Has the participation period of your promotion ended and it’s now time to carry out the final sweepstakes to find out who the winners are?

Easypromos offers you a comprehensive tool to help you pick the winners and alternates of a contest or promotion automatically and at random. The tool will also generate a certificate of validity which you can share with users, providing security and transparency to your promotion.

This tutorial will help you get to know all the features of this tool and learn how to make the most of it.

Note: This tool is available for all promotions created with Basic, Premium and White Label versions of the platform.

For Facebook sweepstakes based on a post, check the tutorial to pick the winners among all users who Like or Comment on a post.

For Twitter sweepstakes, check the tutorial of how to carry out a sweepstakes based on Retweets, and the tutorial of how to carry out a sweepstakes among all your Followers.

For comments-based Instagram sweepstakes, check this tutorial.

General functioning

The “random draw” assignment method from the ‘Draws’ section of the promotion allows you to run a random draw among all the registered users in a promotion. You can choose to either carry out a draw among all participants or you can specify a particular segment of users based on a series of criteria which define them, such as their country, time of registration, the social network they participated from, and so on. The tool includes a multi-draw mode – for carrying out multiple draws in a single promotion among different segments of users (only Premium and White Label promotions).

The tool also offers administrators the chance to assign additional participations, exclude specific users, exclude previous winners and it facilitates the quick and efficient management of winners and alternates.

Below, we go through each of these features, step by step, to ensure you don’t miss a thing.

• Step 1. Access the Draws Tool

• Step 2. Select the finalists

• Step 3. Assign additional entries

• Step 4. Apply rules of exclusion

• Step 5. Run the random draw

• Step 6. Publish the Winners page

• Step 7. Communicate with the winners

• Step 8. Alternate management

Step 1. Access the Draws Tool

Once the participation period is over and it’s time for you to carry out the final sweepstakes, you should go to the “Draws” section from the promotion management page:

On this first screen, if you have already created the prize that you plan to raffle among the participants of the promotion, the button "Run draw" will appear:

Note: If you haven't created the prize you plan to give away yet, follow the steps in this tutorial.

Step 2. Select the finalists

When you click the button “Run sweepstakes”, the process to select the winners and alternate winners of this sweepstakes is started. You will see the following page:

On this screen you can select the finalists who will enter the draw, and you can choose between drawing the prize among:

• All the participants

• A group of participants

Draw among all the participants

After clicking "Continue" the next screen allows you to fill in the draw information to randomly select the winners.

In this "Finalists" section you can decide who enters the draw, how many entries each user has, apply exclusion rules and indicate how many alternates you need. These are the actions to finish configuring the finalists:

1. Finalists. This number tells you the number of finalists that you have at the moment, these are the ones that will enter the draw.
2. View. Allows you to see the list of participants and leave out any participant manually if needed.
3. Manage additional entries. If you want to give additional entries to some of the users according to the rules and conditions of use of your promotion, you can use this option.
4. Reset and select new finalists. If at some point during the selection process you made a mistake, you can use this link to delete the selection and start over.
5. "Ready! Pick the winners" button. Click to start the selection of winners.

Draw among a group of participants

After clicking "Select" a pop-up window will open so you can access the User Manager, where you will find the different filter tools to define the segment of users you want to create for the draw

From the Users Manager you can do the draw in 2 steps:

1. Create the segment of participants that you are interested in selecting so that they become the finalists of the draw. Consult the tutorial where we explain the different filters available to segment the participants of your promotion.
2. Submit the user segment to the giveaway. Once the filter is applied and you have the segment applied, the next step is to apply the "Assign random prize" action among the users of the filter.

Check out all the steps in this video.

Step 3: Assign additional entries

By default, the application will automatically assign each finalist one participation to enter the sweepstakes, but the administrator has the possibility to assign a number of additional entries, giving users who meet the requirements more chances to win the prize.

The options available depend on the mechanics of your promotion. Follow the section A if your promotion has the Login system enabled. If this is not the case, please follow the section B.

Section A- Promotions with Login system enabled:

By clicking on “Manage additional entries” you will see the following options:

• Number of participations: Give additional participations according to the number of times users entered to participate in the promotion.
• Number of stages that the user has participated in: Give additional participations according to the number of stages that the user has participated. This option is only available in multi-stage promotions.
• By total score: Give additional participations for every X points that the user has obtained. If the promotion has a single stage, and multiple participations, the score of the best participation in the stage is considered. If the promotion is multi-stage, the score from the sum of the maximum score for each stage is considered.

Once you added the number of extra participations, confirm and click the "Accept and apply entries" button. 

Section B- "Classic" promotion that do not use the Login System:

By clicking on “Manage additional entries” you will see the following options:

• Number of obtained recruited users: number of new participants that each user has brought to the promotion (register done via recruiting link).
• Number of votes received: number of votes obtained by the user for their entry (image, video or text).

When the additional entries have been added, you can see the list of finalists and verify that the selected finalists now have more entries:

Step 4: Apply rules of exclusion

On the following page you can apply different rules of exclusion of users if necessary to block those you don’t wish to enter into the final sweepstakes. Specifically, you have the following options available:

1. Exclude users from your blacklist: You can create and manage lists of users that you don’t want to enter your sweepstakes. These users will be able to participate in future promotions, but they can be automatically excluded from your sweepstakes without them knowing.
2. Exclude previous winners based on:

• Promotion: if you carry out multiple sweepstakes in a single promotion, you can exclude users who have won one of the previous sweepstakes.
• Account: exclude any user who has already won another promotion or sweepstakes that you have carried out from your account.

