The "Instagram Story Giveaway" application allows you to raffle a prize among users who interact in Instagram Stories. Specifically, the application allows you to organize two different types of draws:

1. Story replies giveaway: Carry out a draw among the users who have responded to a Story shared from your Instagram business profile during a specific period. You will also be able to filter the answers that will be imported into the draw by the use of a certain hashtag.
2. Story mentions giveaway: Raffle a prize among all the users who posted a Story on their Instagram profile mentioning your brand during a certain period.

What you should know before launching your Instagram Story giveaway(s):

• This application is only available for customers with an active Basic PRO plan or higher (Premium, White Label plans).
• Replies and mentions can only be imported if they were posted or sent within the last 7 days, or are to be shared in the next 7 days. Older interactions will not be imported and will therefore not be entered into the giveaway.
• The application can be used either:
  • From the beginning: just after publishing the Story, encouraging participation: You will be able to create the draw in your account from the start, and in this case, the tracker for new responses or mentions will be automatically activated. In this way, the system will import all the entries into the draw. Responses/mentions that users make in the Stories will be pulled. The monitor will stop automatically after 7 days from the draw creation date and new entries will no longer be imported.
  • At the end: when the period to participate has ended and you need to finalize the draw, you can access your Easypromos dashboard, create the draw in your account, and the system will import all the answers (made within the last 7 days) to your Story so you can make the draw among all users who interacted.
• If you create the draw from the beginning, the "Automatic thank you message" option will be available, which allows you to send an automatic response to the users, to thank them for their participation.
• Story mentions giveaway: only participations done by users with a public Instagram profile can be imported. It is not possible to pull stories shared from private accounts.

Recommendation: From Easypromos we recommend that you create the draw in your account from the beginning. Indeed, in this way you will be able to enable the automatic thank you message in order to send a direct message to the users who are participating. In addition, the system will import the users who are participating in the draw in real time, which will allow you to review and control the participations that are arriving.

Below we present the steps to configure and carry out the draw:

1. Types of giveaways on Instagram Stories

2. Initial requirement in the Instagram app

3. Create the giveaway

   • Story replies giveaway

   • Story mentions giveaway

4. Monitoring of user participation in real-time and automatic Thank you message

5. Review the list of finalists and apply exclusions

6. Define the number of winners and alternates

7. Test your giveaway and activate it

8. Prepare to announce the winners

9. Announce the winners

10. Manage winners and alternates

1. Types of giveaways on Instagram Stories

The platform allows you to carry out the following types of giveaways based on Instagram Stories:

Story replies giveaway

Allows a raffle to be held among users who have responded to a Story on your Instagram account during a specific period.

The story replies giveaways works as explained below:

• The brand or company defines a hashtag for the giveaway.
• The brand or company shares a Story or multiple Stories on their Instagram profile, encouraging users to reply to the story including the hashtag to enter the draw.
• Users will participate by replying to the story with a message including the hashtag.
• From your Easypromos dashboard, you can retrieve all the responses to the Story made by users, to carry out the draw among all the imported responses.
• Additionally, you can program an automatic thank you message to send a message to users as they participate.

Story mentions giveaway

Allows you to draw one or more prizes among all the users who share a Story on their Instagram public profile mentioning your brand during a certain period.

The story mentions giveaways works as explained below:

• As a brand or business, the first step will be for you to share a Story or post in your Instagram profile, informing of the giveaway and encouraging users to post a Story to their own profiles in order to enter the giveaway.
• To participate, users must share a Story on their profile. The story must include a mention of the brand that's organizing the draw. Important! The user's profile must be public for their Story to be counted.
• From your Easypromos dashboard, you will be able to retrieve all the stories made by users who have mentioned your Instagram account, to carry out the draw among all of them. Maximum duration: 7 days.
• Additionally, you can program an automatic thank you message to send a message to users as they participate.

