How to run a sweepstakes online

It’s very likely this is your first time and your looking for pointers on how to run a sweepstakes online. If you’re feeling uneasy or unsure, don’t worry, you’re in the right place. At Easypromos, we have extensive experience helping create thousands of online sweepstakes. In this article, we’ll explain, clearly and step by step, how to set up an automated, random, transparent sweepstakes that participants will love, with zero complaints.

Types of Online Sweepstakes

There are three main types of sweepstakes, depending on how participants enter:

1. Social Media Giveaways – Participation happens directly on the platform. The goal is usually to increase engagement and followers.
2. Sweepstakes from a Participant List – Winners are selected randomly from a list that the organizer already has.
3. Entry Form Giveaway – Participants register with their details (from a simple form to interactive quizzes, games, or surveys). The sweepstakes is then drawn among all eligible participants. Easypromos provides a dedicated microsite to host the promotion.

If you’re running a virtual event, Easypromos also offers a specialized app to boost engagement with up to 1,000 attendees.

Social Media Sweepstakes

Social platforms are extremely effective for sweepstakes due to their reach and ease of use. However, each one has its own rules. Based on our experience, here are two golden guidelines:

• Always follow each platform’s policies. You’re playing on their turf, so compliance is crucial. We’ve seen campaigns and accounts shut down for ignoring the rules. Easypromos ensures your sweepstakes is always compliant.
• Play it safe. Stick to proven dynamics that won’t put your account at risk. Some campaigns push the limits creatively, but with sweepstakes, your priority should be compliance, a great prize, and total transparency.

Here are the main types of sweepstakes allowed on each platform.

Instagram Giveaway

• Comment-Based Giveaways – Users comment on a post to enter, and you can also ask them to follow the brand and tag friends. Easypromos collects all comments, applies filters, and generates the final participant list for a fair Instagram giveaway.
• Mention + hashtag contest – Users publish a post tagging the brand with a specific hashtag. Easypromos can automatically generate a gallery of entries. Winners can be drawn randomly or selected via public voting.
• Instagram Story Giveaway – Either draw from users who comment on your Story, or from those who post their own Story tagging your brand. The latter is especially powerful as participants become brand ambassadors.
• Collaborative giveaways – Partner with influencers using Instagram Collabs to extend reach. Then run the comment-draw tool on the original post.
• Instagram + Facebook combined giveaway – Merge comments from both platforms into one sweepstakes using the Multi-Network giveaway app. Perfect for large communities or big prizes.

Facebook Giveaway

There are two types of Facebook Giveaway:

• Comment giveaway – Users comment on one or several posts with text, images, or videos. Easypromos collects and filters entries for a fair draw.
• Reaction giveaway – Select winners from users who like or react to one or more posts.

X (Twitter) Giveaway

An X Giveaway can be of three types

• Reply giveaway – Participants reply to a brand’s post. Easypromos lets you manage users, apply filters, and exclude past winners.
• Retweet sweepstakes – Winners are randomly chosen from users who retweet your post(s).
• Mention + hashtag giveaway – Users post tagging the brand and using a specific hashtag. Easypromos groups entries for a fair draw.

Other Social Networks

Some networks (like YouTube) don’t allow automated draws from comments, or lack API tools to collect data. In these cases, the solution is to share an external sweepstakes link hosted on a microsite. Examples:

• LinkedIn Giveaway – Share the sweepstakes link in a post; participants use LinkedIn’s social login to register.
• YouTube Giveaway – Run a registration-based sweepstakes linked in your video feed.
• TikTok Giveaway – Share an external microsite link, since TikTok doesn’t allow automated comment collection.
• Twitch Giveaway – Run sweepstakes in chat or for subscribers, or use an external link where users sign in with Twitch.
• Threads – Share any microsite sweepstakes link to build your community.

Sweepstakes from a Participant List

Common for offline events, app users, e-commerce customers, or newsletter subscribers.