Step 5: Run the random draw

The tool already knows how many winners it should select because you already indicated that when creating the prize.

1. Add the number of alternates you want to select, in case you’re unable to contact one of the winners or need to make a last-minute substitution. The sum of the number of prizewinners and alternates must always be less than the total number of finalists. Do you want to know why it’s so important to select alternate winners? We give the answer in this blog post.
2. You can run a test of the sweepstakes first where you will see some winners and alternates but it is not a valid result and there won’t be a certificate of validity.
3. The moment has come to do the final sweepstakes. Click the button “Ready! Pick the winners” to run the final sweepstakes. A small pop-up window will open where you have to confirm if you accept that a public certificate of validity about the sweepstakes will be created:

On the following screen you will see the names of the definitive prizewinners and alternates. A certificate of validity will be generated automatically for the sweepstakes you have just carried out, you will have the link to the certificate here.

Step 6. Publish the Winners page

The last step is to publish the winners on your Winners page of the promotion and disseminate the result to the participants and your online community.

In this case, you will find the following two options:

1. Publication status of the Winners page: If the Winners page has not yet been published, click the “Configure” button that appears next to “The Winners page is not published.” This will take you to the Winners page settings within the Editor, where you will see the “Publish page” button.

2. Publication status of the winners on the page: If the winners have not yet been published, click the “Configure” button that appears next to “The winners of this prize are not published.” This will take you to the prize settings within the promotion management page, where you will need to enable the “Show winners automatically” option.

To finish, share the result of the sweepstakes with all your followers and contact the winners.

Do you want to customize the shared content of the prizes page?

Go to the Editor > Pages > Winners > Viral content and customize the text that will be shown when the page is shared. You can also customize the image that will be shared.

Step 7. Communicate the winners

Below we explain some ideas to how to communicate with the winners to be able to ease the prize fulfillment management once you have the winners of your promotion.

1. Share the link to the winners page

When you have the list of the winners, we recommend to always share the result of the sweepstakes with the participants because, apart from contacting the winners individually, it’s good practice to inform publically to the rest of the participants so that all know who the lucky winners are.

You will find the link in the “Draws” section by clicking the “View” button:

When you click, the public Winners page will open, and you can use the link to share the page on any of your social media channels, so that users can check the name of the winner(s) of your promotion.

2. Share the Certificate of validity link

In addition, you can also obtain the link to the Certificate of validity of the draw generated by the tool, so you can share it with users. To do this, go to the completed draw by clicking the “View results” button, where you will find the certificate link.

3. Share the Giveaway in Show Mode

The "Show Mode" functionality allows you to present the result of a giveaway in a dynamic format to make the announcement of the winners more entertaining and add surprise and fun to your giveaways. The platform automatically generates a video when you pick your giveaway winners. The vertical and horizontal video formats are optimized for sharing on social networks, WhatsApp, email, and other digital media.

Note: The Show Mode functionality is available for all versions of the platform (Basic, Premium and White Label).

To create the presentation of the draw in Show Mode you must follow the steps that we indicate below:

1. Access the management page of the giveaway you have made. At the bottom you will find the "Show Mode" section.

2. Click "Edit" to customize Show Mode. Check out this tutorial to learn all the configuration options available to you.

3. Finally, export the Show Mode video or use the links to share it.

4. Use the Email platform to inform all participants or only the winners by email

Once the promotion has ended, and if you ask for the email address in order to enter the promotion, a good practice is to send an email to all participants informing that the winners have now been found and include the link to the prizes page to that the users can visit the page and check out the winners. You can take advantage of the occasion to thank them for their participation in the promotion.

Below we show you some examples of emails that you can create:

• Email to all users that have won any prize
• Email to all users that have won a certain prize
• Email to a specific users to send him the details of his prize
• Email to all non-winners.

In the content of the email you can insert any characteristic of the prize using the smart tags. You can for example show the name of the prize the user has won and also customize the email with the name of the user. Check out here the most common emails that you can create and automate in the Email platform.

Step 8. Alternate management

Have you carried out the draw but can’t get in touch with one of the winners? Is the winner located outside your city and you can’t arrange the delivery of the prize? Or is the selected winner ultimately not eligible for the prize?

To address these situations, each completed draw includes the alternate management tool, which allows you to replace winners with one of the alternates.

Below we explain how the tool works and how you can replace a winner with one of the alternates.

1. On the management screen of the completed draw, next to the name of the winner you want to replace, you will find the “Revoke winner” button:

2. A pop-up will then open where you must indicate the reason why you want to revoke the prize from this winner.

Note: The reason will be displayed publicly in the validity certificate of the draw.

3. Once the prize has been revoked from the winner, you must assign a new participant as the prize winner. To do this, in the “Alternates” column you will see the names of the users who were drawn as alternates, so you can choose the one you want to designate as the new prize winner.

4. After confirming, the alternate will appear as the new prize winner, and the previous winner will be moved to the “Rejected” column.

Note: Any substitutions made will be reflected on the draw’s validity certificate page, where the history of winners assigned to the prize is displayed.