Contests bring joy to the winners, but they could bring even more joy to you as a company. Think about how many people submit entries for these contests; they see your brand, engage with it, and even voluntarily give you their contact details. So, while a few win the contest, the real winner is you the business that gets to win the hearts of your target audience.

Having a contest entry form ensures everyone interested in the contest can seamlessly join, and you get a comprehensive database of your potential customers. Let’s look at how to create an effective contest entry form with examples.

What is a Contest Entry Form?

A contest entry form can be a paper or digital form that people fill out to register their interest and participate in the contest. It’s the official gateway for participants to join the competition and helps contest organizers retain information to select winners. You can also use the contest entry form to collect submissions for the contest. For example, you can use the contest entry form to collect photos, videos, or written content for a competition.

There’s more to contest forms than just collecting participants’ information to select the winner. Contest forms help you create a database of your target audience, and segment them, enabling you to tailor your offers to convert them into long-term customers.

Most Common Types of Contest Forms:

Depending on the people you are targeting, you can use different types of contest forms, here are the most common:

• Physical paper forms: This is especially helpful when you want to reach people in your community. Contestants receive a physical copy of the form or a printout from the website and then submit it at their local office or event center.
• Online forms: This is way more accessible than physical forms; contestants can join your contest from anywhere. It’s also easier to capture and store their data with their permission.
• Specialized software applications: You can also use contest software e.g. Viralsweep, Gleam, etc for complex contests like design competitions for submissions and winner selection.

Key Components of a Contest Entry Form

Here are the most important content of every contest entry form:

Participant details: Full name, contact details, age/date of birth (if the contest has age restrictions), social media handles (for promotional purposes)

Entry Details: This is the information the contestant submits to enter the contest, it could be a photo, a social media post link, a video, written content, etc. This section typically contains:

• Title of Submission (if applicable): If you’re running a creative contest with different kinds of submissions, having a title helps you classify the submissions.
• Description or Explanation (for creative contests): Provides participants with the opportunity to give context to their submissions in creative content such as photography, video, or writing.
• Upload or Attachment (for visual or written submissions): This section allows contestants to submit the media needed for the contest such as image, video, document, or written submission.
• Link to Additional Content (if required): Some contests may allow or require linking to additional content hosted elsewhere, such as a longer video or portfolio website.
• Submission Guidelines: These are clear instructions to guide contestants through the contestant entry process. This includes specifying any formatting requirements such as file type, file size, character limit for written content, and the submission deadline.
• Agreements and Permissions: This section ensures the participant understands and agrees to certain terms. This includes acceptance of the terms and conditions of the contest, and consent to use the submitted material. Also, clarify the ownership of submitted materials and any rights granted to you, the organizer.

Optional Fields:

Depending on your contest type, you might want to collect additional information such as:

• Demographic Information (gender, location, etc.): This helps you understand your audience and helps you tailor your offers to them.
• How They Heard About the Contest: This gives you insight into where your traffic is coming from and helps you identify your most effective marketing channel.
• Feedback or Comments: This allows participants to share their experience with the contest entry process and spotlight areas to improve.

Verification Mechanism for Contest Entry Forms:

So contestants try to scam their way through contests by falsifying information or using bots to increase their chances of winning. Here are some preventive measures to take against this:

• CAPTCHA (for online forms): This prevents survey scammers from using automated bots to submit fake entries.
• Signature (for physical forms): No two forms should have the same signature, so this helps verify the participant’s identity. 
• Confirmation Email (for online submissions):   This ensures contestants confirm their entry and prevents them from making more submissions with that email.

How to Create Contest Entry Forms With Formplus + Free Template

Here’s how you can use Formplus to create effective contest entry forms for your company, (and the best part is that you don’t even have to build from scratch)!

Creating Your Contest Entry Form

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create a contest entry form in minutes:

1. Open the contest entry form.
2. Edit the template to fit your contest specifications. 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. Share the form with contestants by embedding it on a webpage or via email, direct form link, or QR code.
5. Collect and monitor responses to select winners.

Best Practices for Crafting a Contest Entry Form

The ultimate goal of contests is not just to select winners; it’s to use generosity as a tool to impact lives and build a solid reputation. Here are some tips to ensure your contest entry forms help you achieve this:

• Keep it Short and Sweet: Picture a participant excited to enter your contest. Don’t crush that excitement with a lengthy form, full of redundant fields or overly complicated instructions; the easier it is to fill out the form, the more likely participants are to fill it out.
• Stick with Simple: Don’t leave participants in the dark with heavy terminologies. If there’s a term some contestants might struggle with, define the term so they don’t have to guess. Always use clear, easy-to-understand language with step-by-step instructions to walk contestants through the entry process. 
• Mobile-Friendly Design:  Most of us use our phones all the time, so a good chunk of submissions will come from phones and tablets. Ensure your form is responsive across varying screen sizes and doesn’t lag.
• Highlight Important Details: Include the contest date at the top of the form, and any other important information like submission format, age restrictions, expected response time, etc. This way, you’ll keep everyone updated and avoid confusion impacting the submissions.
• Transparency: Be upfront about how their information and submissions will be used. Briefly describe your privacy policy and how your contest entries will be evaluated. This shows that you value contestants’ privacy and encourage them to confidently participate.
• Test and Review: Test the form across various devices to ensure it won’t give participants issues while entering the contest. Also, run the form through different scenarios to identify potential bugs and avoid any last-minute hiccups.

Conclusion

Contest entry forms allow participants to enter and engage with your contestants seamlessly. They are the bridge between a potential winner and the grand prize. They also help you boost your sales by giving you access to a large database of your target audience.

However, contest entry forms are only effective when you follow the best practices in this guide. If you do not carefully create your form, you will be giving away money without anything to show for it. The Formplus contest entry template follows these best practices and saves you the trouble of creating one from scratch, so get started with the contest entry template.