The popular series Peaky Blinders opened with the Shelibys cajoling people to gamble on the supposedly best horse to win the race; this series was set as far back as 1919 and this represented the earliest form of sweepstakes. Originally, sweepstakes started with people betting on horses, but now you can use sweepstakes to grow your audience engagement, promote your brand, and win the hearts of your target audience.

An online sweepstake is a prize competition where winners are randomly selected from a group of participants who complete specific tasks. You have probably seen e-commerce vendors doing giveaways and contests where they will ask you to complete some tasks like following the page and creating user-generated content, and when you’re done, they will select the winner randomly. 

Let’s look at how to use online forms to create sweepstakes and win your target audience’s hearts.

Understanding Sweepstake Forms

Sweepstakes allow participants to win big prizes but they have to complete some activities first. These activities should be your gain from the giveaway. For example, participants could win free tailored dresses after completing activities like sharing a story of how your brand is making a difference in the fashion world with specific hashtags and tags to fit your engagement and acquisition goals. So, while the winner gets a new dress they love, you get hundreds, maybe even thousands of new page visitors and customers.

There are different ways of creating sweepstakes, but the easiest and most efficient is online forms. You can easily add them to your company’s website or social media page with instructions on how to participate in the competition. You can use traditional sweepstakes but you would not be able to reach a large target audience. However, with online forms, you can make your target audience as small or large as you want it to be.

Essential Components of Sweepstake Forms

Here are the most important information to have on your sweepstakes form:

• Personal details: full name, contact details (email and phone number) and address.

• Eligibility Confirmation

These are the criteria that will help you narrow down the list of people who should participate in your contest. For example, if your goal is to promote your products to university students living on campus using sweepstakes, you have to ensure whoever wins the sweepstakes meets these criteria. So, you collect information that helps you determine this fact such as age, education level, residency, and compliance with official rules. Here’s a breakdown: 

• • Age Verification: Clearly state the minimum age requirement and ask for a birthdate to verify
  • Residency Requirements: Specify any geographical restrictions on who can enter, such as state, country, or region.
  • Compliance with Official Rules: Include a checkbox requiring participants to acknowledge they have read and understood the rules.

• Opt-in/Opt-out Options

You have to comply with data privacy laws, so tell participants how and why you are collecting their data. Also, give them the choice to get on board with how you want to use their data. You can do this by:

• • Consent for Marketing Communication: Allow participants to opt-in to receive future promotions or updates from you.
  • Privacy Preferences: Offer a link to your privacy policy outlining how their information will be used and protected.
• Entry Method: Clearly explain how to enter the sweepstake, and specify the mode of entry (online form, mail-in form, social media, etc). Also, provide instructions that will help participants easily complete the entry process.
• Agreement to Terms and Conditions: This will help prevent future legal disputes by ensuring participants read and agree to the sweepstakes rules. It also helps you add a liability waiver as a layer of protection over your company.
• Anti-fraud Measures: People are always excited about winning sweepstakes, so survey scammers try to cheat the system using bots for multiple entries to increase their chances of winning.
• Data Protection and Privacy: When collecting entries for sweepstakes ensure you follow the necessary data protection and privacy laws. For example, if you are conducting an international sweepstakes it must be GDPR compliant, so reassure participants that their information will be handled securely and under your GDPR-compliant privacy policy.

How to Create Sweepstakes Forms With Formplus + Free Template

The end goal of your sweepstakes is to help you build engagement with the new visitors you acquired and convert them to users/customers after the competition. Using an online form helps you to securely collect and store the information you need to convert them using different engagement strategies e.g. community events, email marketing, sales/discounts, etc. So, here’s how to use Formplus to create effective sweepstakes forms in minutes:

1. Open the sweepstakes form template.
2. Edit the template to fit your sweepstakes requirements. For example, you can add new questions or edit the existing fields.
3. Customize the form by adding your brand assets such as color, font, logo, etc.
4. You can also filter out responses by adding conditional logic to your questions. So if a person doesn’t meet the eligibility criteria.  Instead of going through the entire entry and not being selected, and having a large database of people who are not your target audience, the conditional logic ends the entry automatically.
5. Configure your form setting by adding a submission deadline for when the contest closes.
6. Share the form with participants by embedding it on your website, or a QR code to add to social media creatives. You could also add the form link in your social media link in bio, blogs, or even in emails to your existing customers.
7. Collect and monitor responses to select the winners.

Best Practices for Sweepstake Forms

Your sweepstakes should be easy to navigate and have clear guidelines so everyone has a fair chance of winning. Here are a few significant best practices to implement while building your form:

• Keep It Simple: keep your sweepstake form clear and simple; that’s how to get as many entries as possible. Don’t make the form unnecessarily long either, only ask for the information you need and avoid using heavy technical terms.
• Mobile-friendliness: we all use our smartphones and tablets on the go, it’s way easier than carrying our PC everywhere you go. So, ensure your sweepstake form is mobile responsive and adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes.
• Transparency: Tell your participants how you’ll use the data collected through the sweepstake form, if they are not satisfied with the terms, give them the option of dropping out and erasing their data. Also, clearly outline the rules of the sweepstakes and how the winners will be selected.
• Accessibility: Add accessibility features to your form to ensure everyone gets an equal chance to participate. This could include clear labels, alternative text descriptions for images, and screen readers compatible forms for visually impaired people.
• Security:  carefully safeguard all information collected through the form. For example, use encryption protocols and secure data storage to avoid data breaches.

Conclusion

Online Sweepstakes form makes it easy to run your contest.  People can easily sign up for your contest, and for you to pick your winners. It ensures you and the participants get what you want from the sweepstakes campaign. Ready to make your sweepstakes entry process easier? Here’s a template to get started!