promptly mail you your prize. Please allow for up to three weeks to receive the prize.
Thanks and we look forward to your continued support!
Gather Winner Information
If you have set up a claim form on the prize you are giving away, users will be able to use this form to send in their shipping information
As winners submit their information, make sure you track it in your Google Sheet or other spreadsheet.
Here is how to set up the claim form and notify your winners
Once the winner sends back the information you requested you will be able to fulfill the prize and add them to the winner's circle.
Ready, Set, Go and set up some prizing on your campaign!
End of Month Checklist
Before the end of your contest:
☐ Update Rules
☐ Update Prizes page
☐ Check to see what prizes you’re giving away
After the end of your current contest:
☐ Choose your winners
☐ Place winners in spreadsheet
☐ Notify winners
☐ Collect winner information
☐ Place winners in winner’s circle (optional)
☐ Send prizes