How to Run a Successful Giveaway

What makes a giveaway successful?

Success depends on what you wanted from the giveaway, because a product launch needs different results from a list-building campaign. Even so, most giveaways that work share the same seven parts. Each part has its own section below.

1. 1

   A relevant prize

   The prize decides who enters. Pick one your future customers want more than everyone else does.

2. 2

   Simple entry

   Make one step required, ideally an email address, and keep everything else optional.

3. 3

   Meaningful incentives

   Points and reward tiers give entrants a reason to do more than the minimum.

4. 4

   A promotion plan

   Nobody enters a giveaway they never see. Decide where the first visitors will come from before you launch.

5. 5

   Referrals and sharing

   Each entrant can bring in the next one, as long as the reward is worth the effort of sharing.

6. 6

   Fraud and verification controls

   Prizes attract cheats. Turn on email verification and fraud protection before launch.

7. 7

   Follow-up

   Reminders, the winner announcement and later emails turn entrants into an audience you keep.

The entry count is only one measure. Also count how many entrants confirmed their email, how many match the audience you want, and what they do after the draw.

Set your giveaway goal

Pick one main goal before you choose anything else. The goal decides which entry actions earn the most points.

Choose the right giveaway prize

After the goal, the prize is your most important choice, because it decides who enters.

Relevance matters more than value

An expensive prize with broad appeal brings in lots of people who want the prize and nothing else. A smaller prize close to what you sell brings in fewer entrants, but more of them care about your niche. Our Kickstarter pre-launch case study shows the targeted version, with a drinks fridge given away to promote a bottle opener.

Prize ideas that fit the audience

Match the reward to the effort

The more you ask of entrants, the more the reward has to be worth. An email address is a fair price for a chance at a big prize. Ten extra actions aren't, unless each one moves the entrant toward something they want. The reward ladder below does that job.

Decide how people will enter

Make one step required and nothing else. Every extra mandatory action costs you some of the people who would have entered. An email signup is the usual choice, and every other action should be optional.

Weight the points toward your goal

Give the most points to the action that matters most to your goal, and the fewest to actions that are worth little to you. We paid 10 points for a referral, 5 to 8 for a survey or secret code, and 2 to 4 for social actions. The Competition Starter template sets up a classic points board you can adapt, and the Secret Codes and Survey System templates show those two actions on their own.

Give entrants a reason to keep engaging

For most entrants, a giveaway ends the moment they enter. They have their ticket, so there's nothing left to do. A points ladder changes that. Each action moves the entrant toward a reward they can see, so the fourth or fifth action feels like progress rather than a chore.

The reward ladder we used

The first rung is the entry itself, so nobody has to do more than sign up to be in the draw. The next two rungs sit far enough up that each takes several more actions. Both tie back to the main prize or to Tokei, so the extra effort goes toward something connected to the giveaway.

Unlock gates

Every action has an Actions Required setting. The action stays locked until the entrant completes that many other actions.

Gate your most valuable actions, and leave the referral link open so entrants can share the moment they enter. Gates also slow down throwaway accounts, because each one has to do real work before the valuable actions open.

Gates didn't put entrants off. Our daily bonus unlocks last, yet only the email signup was completed more often.

Design your own ladder

• Put the first rung at the minimum entry, so entering stays a single step.
• Space the higher rungs several actions apart, so each one takes real effort.
• Tie every reward to your prize or your product.
• Gate the actions worth most to you, and leave the referral link open.
• Decide before launch whether points past the entry threshold add draw chances or only unlock rewards, and say which in your rules.

Choose which actions to verify

Checking entries takes time, so spend it where it counts. Verify the actions that are quick to check and worth faking. Skip the ones where checking costs more than the action is worth. On our giveaway, we asked for a handle on every follow and left reposts and posts unchecked.

Tick Verify on actions that are quick to check and easy to fake. A follow is the clearest case, because a submitted handle takes seconds to check.

Leave reposts and posts unticked. They're slow to check one at a time, and they're the actions most likely to reach new people.

Points land straight away and a pending row appears on the Verify page. Approving keeps the points, and rejecting takes them back. You don't need to review every row. Check the winner's entry before you contact them.

Set point values before launch. A change only affects entries made after it.

Stop fraud with security settings

A valuable prize attracts fake accounts. The Page Security and Configure Login settings, both in the Advanced tab, did more to keep our draw clean than anything else.

Require email verification made the biggest difference. An entry only counts once the entrant clicks the link in their confirmation email. That filters out throwaway and mistyped addresses, and it narrows the draw to real people who can be contacted.

Fraud Protection scores every entry and blocks high-risk activity automatically. It also flags groups of accounts that share an IP address and refer each other, and lists them for review.

The age, Official Rules and marketing consent checkboxes put your eligibility and consent terms on the entry form, so every entrant has agreed to them.

Allow login with sets how entrants sign in. We allowed Email, Google and Discord. A Google or Discord account is harder to create in bulk than a new email address.

Show email form immediately skips the Register with Email button, so entering takes one step fewer.

