Contests help boost engagement with a brand’s followers and customers by offering a dynamic where participating users can vote online for their favorite candidates. The candidates to be voted for can be published by the contest organizer, or by the users themselves by uploading their photos, videos, projects, or stories.

The Easypromos platform offers different contest applications to adapt to the exact dynamic the administrator wants to create. The following applications allow you to organize voting in the contest gallery:

• Online voting contest
• Photo Contest
• Video Contest
• Scenes
• Instagram Mention + Hashtag Contest
• Photofun

All applications included in the "Contests" category include a fraud control system to detect and block users attempting to cast fraudulent votes.

In this tutorial, we present the step-by-step process to configure and open voting in a contest. The tutorial covers the following sections:

1. Enable voting in the gallery

2. Voting configuration

3. Gallery visibility

4. Contact participants by email

5. Contest results management

1. Enable voting in the contest gallery

To open voting in the contest, the first step is to enter the Promotion Editor > Participation Stages and access the contest gallery:

Under the Options tab, select the dates during which users will be able to vote for their favorite candidates.  In the same section, you can also configure the participation frequency, determining how often can users access and vote:

Go to the Voting Gallery tab below to enable the voting system:

2. Voting configuration

From the Participation Stages section, access the Contest Gallery to edit it, and under the Voting Gallery, you will find the "Voting" subsection, where you can configure the desired voting type from the following two options:

• Simple: the user will be able to vote for one candidate in each entry. Each vote and participation corresponds to 1 point that the candidate will receive.
• Advanced: allows assigning multiple votes in each user participation. You can configure the score of each of those votes so the voter can establish a ranking of their preferences. For example, they can create a “top 3” of candidates, awarding 3 points to their favorite, 2 points to the second, and 1 point to the third. 

In the following video, you can see an example of the user experience when voting with the advanced voting option enabled. 

Advanced voting allows you to create different levels, assigning the desired number of points that will be awarded to candidates. You can create as many point levels as needed, including multiple levels with the same number of points (for example, to vote for the three favorite photos in the gallery, assigning 1 point to each one). 

The following customization options are available for each level:

1. Score: Points awarded to the candidate voted for by the user.

2. Name: Label of the entry when it is selected for voting.

3. Color: The selected entry will be highlighted with the chosen color.

Users must select one candidate for each level to complete their participation and vote for their favorites. Additionally, in advanced voting, you can configure the following two options to define the user experience after they confirm their votes:

• Message after voting: Share any relevant information with users who have just voted and thank them for their participation. 
• Action after voting: You can redirect users who have just voted to the contest public gallery to continue browsing candidates, or to the final promotion page, where you can thank them for their participation and redirect them to an external page or your own website.

3. Gallery visibility

From the "Galleries public page" tab, you can configure the following options related to the publication and visibility of the contest gallery:

1. Enable gallery public page: Defines whether the contest gallery is visible to users who have not yet registered. Any visitor accessing the contest page will be able to see all candidates if the public gallery is enabled. Uncheck this option if you want to restrict access to the candidates to users who have filled in the registration form. 
2. Hide the number of votes from unregistered users: Visitors will be able to view the gallery and voting options, but not the total number of votes received by each candidate. This information will only be visible to users who have already registered in the contest (whether they have confirmed their vote or not). 

4. Contact participants by email

The contest Emails and notifications platform allows you to create emails that will be automatically sent to promotion participants to thank them for participating and confirming their vote, as well as encourage them to share the contest or a specific candidate.

To do so, access the contest Email platform from the general overview of the contest:

Create a new email, of the "Upon participating" type, to automate the sending when the user validates their vote:

Within the generated email, in the field "What stage does it apply to?", select the participation stage of the voting gallery so that the email is only sent to users who have just voted.

You will be able to apply one or more smart tags within the body of the email to personalize its content with the voter's information, the link and name of the voted candidate, share the contest URL, etc...

Learn more here about the email platform and the available options for contacting contest participants.

5. Contest results management

From the promotion's User Manager, the administrator will be able to access the votes that each candidate has received in the gallery, assign a prize to the candidates with the most votes, as well as download the vote ranking and voter information. 

Click here to learn more about the User Manager and the participant information you will be able to obtain and download.

To access more information about the contest voting, go to the "Votes" section from the User Manager:

Once you have selected the contest gallery, you will be able to see the total number of votes for each candidate, as well as access the following information/options:

1. Export all votes.
2. Export results of the vote.
3. View votes received by a specific candidate.
4. Export votes for a specific candidate.

The fraudulent votes information column also allows you to manage and view possible fraud attempts. 

Learn more here about fraud control and our recommendations for running a fair and transparent contest.