Flow:

• Collect participant list. This can be done through prior registration forms, event sign-ups, or any other method that allows you to build a list of participants.
• Select he prize draw method: Use Easypromos’ Pick-a-Winner app to randomly and transparently select winners.
• Announce winners publicly. Communicating results clearly is essential. Easypromos generates a validity certificate for each sweepstakes and provides tools to contact the winner directly. It also automatically creates a results page and a countdown video with the winners, ready to share on social media and your online channels.

Take a look at this case study of Too Good to Go to better understand how the Pck-a-Winner app works and its benefits.

Entry Form Giveaway

Entry form giveaways are an excellent way to collect valuable data, provided that you offer an attractive prize suited to the target audience to encourage participation. With this option, users must provide personal information to enter the prize draw, which may include name, email, location, phone number, or any other information, depending on the purpose of the sweepstakes or the data you want to gather from your audience.

There are several key considerations when running an Entry Form Giveaway:

• Creating a registration form. Make sure the form is simple yet collects the necessary information. An overly long form can discourage participation in an online sweepstakes. Clarity and ease of use are essential to maximize entries.
• Legal compliance. It’s crucial to respect data privacy laws such as the GDPR. You must ensure participants understand what information you’re collecting and how it will be used.
• Data management. At the end of your online sweepstakes, you’ll have a valuable database. If used properly, it can become a powerful tool for future marketing campaigns.

We can highlight two types of online sweepstakes: simple ones and those that require prior engagement.

Simple

Users simply fill out a short registration form and automatically enter the draw.

Requiring prior engagement

This kind of online sweepstakes require users to complete a previous action to enter the online sweepstakes, such as:

• Enter a code or keyword to access the registration form, useful when you want to limit access to a specific sweepstakes to a certain group.
• Validate a purchase receipt of a minimum amount in order to register for the sweepstakes. This is very common when running an exclusive promotion for customers.
• Watch a video before accessing the sweepstakes, to educate or persuade users.
• Complete a game to be eligible for the sweepstakes.
• Answer a quiz to enter the sweepstakes.

All dynamics in the Easypromos catalog include the tool to select random winners among all registered users.

Legal considerations for your online sweepstakes

Online sweepstakes have become one of the most common marketing actions for any brand, as they allow them to gain visibility, dynamize their online community, and promote products or services.

There are several legal, tax, and ethical aspects that the organizer of the giveaway must consider before conducting the action so that it can be managed with ease. The online sweepstakes organizer is responsible for:

• Complying with the legislation of the geographical area where it applies.
• Adhering to the regulations of the social media platform where it applies.
• Complying with the legal terms and conditions defined by the organizer for the giveaway.
• Using the data obtained through the giveaway responsibly.

Creating the Terms & Conditions for Your Sweepstakes

All sweepstakes must include Terms & Conditions, which regulate the entire promotion. These rules should always be available for participants to read at any time.

Easypromos provides a template for drafting terms and conditions, created by our partner Letslaw, to make it easy to cover the key aspects that need to be communicated. All Easypromos dynamics allow you to integrate the terms and conditions for participants to view and accept.

Some of the clauses that should be included in these rules to protect the sweepstakes organizer against potential issues are:

• Identification of the organizer.
• Free entry, or if applicable, details of any additional costs tied to the promotional sweepstakes.
• Start and end dates of the sweepstakes, as well as the date and method used to select winners (e.g., before a notary, jury decision, random selection using the Easypromos tool, etc.).
• Terms and conditions for participation.
• If the sweepstakes are run on social media, an explicit statement that the social platform is not associated with, responsible for, or sponsoring the sweepstakes.
• Value and nature of the prize offered.
• Personal data protection policies.
• Penalties in cases of fraudulent use.
• Image and/or intellectual property rights granted by winners or participants.
• Possibility of extending or suspending the sweepstakes (e.g., in cases of force majeure).
• Right to remove or disqualify users who break the rules, and the organizer’s release of liability for participant misconduct.

Publishing the Terms & Conditions for Your Online Sweepstakes

As mentioned above, the official rules must be accessible to users at all times. That’s why it’s important to distribute them across multiple channels.

