I’ve used Rafflecopter a number of times now, for both ‘game of skill’ and ‘game of chance’ giveaways. Here are a few practicalities or observations I’ve made that might help you:
- Rafflecopter makes it very easy to collect entries, manage them and draw them randomly
- Don’t ask entrants to jump through too many hoops to enter. 1-3 mandatory requirements is sufficient. The exception might be when you’re working with multiple brands and they want their FB pages liked as a condition of entry.
- Consider whether you want to make liking your page, following you on Twitter or signing up to your newsletter a mandatory option. You may end up with a lot of people ‘following’ you that don’t actually interact with you or open your emails. They may even unlike or unsubscribe straight after the giveaway. Consider the effect on things like People Talking About This (FB) and your email open rates.
- If you create options for entry like ‘subscribe to my email’ or ‘comment and tell me’, remember these entries are not automatically validated like FB likes or Tweet this. You will need to manually check the eligibility of the entries (by law, only eligible entries can win). For me that has meant checking the email address supplied with my Mail Chimp lists or checking that everyone who claimed they commented actually did comment.
- I was really surprised by the number of false entry claims made, either saying they had subscribed by email when they hadn’t all not commenting. I was also really surprised (and disappointed) at the number of false claims made by other bloggers entering my giveaway. I removed over 150 entries from my Blog Birthday Bonanza due to ineligibility.
- I suspect there are a lot of ‘compers’ out there who count on the fact that you are not checking the eligiblity of their entries as described above. Many entries I removed had email addresses like comps123@hotmail.com
- Giveaways attract a lot of ‘comper’ traffic who are unlikely to ‘stick’.
- Rafflecopter doesn’t allow you to collect addresses from entrants, so you will need to wait for winners to reply with their addresses and send these out to the brand who is providing the giveaway. This process can drag on a bit and you will find yourself chasing both the winners and the brands to ensure prize fulfillment.
You can also refer to my guide on how to run a giveaway in Australia for information on applying for permits and getting your Terms and Conditions right.
That’s my two cents.
Laney x
Thanks so much for this and your previous post Laney, so helpful. I am very new to giveaways and have a lot to learn. It’s fun though. I am using Rafflecopter but didn’t check entries were eligible, it makes sense this needs to be done. Lot of work though!!
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Great post Laney and lots of information. I use Rafflecopter at present and have the permits etc for the appropriate states. It is very important that entries are validated before they announced as a winner. I make this clear to my readers, however there are always those that still don’t read it. I usually also have 1 or 2 mandatory entries and extra entries if they wish to complete them so generally it is very easy to enter. There is another giveaway widget currently in BETA faze being developed and I have been keeping an eye on it and look forward to perhaps using it but it of course needs to be approved by the appropriate states again.
Hi Laney, I came across your site while trying to work out the best way to run a Rafflecopter comp. It is very helpful thanks – particularly reading about the permits. Are they require for American do you know?
I have the Australian country music site and I am using that as my Rafflecopter ‘experiment’. If it goes alright I will use it for our House Sitting sites, one in Australia and one in the US. (mindahome.com and mindahome.com.au). I noticed there is a webpage that you can register your competition – that could be handy to drive some extra entries, but as you say in your other article on Rafflecopter, it could just generate professional ‘compys’. I will try it this time and see.
Thanks for all the info – will be joining your mailing list.
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Hi Sue. I don’t know what the permit requirements in America I’m sorry. Mabye a network like BlogHer might have some resources?
I registered my last big giveaway with Win Stuff and it certainly generated a lot of traffic. I’m guessing that’s where a lot of the ‘compys’ came from. I won’t be doing it again. I’d prefer for my loyal readers to be the ones who benefit from my giveaways.
Cheers,
Laney
Thanks Laney, I will keep the registration advice in mind, its true that you do want quality traffic, links and to generate something nice for your loyal people.
I have looked at a few US comps but they don’t seem to have as many rules as we do here. At the moment, we are working out how to insert the code into the site which runs on vBulletin. It’s a good learning curve!
Have a good day, Sue
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