The "Instagram Story Giveaway" app allows you to run giveaways among users who interact with your Instagram Stories. Specifically, the app allows you to organize two different types of giveaways:

1. Story Replies Giveaway: Allows you to run a giveaway among users who have replied to a Story on your Instagram profile during a specific period.
2. Story Mentions Giveaway: Allows you to run a giveaway among all users who publish a Story on their public Instagram profile mentioning your brand during a set period.
    

What you need to know before you start:

• This app is only available for customers with the Basic PRO plan or higher.
• You can import past replies and mentions from up to 30 days ago.
• When you organize an Instagram Story Giveaway, the first step is to announce the giveaway to your community to encourage users to participate. Once the participation period is over, you must access the Easypromos control panel, create a promotion of the "Stories Giveaway" type, and select the type of giveaway you want to run, either a replies giveaway or a mentions giveaway. The system will import all participants (from up to 30 days ago) so you can start the giveaway. Finally, the tool will select and publish one or more winners among the users who participated.
• For the Story Mention Giveaway, only users with a public Instagram profile can be imported.

Below, we describe all the steps to set up and run the giveaway:

1. Types of Instagram Stories giveaways

2. Prerequisite in the Instagram app

3. Create the giveaway

   • 3.1. Story Replies Giveaway

   • 3.2. Story Mentions Giveaway

4. Define the number of winners and alternates

5. Run a test and finalize the giveaway

6. Prepare the winners' announcement

7. Announce the winners

8. Manage winners and alternates

1. Types of giveaways on Instagram Stories

The platform allows you to run the following types of giveaways on Instagram Stories:

Story Replies Giveaway

Allows you to run a giveaway among users who have replied to a Story on your Instagram profile during a specific period.

This giveaway works as follows:

• The brand or company publishes one or more Stories on its Instagram profile, encouraging users to participate by replying to the Story.
• Users participate by replying to the Story with a message.
• From the Easypromos control panel, you can retrieve all replies to the Story made by users to run the giveaway among all imported replies.
• If multiple Stories are imported, you can use the Story filter to select which replies will be included in the giveaway.

Story Mentions Giveaway

Allows you to run a giveaway among all users who publish a Story on their Instagram profile mentioning your brand during a set period.

This giveaway works as follows:

• As a brand or company, the first step is to publish a Story or post on your Instagram profile, encouraging users to publish a Story on their own profiles to enter the giveaway.
• To participate, users must publish a Story on their profile and include a mention of the brand running the giveaway. Important! The user's profile must be public for their Story to be counted.
• From the Easypromos control panel, you can retrieve all stories made by users who have mentioned your Instagram account to run the giveaway among all of them.

2. Prerequisite in the Instagram app

For the app to import participants, you must enable the "Allow access to messages" option in your Instagram account's privacy settings. To do this, go to Settings > Privacy > Messages::

Important note: Without enabling this option, it will not be possible to run the giveaway.

3. Create the giveaway

To start creating the giveaway, access the Easypromos Control Panel through this link. Create an account if you are not yet a user and enter your admin panel to manage and create your promotions.

Next, select the type of Instagram Stories Giveaway you want to run.

To do this, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the “Create new promotion” button to start setting up the giveaway.

2. Choose the “Stories Giveaway” option:

3. Next, select the type of giveaway you want to run:

4. The giveaway configuration screen will appear. As a first step, you must create an organizing brand for your giveaway and the Title of your giveaway. This organizing brand is independent of any social network and works as a folder within your Easypromos account to help you organize the giveaways you create..

5. Next, the following step is to log in with your Instagram account:

6. Once the Instagram account is connected, the next step is to configure the entries you want to import for the giveaway, depending on the type of giveaway you have selected.

3.1. Story Replies Giveaway

If you have selected "Story Replies Giveaway," you must follow the steps below.

Step 1. Basic giveaway setup

1. Select the time zone. As a required step, you must select the time zone for the giveaway.

2. Date: Allows you to specify the start date for importing Story replies. You can select a maximum period of up to 30 days.

Next, the app will analyze the content to import, a process that may take up to 3 minutes, depending on the data volume. During this import process, it is important not to close the browser to avoid losing communication and data.

Step 2. Review the list of finalists

Once all data has been imported, you will access the giveaway configuration page, where you will find the following options:

A. View and Export users

If you click "View" you can open the list of users who participated by replying to the story, and by clicking "Export" you can download the list in .CSV format.

B. Apply filters and exclusions

If multiple stories have been imported, by default the app will import user replies to all stories on your account. From this section, you can select which story or stories you want to include in the giveaway to determine which replies will be included as finalists. To do this, simply click "Change," and a pop-up window will open with details of all imported stories so you can select the ones you want to include in the giveaway:

You can also use the following user filter and exclusion tools if needed:

• Exclude users from the blacklist: Allows you to add users who use bad practices to your blacklist and exclude them from any giveaway at once, without having to search for them one by one. The blacklist will always be available as it is associated with your Easypromos admin account.
• Exclude users who have already won: This option allows you to prevent the same user from winning more than one of the different giveaways you run.
• One-time user exclusion: This option allows you to exclude one or more specific users only in this giveaway if, for any reason, you believe they do not comply with the rules and therefore cannot be eligible for the prize.

3.2. Story Mentions Giveaway

If you have selected "Story Mentions Giveaway," you must follow the steps below:

Step 1. Basic giveaway setup

1. Select the time zone. As a required step, you must select the time zone for the giveaway.

2. Date: Allows you to specify the start date for importing mentions to your account. You can select a maximum period of up to 30 days.