Show preview buttons lets visitors see the actions before they sign up, and the Register Button fields set the button's text and icon.

Make referrals worthwhile without inviting abuse

A referral link turns every entrant into a promoter. It only works if the reward is worth the effort of sharing, and a big reward also attracts people who try to game it.

Make the referral the top-value action. We set it to 10 points, more than double the best social action, with no actions required so it works from the moment someone enters.

The referrer earns the bonus only after their friend completes an action, not when the friend clicks. About 1 in 9 of our entrants arrived through a referral.

A big referral reward is exactly what fake-account rings target. Turn on the security settings above. Banning an account removes its entries and takes back the bonus paid to whoever referred it. Check each flagged group before you ban, because a family on one home connection can look like a ring.

Promote your giveaway

Referrals need a first wave of entrants to start from, and that first wave comes from promotion. Plan where it will come from before you launch.

If you run ads, Tokei supports the Meta Pixel, Reddit Pixel and Google Analytics on giveaway pages. To embed a giveaway on your own site, see the widget docs.

Where our entrants came from

Free competition listing sites and forums sent most of our entrants. List your giveaway in every market your rules accept.

Use a dedicated giveaway page

Run the giveaway from one page that holds everything an entrant needs. A social post can point to that page, but it can't replace it, because a post has no room for rules, a points board or an entry form.

After signing up, entrants see the post-capture page, which lists the actions they can still complete.

Re-engage entrants who stalled

Entrants usually stall in one of two places. Some never confirm their email, and some complete one action and leave.

Entrants who never confirmed

With email verification on, an entry only counts once the entrant clicks the confirmation link. On our giveaway, about 880 entrants hadn't confirmed, so we sent them reminders in two waves. About a quarter confirmed afterwards, which put a couple of hundred entrants back in the draw. That's one campaign's result, not a benchmark to expect.

Entrants who did one thing and left

The daily bonus and the secret code give entrants a reason to come back. So does a reminder email a few days before the close. If you sync entrants to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo, MailerLite, Kit or Resend, you can send those emails from the tool you already use.

Keep your giveaway compliant

What we turned on

• Official rules
• An age restriction
• A marketing consent checkbox
• Sponsor details with our company name and postal address
• A free postal entry route: no purchase necessary, and one postcard counts the same as one online sign-up
• Every social action optional, so nobody needs a social account to enter

What your official rules should cover

In the UK, the CAP Code on promotional marketing lists the conditions a promoter must make clear. It also expects prizes to be awarded, normally within 30 days, and winner details to be published or made available. Wherever you run a giveaway, your rules should cover at least these points.

• How to enter, and any limit on entries
• The opening and closing dates
• What the prizes are, and how many there are
• Who can enter, including age and location limits
• How and when you'll choose and contact winners
• Whether bonus actions add draw chances or only unlock rewards
• The promoter's name and address

No purchase necessary

In the UK, a prize draw that requires payment can count as an illegal lottery unless it offers a genuine free way to enter. The Gambling Commission's guide to free draws and prize competitions explains the requirements. Many US sweepstakes use a "no purchase necessary" route for a similar reason, but the details vary by state. Our giveaway is free to enter online and also accepts postal entries.

Platform rules

• Facebook. Meta's Pages policy doesn't allow "share on your Timeline to enter" or "tag your friends to enter", and it requires your rules to release Facebook from responsibility for the promotion.
• Instagram. Instagram has its own promotion guidelines, including rules on tagging. Read them before you run an Instagram giveaway.
• X. X's guidelines for running promotions warn against entry rules that encourage multiple accounts or repeated identical posts.

Disclose incentivised posts

When entrants post about your brand to earn entries, their posts are incentivised, and so are posts from creators you pay or gift. The FTC's Endorsement Guides FAQ suggests putting the word "contest" or "sweepstakes" in the hashtag, as in #BrandName_Contest.

What our 3,000-entrant giveaway produced

Snapshot from 16 September 2026. The giveaway is still running, so these are not final results.

What the numbers show

• Entrants did more than enter. About 12,800 actions across about 3,000 entrants works out at roughly four actions each.
• Email verification shrinks the draw. About 78% of entrants have confirmed their email, and the rest aren't in the draw until they do.
• Referrals mattered without dominating. About 1 in 9 entrants arrived through a referral link, and listing sites and forums brought in most of the rest.
• Gated actions still got used. About 280 survey answers and 200 secret-code redemptions came from actions locked behind three and four other actions.

The most-completed actions, in order, were Email signup, Daily bonus, Repost on X, Social share, View an Instagram post, Follow on X, Follow on Instagram.

What they don't show

These are totals from one live giveaway. We didn't run a version without gates or reward tiers, so we can't say how much any single setting changed the outcome. We also don't know yet how many entrants will become Tokei customers, or what the final numbers will be when the giveaway closes on 30 November 2026. We'll update this page after the draw.

Giveaway mistakes to avoid

Successful giveaway checklist

Frequently asked questions