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4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground1

Businesses are making $6.50 for every $1.00 they spend when they team up with influential bloggers, according to a recent poll of marketing

professionals by Tomoson. What’s more, this type of “influencer marketing” was rated as the fastest-growing online customer acquisition

channel, beating out organic search, paid search and email marketing.

While there are many ways brands can partner with bloggers — including event hosting, Twitter parties, and Instagram takeovers — partnered

giveaways are one of the most popular and effective efforts a brand can invest their time and money into.

Why?

Everyone loves free stuff, especially when

the free stuff is relevant to their likes,

needs and/or interests. When you take this

idea and promote it to a large, untapped,

and yes, relevant audience — for example,

a popular blogger’s audience — magic

happens.

Giveaways encourage engagement and can

be designed with features to improve the

likelihood of people wanting to share your

Campaign with their networks (more on

this later).

The opportunity to win something amazing

provides the perfect incentive for users to

share their data. This means the blogger

you partner with is able to collect valuable

data on behalf of your brand.

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4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground2

Now that your brand is set on partnering with a blogger on a giveaway, here are four steps to making the partnered effort happen:

STEP 1: DECIDE WHICH OF YOU WILL DESIGN THE GIVEAWAY CAMPAIGN

It’s not always the brand that takes on the responsibility of

designing the Campaign. There are many bloggers who have

design skills and tools they already subscribe to, so they may want

to assume the responsibility of designing the giveaway Campaign.

If this is the case, make sure your brand includes this task into

your blogger’s compensation agreement.

A bit of advice: If your brand is working with just one blogger on a

giveaway, it’s okay to delegate the design work. However, if your

brand is working with multiple bloggers to promote a giveaway,

it’s best if your brand handles the responsibility. This way you can

design the Campaign once, publish it to the web (more on this in

step 4) and share one link for all your partner bloggers to use and

promote.

Tip: Make sure both parties are in agreement about how your logos and other relevant images will be used.

4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground3

STEP 2: WRITE THE OFFICIAL RULES OF YOUR PARTNERED GIVEAWAY

Although you may have decided to let your blogger partner design your giveaway Campaign, it will always be your brand’s responsibility to write

the official rules of your partnered giveaway.

Here are 10 things to keep in mind as you draft your partnered giveaway’s rules:

Adhere to local/state/national or international laws

In the United States, sweepstakes promotions are regulated by

federal and state laws, and overseen by federal agencies like

the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If your partnered giveaway

allows nationwide participation, your rules must comply with

federal and state regulations. If you want to allow nationwide and

international participation, you must be willing to comply with the

laws of every jurisdiction (including those of foreign countries).

That said, be sure to check with your region’s business agencies

to ensure that your rules include all abiding local, state, and/or

international laws for both parties’ — your and the blogger’s —

regions.

Include a “No purchase necessary” disclosure

In order for your partnered giveaway to be considered a

“giveaway” in the eyes of the law, you must include a “no

purchase necessary” disclosure in your rules. If you do not

do this, your effort will be considered a lottery/raffle and

you will have to consider specific state laws; lotteries are

illegal in some states.

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4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground4

Clearly state the giveaway sponsor

Your rules should make it clear that your business is the sponsor

of your partnered giveaway. The rules should also explain that by

participating in your partnered giveaway, entrants agree to abide

by all of your giveaway’s rules and regulations.

Specify the giveaway entry period

Include a month, day and time for when the partnered giveaway

will begin and end, and when the winner(s) will be selected and

announced. If your promotion has several entry periods include

the dates for each individual portion of the partnered giveaway.

This description becomes especially important if you’re running a

partnered giveaway in which people are entering a photo or video

that will be judged and then voted on by the public. You want to

include the dates for entry and voting.

Include an eligibility section

Be sure to specify age and residency restrictions in your

rules. You will often see that giveaways are only open to

people 18 years of age or older. This is because the laws

relating to minors add a layer of complexity that many

companies are not willing to manage. Be sure you’re aware

of and obey these laws.

Explain the entry process

It seems simple enough: Fill out the information and you’re

entered! But giving direct rules about how to enter a partnered

giveaway — and letting fans know they must complete all required

fields in order to successfully enter — ensures that an entrant

understands exactly how and where to enter.

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4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground5

Explain how a winner will be selected

Make sure you are specific about how you will select a winner,

including all judging criteria and details about rounds of

judging (if there are multiple rounds).

Include additional limitations

Additional limitations can include disclaimers stating that

you have the right to adjust or shut down the partnered

giveaway at any time, and you have the right to investigate

possible cheating or tampering, before you determine a

winner.

Discuss the prize(s)

Provide a list of the prizes that the winner will receive and outline

the process of how that prize will be distributed. For example, if the

eventual winner will receive an email notification and must provide a

valid mailing address to receive a prize, include these details in your

rules.