Next, the app will analyze the content to import, a process that may take up to 3 minutes, depending on the data volume. During this import process, it is important not to close the browser to avoid losing communication and data.

Step 2. Review the list of finalists

Once all data has been imported, you will access the giveaway configuration page, where you will find the following options:

A. View and Export users

If you click "View" you can open the list of users who participated by replying to the story, and by clicking "Export" you can download the list in .CSV format.

Note: From here you can see the story each user participated with as long as the stories are still available, since after 24 hours from publication the story will expire and can no longer be viewed.

Recommendation: Ask users to highlight the Story on their Instagram account. This way, the Story will be available beyond 24 hours, so you can review it later.

Tip! If a user has not highlighted their story and you need to review it if they have won the draw, you can contact the user and ask them to send you the story they published. All stories are saved in the "Archive" section of the Instagram user's profile, and from there they can use the "Send to" function to send the story to your Instagram account so you can see it.

B. Apply filters and exclusions

You'll also be able to use the different filters and user exclusion tools if necessary:

The following exclusion tools are available:

• Exclude blacklisted users: Add any users engaging in bad practices to your blacklist. This option allows you to exclude all the blacklisted users from your giveaways so that you won’t have to manually exclude them in each giveaway you run. The blacklist is linked to your Easypromos administrator account so that it is always available to you.
• Exclusion of previous winners. Select this option if you do not want users to be able to win more than one prize in the giveaways you manage.
• One-off exclusion. If you wish to exclude one or more users from this particular giveaway because you consider that they did not comply with the Terms and Conditions or based on your own criteria, use this search tool to find and exclude the user(s) manually. You can also find the users and exclude them from the giveaway in the list of participants.

4. Define the number of winners and alternates

Next, indicate how many winners and alternate winners you want the system to select when running the draw. We always recommend including several alternate winners: this way you will be able to make a substitution if needed. This will make it easier for you to distribute the prizes.

Note: the total number of winners and alternates cannot exceed 1000 in each draw.

Do you want to give away several prizes?

With the “Customize the prizes” option, you can create all the prizes you want to distribute, and for each prize, you will be able to define the number of winners you want to obtain. You can, for instance, have a first prize to give away movie tickets to 2 winners, and as a second prize movie tickets to 2 different winners.

When publishing the winners, the two prizes will be presented separately, each with the corresponding winners.

To create all the prizes of your giveaway, click the “Customize prizes” link. A pop-up will open where you can define the name and number of units of each of the prizes to be raffled:

Click "Continue" to be taken to the Test page, where you can take a test to see how the giveaway will work and how the winners will be presented when you finalize the draw.

5. Test your giveaway and activate it

Before activating the random selection of winners, you can carry out a test to help you learn and preview how the tool works.

When you are ready to pick the winners, the system will allow you to finalize the giveaway and see the winners and alternate winners. If you do not have a Basic PRO or higher plan active on your account, the system will prompt you to purchase it.

Once you are ready to pick the winners, click the “Ready! Pick the winners” button and winners will be selected randomly. A certificate of validity will be issued with the information of the giveaway, which cannot be edited.

6. Prepare to announce the winners

Congratulations! The giveaway has been carried out and the results will be displayed. You can now think about announcing the winners and awarding the prizes.

1. "Winners and alternates" section:

Here you will see the list of winners and alternates. You can manage the prize winners from this page, and make a substitution if needed. From here you can perform the following actions:

A. Send a direct message to the winner by clicking on the envelope icon, to inform them that they have won a prize in the draw.

B. Manage the winners and change them if necessary. If for any reason the user who won a prize cannot or does not wish to claim it, by clicking on the "Manage" button you can make a substitution for one of the alternate winners.

2. “Publication of winners” section:

When you run the giveaway, the tool will generate two relevant URLs that you need to know about:

• Certificate of Validity. The certificate of validity confirms that the giveaway was run only once and completely at random. This certificate identifies the giveaway and cannot be modified. Share the URL with participants so that they can see that your giveaway was run fairly and transparently.
• Winners page. This is a microsite where the names of the winners and the alternate winners are displayed. This way, communicating the results of the draw will be easier. You can customize this page to adapt it to your brand design and needs. Click the pencil icon to edit the winners page and customize it to your liking:

Additionally, you will be able to present the results of the giveaway via the URL of the Show mode. You can also download the Show mode video in WEBM or MP4 format. This option allows you to present the results of the draw in an animated format, to show the winners in a fun way and add a touch of suspense to your giveaway.

Enter here to see more information regarding the Show mode.

3. "Claim your prize" section :

Do you want the winners to send you the relevant data to claim their prize? You can set up and activate this section to aid in the prize-awarding process. This way, users who visit the Winners page will be able to claim the prize on their screen, verifying their details and confirming that they are interested in receiving their prize.

To use the tool, click on the “Enable” button and follow the steps indicated in this tutorial to customize the module.

7. Announce the winners

Once the Winners page is ready, share it on social media. You can use the “Share” button or copy and share the URL of the Winners page directly with your audience.

Recommendation: To present the winners on Instagram, we recommend the three following actions:

1. Post the link to the Winners page in the bio of the Instagram account.
2. Share a post or a story (or both) indicating that the result of the draw is available in the bio.
3. Take advantage of all your channels to share the link to the giveaway Winners page.

Please note that on Instagram the links included in the description of your posts or the comments are not clickable.

8. Manage winners and alternates

From the 'Winners and alternates' section you can:

• See if the winners have claimed their prize and the personal data they have communicated.
• Manage winners to make a substitution if needed.
• Download in a file all the information provided by the winners.