The "Refer a friend" application will allow you to create a contest using the recruiters system to increase the organic virality of the campaign and get a high participation. To participate, users must share and viralize the promotion among their friends and contacts and thus get new participants to have more opportunities to win. You will be able to reward the most recruiters with a final draw, and thus increase participation organically.

The content of the tutorial is as follows:

1. General description

2. Set up of the Refer a friend Contest

• Step 1. Create the promotion

• Paso 2. Participant registration system

• Step 3. Customize the Gallery page

3. Communicate with participants via email

4. Customize the design and finish the settings

5. Manage and publish the winners

1. General description

The Refer a friend application will allow you to create a contest applying the recruiters system to increase the organic virality of the promotion. To participate, users must share the promotion with their friends and contacts to get new participants to have more chances to win.

The Refer a friend contest will allow you to:

• Completely customize the registration form with the data you want to obtain from the participants.
• Combine the Recruiters system with any type of Easypromos contest or giveaway to increase its virality and reach.
• Reward those who viralize the most with two different mechanics:
  • • Final draw where the participants who have achieved a minimum number of recruits opt for the prize.
    • Draw among all participants but giving more chances of winning to the most recruiters with additional participations.
• Publish the recruited friends of each participant to promote competitiveness among participants.
• Send automatic emails to participants to inform them of their progress in the contest: you can configure an email to be sent automatically when the user manages to recruit the minimum number of friends required, or even send an email to all participants who have not yet achieved the challenge.
• Provide users with all the tools to go viral: after completing the registration for the promotion, users will have different tools available to publish and share the promotion.

2. Set up of the Refer a friend contest

Here we explain all the steps to create your Refer a friend contest.

Step 1. Create the promotion

1. Access the Easypromos Control Panel and log in with your email address and password to manage and create your promotions.

2. Create a new promotion by clicking the green button.

3. You'll see a display of all the products available. Choose "Refer a Friend" contest to create a promotion which encourages participants to register their details and recruit their friends.

4. As a next step, set up the following options:

• Organizing brand. As a first step, you should select or create an organizing brand for your promotion. This organizing brand is independent of any social network and works as a folder within your Easypromos account, in order to help organize the promotions that you create.
• Template version. Select which template you want to use to create your promotion: Premium or White Label.

Note: Compare here the features and functionalities included in each template.

5. After clicking on "Continue" button, you'll get access to the promotion management page, where you have all the options for configuring the promotion. Below, we outline the most important sections:

1. Header. This displays the title of the promotion, the version (Premium or White Label), and other relevant information, such as the promotion ID number. The promotion status indicates whether the promotion is Draft, Active or Expired, as well as if it’s about to start. Once the promotion period has ended, this field will be marked in red saying: Status: Expired. You can choose what to show on an expired promotion page.
2. Link to the promotion. Use this URL whenever you share the promotion. Learn more about sharing here. The copy link button automatically copies the link, to make sharing even faster.
3. Activate Promotion. When the promotion is ready to launch, click this button to activate it. You'll be taken to the activation page, where you can review billing information and make payments.
4. Test mode. This tool will allow you to carry out a real test of the promotion before activating it, in order to participate in it as users will when it is activated and thus be able to check that the promotion works as expected before launching it. More information.
5. Side menu. All your promotion settings in one place.
6. View tutorial. This tutorial guides you step by step through the creation and management of your promotion.
7. Promotion dates controls the phases of the promotion, including your choice of timezone.
   Languages indicates the default language of the promotion. You can edit this if you wish.
   Localization limits participation to one or several countries. Learn more about country restrictions.
8. Next steps: Practical recommendations for the creation and management of your campaign.

Step 2. Participant registration system

In order to participate in the Refer a friend Contest, users must register by filling in the registration form with the requested data.

To do this, go to the Editor > Pages > Registration Form, to customize the fields that you want to ask users to be able to participate:

Check the tutorial where we explain how to configure the promotion registration form.

Step 3. Customize the Gallery page

By default, when the contest is created, the Gallery page is enabled, which will allow users to see their participation in the contest confirmed and, furthermore, to promote competitiveness among users, which will translate into more participation. If the participations are public, all users can access the public list of participants and check at any time the evolution of their recruits.

Access the "Options" tab to configure the following options

1. Make recruits public. You can show how many recruits each participant has achieved, and even order the list of entries by number of recruits. This feature is enabled by default. We recommend keeping it enabled, to inform and motivate participants.

2. Number of recruits to obtain. You can specify a minimum number of recruited users that participants must obtain for a chance to win the contest. In this way, the user will be able to see in the gallery how many users they have recruited and will see the message "Challenge completed!" when they have recruited the minimum required. Use this option to indicate a goal to the user, such as: "Get a minimum of 3 users to enter the draw."

Discover in this article 5 Keys to Create a Successful Recruitment Promotion.

3. Communicate with participants via email

The success of a Refer a friend promotion depends ultimately on two main factors. Firstly, whether users have correctly understood what they need to do to participate; and secondly, how easy they find it to ‘recruit’ their friends.

The Emails Platform is designed to help you with both these factors. It enables you to communicate with participants, in a way that is both direct and personalized, via automated emails. The objectives of these emails will be as follows:

1. Providing each participant with their unique and individual recruiting URL to make recruitment as simple as possible.
2. Motivating participants to keep recruiting. Reminding them of the prize will encourage them!
3. Sending reminders and informing participants about the status of their entry: how many recruits they’ve obtained and how many they still have to find. Don’t forget to congratulate them when they meet their objectives.

Here are the instructions to create the email with the following objectives:

• Thank participants for registering and give them a unique recruiting URL to invite friends to the contest.
• Remind participants of how many recruits they must achieve to become a finalist, and recommend strategies for recruitment.
• Congratulate users who reach the goal number of recruits, and will enter the final of the competition.

4. Customize the design and finish the settings

Once you have configured the Refer a friend contest, the next step is to finish the configuration of the other options of the promotion, such as customizing the design template with your own colors and texts, introducing the legal bases, the viral content settings, etc. Check the tutorial to finish the configuration and customization of your promotion.

5. Manage and publish the winners

Easypromos provides a complete Prize and Winners Management system that will allow you to create the prize or prizes that you want to give to the users who participate in the contest, as well as configure how you want to assign the prizes and select the winners.

Specifically, for the Refer a friend Contest, the two dynamics that we recommend are the following:

1. Ask users to hit a recruiting target in order to become finalists. For example, only those who have gotten 4 friends to participate will enter the final sweepstakes. In this tutorial we explain how you can filter the finalists of the draw according to a minimum number of recruits.

2. Carry out a random draw among all registered users, but give an additional entry for each recruited friend. You can give participants their additional entries in the prize draw setup. Check out this tutorial to learn how to assign additional entries based on the number of recruits earned.