When we design a promotion, we do it with positive goals in mind: increasing sales, generating leads, boosting participation, or building customer loyalty. A campaign’s success is measured by how well these metrics improve. Every part of the process, from planning to communication, is focused on growing those numbers in a healthy and sustainable manner.
However, the anti-goals are rarely addressed: the unwanted effects that, if not properly managed, can damage your brand’s reputation. And we’re not just talking about technical glitches or unexpected issues such as system crashes or connectivity problems. We mean risks that are much more subtle, but just as dangerous, if not more so: those that stem from poor conceptual design.
A poorly planned mechanic can do more harm than just frustrate participants or generate complaints; it can encourage cheating, create unfair advantages, or, at worst, trigger a crisis of trust in your community.
Therefore, when designing a promotional campaign, it’s not enough to focus solely on what you want to achieve. You also need to anticipate what not to do right from the start. Only then can you create secure campaigns that reflect your brand values—and run smoothly, without surprises.
Nothing creates more stress than a campaign that starts strong and then turns into a problem: user complaints, suspicions of cheating, and a sense of unfairness. What began as a brilliant idea becomes a constant source of concern.
Here are three real-life scenarios that seem logical, but can easily backfire:
Games: Rewarding the Highest Scorer
On paper, this sounds great: create a fun game, launch it to the public, and reward the person with the best score. What could go wrong?
A lot. As soon as there’s a prize involved, some users start looking for any loophole to gain an advantage. Here’s what we’ve seen:
- Attempts to pause or manipulate the game timer to gain extra time or a better score.
- URL parameter tampering to alter game behavior or simulate results.
- Scanning all platform URLs to uncover hidden content, quiz answers, or vulnerable endpoints.
- Using browser inspection tools to access source code, revealing answers, key variables, or editable functions.
- Automated bots playing thousands of times to rack up high scores or improve odds in a raffle.
- Repeating the game hundreds of times to spot bugs or patterns for unfair advantages.
- Modifying local browser files to fake progress or results.
- Simulating multiple users or fake identities to gain more entries (multi-accounting).
- Using proxies or VPNs to bypass geo-restrictions.
- Sharing answers in forums or messaging groups to gain a collective advantage.
- Using web traffic capture tools to analyze server communication and manipulate requests.
- OCR technology applied to screenshots to solve visual challenges or quizzes.
- Reverse engineering JavaScript files to discover vulnerabilities or game logic.
At Easypromos, we have a dedicated security team that constantly monitors the platform, reviewing vulnerabilities and updating our anti-fraud systems. However, the digital world is dynamic, cross-device, and cross-browser, and the creativity behind cheating is virtually endless.
So while we maintain tight control and respond quickly to any abuse, there is no such thing as absolute security online. The best defense is still good game design.
The solution?
Don’t reward the top scorer directly. Instead, give symbolic prizes to the top players on the leaderboard and randomly draw the main prize among those who attain a minimum score (demanding but not discouraging). Keep the game fun and competitive, just don’t make it all about the #1 spot.
Voting Contests: Rewarding the Most Voted Entry
Another common scenario is the photo or video contest where users vote for their favorite. Our strong recommendation here is not to award the prize to the most-voted participant. What seems like a strategy to drive virality often devolves into a race to cheat: fake accounts, automated scripts, vote exchange groups on Telegram, etc.
The good news is that after 15-plus years managing voting contests, we can confidently say that manipulating an Easypromos voting contest is practically impossible. We have robust anti-fraud systems that block bots, automated scripts, fake accounts, or mass voting from suspicious IPs or domains. Additionally, Easypromos voting is never anonymous: users must be properly identified, which creates a strong barrier, even for the most determined cheaters.
Still, despite these safeguards, we advise against giving the prize to the top-voted participant. Why? Because disproportionate results can occur even without cheating.
How is that possible without cheating?
Simple: some participants have a much larger reach than others, which skews the results without breaking any rules. Real examples we’ve seen include:
- Influencers with thousands or millions of followers ask for votes.
- Streamers mention the contest during live broadcasts.
- Facebook page admins with highly engaged communities.
- Telegram or WhatsApp group managers mobilize thousands of people in minutes.
In all these cases, the promoted participant gets an overwhelming number of votes legally. But it breaks the contest balance. Other participants, seeing no chance to catch up, lose motivation and drop out.
How does this impact a campaign?
What was meant to be a viral, positive brand action becomes a frustrating experience for most users. This hurts both engagement and how the contest is perceived.
How to avoid it?
Votes are great for visibility, but they should not be the sole criterion to win. Instead, use voting as a preliminary or secondary stage rather than the final decider. A solid approach is to choose finalists from those who get a minimum number of votes, then select the winner via raffle or jury decision. You can also award a symbolic prize to the top-voted entry, but reserve the grand prize for a jury or random draw. This way, you keep the virality without compromising fairness or user experience.
Receipt Validation: Rewarding the Highest Spender
With Easypromos’ AI-based purchase receipt validation system, we’ve seen a rise in “buy and win” promotions, where users upload a receipt to validate a purchase.
At first glance, rewarding your biggest spenders might seem like a smart loyalty-building tactic. If the goal is to drive sales, rewarding top customers makes sense, right?
However, this is one of the most sensitive, fraud-prone mechanics. Once a big prize is involved, some participants stop acting like customers and start acting like gamers, determined to win at all costs.
The good news is that Easypromos’ AI can detect duplicate receipts from the same user, attempts to reuse the same receipt across accounts, and both manual and digital ticket tampering. In short, old-school ticket duplication doesn’t work; AI has made it obsolete. Just as in the voting example, some users may find legal ways to collect massive numbers of receipts: digging through trash bins for discarded receipts or collecting receipts from friends and family not participating in the promotion. Once again, a few determined users (contest junkies or compers) will do whatever it takes to climb the rankings.
The main problem here is credibility. Other participants quickly notice these “suspicious” behaviors, leading to frustration, complaints, bad PR, and even public backlash. To top it off, the brand takes on a heavy operational burden: manually reviewing receipts, justifying decisions, responding to issues, all of which waste time and detract from the original campaign goal.
How to avoid it?
Our advice is clear: never reward the biggest spender directly. Instead, consider fairer, more sustainable alternatives:
- Hold prize draws among all users who validate a legitimate purchase.
- Milestone rewards: e.g., get a reward after 1, 2, or 3 verified purchases.
- Gamified systems: virtual coins or points for each purchase, redeemable later, always with per-user limits.
- Instant-win mechanics like prize wheels or scratch cards, with a cap on wins per user.
In all cases, the key is designing a dynamic where it doesn’t matter who buys the most, but rather who participates fairly and transparently.
Conclusion: There’s Good News
Designing a secure and effective promotion is 100% possible. You just need to understand how users behave when prizes are at stake and anticipate the risks.
At Easypromos, we’ve built a range of anti-fraud protections, but the best defense is still a solid design from the start.
If you’re planning your next campaign and have questions, we are here to help you design a promotion that meets your goals without risking the integrity of your contest or the reputation of your brand.
