Instagram giveaways a pain in the 🍑? Here's how to make them easier

For brands big and small, sweepstakes or giveaways on Instagram are a great way to engage your followers. Not a lot of people can pass up the phrase, “Enter for a chance to WIN,” especially if the prize is coveted! 

I saw a recent giveaway from a boutique handbag company. They were giving away an adorable overnight tote (great prize BTW). 

In order to enter, they asked users to do a few things:

• Like this post
• Follow us
• Tag a friend in the comments

Also… if you wanted an extra chance to win, you could head to the “link in bio” to click over to a form, where you could sign up to receive email and text from the brand.

The post had 985 comments. But no doubt, just a fraction of those clicked back to the brand’s profile to click the “link in bio” and completed their registration form – which is the information the brand was after in the first place.

First party data opt-ins (name, email address, etc) are brand gold… with even more value starting in 2023, when internet cookies become obsolete in tracking user behavior across the web.

But relying on chance to collect this information is no way to effectively grow your customer base. Move over ineffective Instagram giveaways, now there’s something better! 

Let’s reimagine the giveaway mentioned above, but instead leveraging Stampede Social’s tools that help make giveaways now a social media manager’s dream. 

Depending on your objectives for the giveaway campaign, there are two approaches you could take using Stampede Social: 

Approach #1:  Giveaway with the goal to collect opt-in first party data. 

This approach involves a registration form to build up your email database and other key first party data.

Approach the caption / call to action like this:

Want a chance to win this adorable overnight tote?

Comment below with #OvernightTote and tell us why you need one. Follow us and we’ll send you a DM with a URL to complete your entry form!

In this example, since we’re going to be asking for first party data, we suggest limiting the additional requests for an entry. The generated replies alone will do a lot to lift the post organically via the algorithms triggered by the engagement.

How it works:  When a user comments with the hashtag (#OvernightTote), they automatically receive a DM from the brand with a unique and trackable link to your registration form for the giveaway (usually hosted by the brand). Here, the user enters their name, email, opts-in to your mailing list, etc to complete their entry. 

Your team then uses the entries from the registration form to complete winner selection.

Approach #2: In-Post Giveaway

This approach doesn’t involve a micro site registration form. An In-post giveaway instructs your fans and followers to simply reply to the post for entry. 

Approach the call to action like this:

Want a chance to win this adorable overnight tote?

Comment below with #OvernightTote and tell us why you need one

Like the post 

Follow us and tag 2 friends.

This type of giveaway causes a different kind of engagement frenzy. Liking and tagging can be layered in as requirements for entry. It’s not that you can’t also include a registration form in this scenario but it is good practice to limit how much you ask of someone in any transaction. 

900+ comments… no problem

When you’re hooked up to Stampede Social every direct to post/reel comment is stored and accessible via our amazing interface. You know exactly where you stand with the status of your promotion as it happens. 

Every direct comment to the post/reel is stored in an easily accessible database so after the giveaway ends, winner selection is just one click away. 

Since the giveaway post is managed in your Stampede Social interface, deduping and creating a randomized list is as easy as a click of a button. 

Simply put, in the selection criteria (i.e. how many entries) and the unique item to filter the entries (ie., #OvernightTote) and with a click of a button, it dedupes and gives you a randomized list of only comments matching your criteria. 

Yes, if your lawyers insist you dedup and all that yourself we have a button that downloads all the replies to the post for you as well. 

However, if you’re in the time saving mood, word on the street is scraping the data, deduping, heading over to randomizer.org, etc. takes up 20-25 minutes. 

If you do weekly giveaways we can save you over 1000 minutes. That’s 17 hours your social media/fulfillment team can use to focus on something else. (maybe daily giveaways?).

Quick legal note: Stampede Social is not a promotions agency, however our team has 10+ years of promotion experience. It is expected that if you use these tools for a sweepstakes or contest, it’s under the care of your legal team's official rules for the giveaway. We offer a raw download of all the comments for you to manually dedupe and randomize if that’s what your legal team or admin agency needs. And if not, our built-in randomizer can help you keep your winner’s choice clean :) 

 Stampede Social is the only social engagement tool that gives brands and agencies meaningful, manageable, and insightful experiences on Instagram. To learn more, Contact us here.