Just as important as the giveaway itself you also need the right plan of action for your giveaway winners to be announced and claim their prize.
This will of course be a little different depending on what your giving away but these core principles will help you to success.
Before Going Public
Depending on your entry rules or how you want to do it contact the winner first via email.
This is to make sure the person is indeed eligible to win and ask if it is ok to use their name in the announcement.
You will also want to make sure the person is around to confirm so you can get their details to send them their winnings and email is the perfect way to do that privately.
As a follow up you may want to ask them to take a picture of themselves and their winnings as proof and to spark a little more hype for your giveaway.
About 90% of the traffic to our giveaways we run ends up coming from Facebook.
Naturally this is the perfect place to announce the winner after the above is taken care of.
Be sure to do the following…
- Thank all entrants for their time and support in making this giveaway such a huge success
- Tag the winner as well as what they ended up winning
- Include a link back to the giveaway page – I like to always use the same page on my blog so those links act as future exposure to new giveaways I run
- If your giveaway system provides it consider adding what entry ended up winning such as following on Twitter or a photo submission
- Let people know when your next contest or giveaway is
Twitter is a great place to announce your winner and also plans on your next giveaway. Even though twitter post have a very short lifespan you can boost this with retweets etc.
Be sure to do the following in your post…
- Thank all participants that have entered they helped you have such a successful giveaway
- Mention the winner and their twitter handle if they have one
- Include a link back to the giveaway. Again I like running all my giveaways via the same link to help maximize exposure for any future giveaways I do
- If the winner provided you with a photo this is one of the perfect spots to use it
Email Your Non Winners
In my book they are still winners, they helped make your giveaway be as successful as it was and took the time to enter it. That speaks a lot for these people and you should really encourage them and offer any help etc possible.
Here are some tips when emailing all of your non winning contestants…
- Be sure to thank them for their time and support again without them your giveaway would not have been what it was
- Encourage them to come back to your next giveaway
- Offer a consolation prize if possible such as 10% off everything in your store as a thank you for their time
Bonus Tips
- Make sure you are building a list from your giveaway but keep it separate from your other lists. This will help you reach out to these people again to announce your next giveaway. This is a snowball effect as many will come back to enter your next giveaway and it ends up costing you very little to start reaching thousands of people. Consider using Aweber to segment your list.
- Second to building your email list be sure to build your social following on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and others. This is another great way to continue to reach out to your entrants.