With Easypromos tools, you’ll get a unique URL for the page hosting the rules and a shortened version of the link to use in your communications. When clicked, the page opens the terms and conditions of your sweepstakes.

Options to share the terms and conditions of your online sweepstakes include:

• Add the link to the T&C’s at the end of the sweepstakes post.
• Share the link in your social media BIO.
• Publish the T&C’s on your website or in a dedicated sweepstakes section.
• Send them via messaging or email.

Want to learn more about Easypromos’ tool to host Terms& Conditions? Check out our article on how to create and share them.

Random Winner Selection

All Easypromos giveaway applications include a built-in system that allows you to select winners in a 100% random manner under the GLI-19 certification. This tool ensures prizes are awarded transparently and automatically, avoiding any kind of manipulation. For added security, the platform includes a test mode you can use before running the final sweepstakes.

This system also includes features that help you manage participants so the sweepstakes outcome is as fair and impartial as possible. Let’s look at some of these in more detail:

Exclusions

To prevent bad practices from affecting results, the tool lets you exclude participants. Here are the most common scenarios:

• Exclude specific users and save a list of unauthorized participants. The system allows individual exclusions and also a blacklist of invalid users, preventing them from entering future sweepstakes.
• Exclude previous winners. If you run recurring sweepstakes, this filter is useful for automatically excluding participants who have already won in previous campaigns by the same brand.
• Exclude comments by registration date. For social media sweepstakes, you can set a cutoff date after which comments will be excluded. This is ideal if your official rules specify an exact participation deadline.
• Manage a blacklist of participants. You can keep a list of users who engaged in misconduct or failed to meet requirements, ensuring they don’t participate in future random draws.

Winners and Alternates

With Easypromos’ sweepstakes tool, you can specify how many winners and alternates you want to generate randomly, up to 1,000 in total. Only eligible participants who haven’t been excluded in the previous step will qualify. Once the sweepstakes is run, a results page is generated to announce the winners and manage prize distribution.

Certificate of Validity

Every Easypromos sweepstakes is generated randomly, ensuring reliability and transparency. Each sweepstakes also produces a certificate of validity, which the brand can share to explain the method used for winner selection. This certificate also provides the assurance you need when justifying the results to participants.

The certificate of validity is a web page with the following features:

• A unique URL in the format: https://sweeps.easypromosapp.com/sweepstake_identifier
• The link can be shared on any social network or website to prove the legitimacy of the sweepstakes outcome.
• The URL cannot be altered or deleted.
• The certificate shows sweepstakes details (organizer ID, time of the draw, total finalists) and results (winner and alternate IDs).
• The certificate remains permanently published, public, and accessible to all participants.
• The organizer cannot modify or delete sweepstakes results.
• If alternates replace winners, the certificate automatically updates with this information.

Communicating the winners of your online sweepstakes

Once the winners of your online sweepstakes have been picked, the following step is to announce the winners and contact them.

Easypromos provides several tools for this:

• Winners page: When the giveaway is completed, a page with the results is automatically generated, listing the winners and substitutes. It is a web page with its own URL that you can use to share the giveaway results. The texts and images on the page are 100% customizable.
• Message to winners: The platform features a tool that allows you to send a direct message to the winners.
• Claim your prize tool: To obtain additional information from the winners and make prize delivery easier, you can activate the ‘Claim Your Prize’ functionality. This allows you to set up a registration form that the winners must fill out to accept the prize, streamlining the prize management process.
• Use the Show Mode to announce the winners: Get a video presentation of the winners to share on your social networks and generate more excitement.

Online sweepstakes conclusions

Online giveaways are an exceptionally flexible and powerful tool in the world of digital marketing. From boosting visibility on social media to building a robust database for future campaigns, giveaways can adapt to a wide variety of objectives and platforms.

When planning a giveaway, carefully consider which method aligns best with your goals, ensure compliance with all relevant legal regulations, and prepare a solid strategy to promote and execute the giveaway. With careful planning, giveaways can not only increase engagement and visibility for your brand but also strengthen the relationship with your audience and gather valuable data to drive your marketing strategy.