Sometimes shipping can be expensive and complicated, so

whenever ShortStack hosts a giveaway, we include a section in

our rules stating that any incidental expenses and all other costs

and expenses not specifically listed as part of the prize are the

“sole responsibility of the winner and not the sponsor.” We also

recommend letting your entrants know that their prize is not

exchangeable for cash (assuming that it’s not!).

Let your entrants know if (and how) their personal

information will be used

If you’re collecting data about your entrants, such as an

email address or birthday, include in your rules that by

participating, each participant is granting the hosting party’s

permission to use his/her/business name, entry, likeness or

comments for publicity (or future marketing purposes).

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4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground6

STEP 3: DESIGN YOUR PARTNERED GIVEAWAY

ShortStack offers several templates that make it easy to create beautiful giveaway Campaigns you and your blogger partner can use to engage

with your audiences and collect valuable data. And the best part? All our templates are optimized for mobile — no fancy code required.

To get started designing your partnered giveaway with ShortStack, download our “Getting Started with ShortStack” guide here.

This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to choose a

template, add widgets, add a theme, test your Campaign before you

launch it to the world, and most important, publish your Campaign to

the web.

To design your partnered giveaway to maximize the reach and

number of entries you receive, consider using the following

ShortStack Widgets and features:

Encourage More Social Shares with the Share Widget

The Share Widget gives visitors up to six different ways to share

your giveaway Campaign: via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+,

LinkedIn, or Manually. You can configure a Title, Description, and

Image to go along with the shares.

This is a great feature to use if your partnered giveaway

has a special hashtag you want to promote. Simply

customize your Share Widget’s description to include

specific copy about your giveaway and your hashtag. This

makes it so your message can be easily shared from your

giveaway Campaign.

Enable Voting and Sharing of Votes with the

Voting Widget

The Voting Widget displays entries submitted via our

Promotion Widget and lets your giveaway Campaign’s

visitors vote, share and comment on each entry.

If your brand wants to show off all the amazing user-

generated content you’re collecting from your entrants, this

is your go-to feature.

4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground7

Collect More Data By Incentivizing Entrants with Points Per Field

The Points Per Field feature incentivizes people to fill out extra fields of a promotion form by awarding them more chances to win. By assigning

a point value to each field on your promotion, you’re able to reward your entrants based on how many fields they fill out. Points Per Field can also

be thought of as extra entries, or extra chances to win.

The Points Per Field feature is really valuable if one of your brand’s primarily goals for your partnered giveaway is to collect data.

4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground8

Social Media Posts

When a brand partners with, and compensates a blogger, there

needs to be full disclosure when promoting their partnered effort.

According to recently updated FTC guidelines, all social media posts,

including Instagram posts, tweets, pins, Facebook posts, etc., must

be labeled with #Ad, “Ad,” #Sponsored, or “Sponsored.”

Using the hashtag #spon or #spons does not comply with rules, as

all disclosures must be in “Understandable Language,” per the FTC.

STEP 4: PROMOTE YOUR PARTNERED GIVEAWAY

There are two primary ways your brand and the blogger you team up with will promote your partnered giveaway: social media posts and blog

posts. Here’s what you need to know about each promotional effort.

4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground9

Blog Posts

Just like you can embed a YouTube video or a tweet into a blog

post, you can do the same with any ShortStack-built Campaign

you create. Why is this so powerful? More exposure to your

partnered giveaway Campaign allows more opportunities to

engage and collect valuable data.

Beyond sharing the link to your Campaign (we call this your

Campaign’s URL) in posts, pins and tweets, you can also use

ShortStack’s External Embed feature to embed your Campaign

on any web page that accepts an iframe.

To give you an idea of what we mean, here are a handful of

places you could consider embedding/publishing your partnered

giveaway Campaign:

• Within a blog post on your partner blogger’s site and/or

Tumblr

• Within a blog post on your brand’s blog and/or Tumblr

• On a page on your brand’s website

• On your brand’s Facebook page as a featured app

• On your partner blogger’s Facebook page as a featured

app

Using ShortStack’s External Embed feature is as easy as copying

and pasting a link in your browser. After you publish your Campaign,

ShortStack is able to generate a piece of embed code that you can

use to install your Campaign, including all of its functions, on any

web URL such as a blog or company website. Click here to learn

more.

The more exposure you create for your partnered giveaway

Campaign — whether it be through sharing your Campaign’s URL

in several social media posts and/or embedding your Campaign on

multiple pages across the web — the greater success your giveaway

will have. It’s a numbers game, after all. Increase the number of

eyeballs on your Campaign and you’ll inevitably get more entries,

collect more data and see better conversion results overall.

4 Steps to Getting Your Partnered Giveaway Idea Off the Ground10

GOOD LUCK!

Want to learn more? Here’s just a taste of the resources that will help you build ShortStack Campaigns to collect and convert more leads:

Resources Page

Tutorial Videos

Help Docs

Social Media Tips

Promotions Guide

ShortStack Support

Get started building your giveaway Campaign with

ShortStack

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