2. Initial requirement in the Instagram app

To import the participants of the giveaway, it will be necessary to enable the "Allow access to messages" option in the privacy options of your Instagram account. To do this, you must go to Settings> Privacy> Messages, as shown below:

Important note: If this option is not enabled it will not be possible to create the giveaway.

3. Create the giveaway

In order to create the giveaway, as a first step access your dashboard through this link. Create an account if you are not yet an Easypromos user and enter your administration panel to manage and create your promotions.

The next step is to select the type of Instagram Stories Giveaway you want to run.

To do so, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the “Create new promotion” button to start with your giveaway.

2. Select the “Instagram Story giveaway” option:

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

4. You will be presented with the giveaway setup screen. First, you will need to create or select an organizing brand for your giveaway and the Title of your giveaway. This organizing brand is independent of any social network and works like a folder within your Easypromos account to help you organize the draws you create.

5. The next step is to connect with the Facebook user with which you manage the Facebook business page linked to your Instagram account:

6. Select then your Instagram company account.

7. Once the Instagram account is connected, the next step is to configure the entries that you want to import into the giveaway, based on the type of giveaway you have selected:

A. Giveaway based on replies to your Story

If you have selected "Story replies", you will find the following options that you must configure:

1. "Select what type of replies to your Story you want to import" option: This first option allows you to define the answers to the Story that you want to import into the giveaway, and you can choose between:

• Import only the replies that contain a specific hashtag. Example: At the time of launching the giveaway, you can ask users to include the hashtag #Megaprize in the message as a way of confirming that they do in fact want to participate in the giveaway you are organizing. In this way, you can make sure that the system only imports the answers with this hashtag into the draw.
• Import all replies from users who interacted with your Story.

2. Select the time zone. As a mandatory step, you must select the time zone of the draw.

3. "Do you want to import replies to your past Story?"option: This feature allows you to decide between:

• Import only new responses. In this way, the users who would have responded to your Stories before creating the giveaway will not be imported.
• Import past replies to your stories. To do this, you can define the start date for importing responses. Example: If you share the Story on your Instagram profile on Saturday, but do not create the giveaway in the control panel until a few days later, this option will allow you to configure the start date for importing responses to the Story, so that the system starts importing all responses from Saturday, when the giveaway was launched on Instagram.

B. Story mentions giveaway

If you have selected "Story mentions", you will find the following options that you must configure:

1. Select the time zone. As a mandatory step, you must select the time zone of the draw.

2. "Do you want to import past mentions?" option: This feature allows you to decide between:

• Import only new mentions. In this way, the users who have mentioned you in a Story before the creation of the giveaway will not be imported.
• Import past mentions. To use this option, select the start date for importing mentions. Example: If you launch the giveaway on your Instagram profile on Saturday, but do not create the giveaway in your Easypromos dashboard until a few days later, this option will allow you to set the start date for importing mentions to the past Saturday, so that the system will pull all stories with a mention to your brand shared from the Saturday until the date.

8. Click the "Continue" button to start the import of the participations via Stories, whether they are replies to your Story or mentions to your Instagram account made by users in their own Stories.

4. Monitoring of user participation in real-time and automatic Thank you message

Once the giveaway has been created, the system automatically activates the tracker to pull new answers or mentions and import the new participations made by users in the Stories in real-time.

In this way, if you have created the giveaway in your dashboard days ago, the monitor will have been importing the new answers or mentions made by users into the giveaway.

Important: The tracker will stop automatically after 7 days from the draw creation date and new responses or mentions will no longer be imported.

Finally, click on the "Automatic Thank You Message" option, which allows you to send an automatic private message to the user when a new entry is imported (optional).

Note: You can use the word @username to make a mention of the user in the automatic thank you message.

5. Review the list of finalists and apply exclusions

Once the period to participate in the draw is over, you can continue to the next step to complete the draw and pick the winner(s). There, you will be able to review the list of participants, and in case of a Mention Giveaway, you will be able to see the story with which each user has participated while the stories are still available, because, after 24 hours of 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.

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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.