Choosing a winner with Rafflecopter is easy! Rafflecopter gives you the tools that help you:
- randomly select a number of winners from your entrants pool
- help you verify the winners' entries
- announce the winners directly on the widget.
Here's a tour of the entries tab in your Rafflecopter dashboard, where you'll choose winners:
After your giveaway ends, sign into your Rafflecopter account and find the giveaway's 'entries' tab where you'd normally moderate entries by clicking on 'pick a winner' or moderate. Clicking on the 'ADD A WINNER' button will generate 1 random entry from your entry pool. For 5 winners, click 'add a winner' 5 times. The # of winners you choose isn't correlated with the number of prizes in your giveaway.
To verify the winners' entries, view your entries by clicking on the 'SHOW ME THE ENTRIES' button. You can sort entries by IP, name, email address, etc.. To contact your winners for the first time, we recommend simply emailing them at the email address provided. You can also download a list of your entrants into a .csv format that will include your entrants' name, email, entry option info, IP address, timestamp, etc.
Download this list from the bottom of your giveaway's entries tab by clicking on 'EXPORT ENTRIES TO EXCEL', which will email you a spreadsheet. We recommend contacting your winners via the email address they provided.
Finally, when you've completed choosing your giveaway's winner(s) and you're ready to display them directly on the widget, click the 'DISPLAY WINNERS' button.
If you'd like to watch a video walkthrough of the entires tab, check out out video tutorials!
How do I get the widget to display winner announcements based on point accumulation? Its kind of pointless to have it, if I am limited to just a randomly selected entry.
If you want to have a winner displayed on the Rafflecopter widget, they'll have to be chosen randomly through our app. Rafflecopter is a sweepstakes app where a promotion is run in which a winner is chosen at random -- it sounds like you're running your promotion more in a contest format (the entrant w/ the most points at the end wins).
I accidentally chose a winner too early. Is there a way to remove them for now? I removed them from the entry list, however they are still the chosen winner.
Hey Samantha - my best recommendation would be to remove the winner chosen by viewing their winner card and clicking on the 'disqualify winner' at the bottom. If you'd like to add them back into the entry list so that they're eligible again, you can do that by manually adding their entry.
I want to make sure I've done this correctly. I have 1 prize, but pulled 5 potential winners in total (the other 4 are back up in case there are disqualifications). When it comes time to announcing the winner, I want to ensure it only displays the 1 name, and not all 5. Do I need to do something to ensure this is done? For example, disqualify the other 4? Or does the site automatically only show the 1, because I have one prize?
Hey Krista - Thanks for reaching out :) You'll need to disqualify the other 4 winners before displaying the winners on the widget. If you need any further clarification on this please don't hesitate to email us at support@rafflecopter.com
I have tried to use the add a random winner button and it tells me it can't add one? Why is this not working? I didnt work for my last rafflecopter event either.
Hey Julie - Can you shoot us an email about this to support@rafflecopter.com? I'd be happy to look into this issue further for you :)
I have multiple prized and multiple winners, but after only selecting 7 winners, it now gives me a message that it "Couldn't pick a winner". Any help you can offer would be appreciated.
Hey Jenzorko20 - Can you shoot us an email at support@rafflecopter.com? Our support team would be happy to look into things for you.
I have one grand prize, but 10 weekly prizes that I will giveaway before the grand prize. How do I select the 10 weekly winners BEFORE the whole giveaway ends?
Hey Jessica - You can select winners whenever you want :) The only downside to picking winners before the giveaway ends is you wont be able to display the winners within the widget until the giveaway is completely over. If you have any further questions about this please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@rafflecopter.com :)
What type of random number algorithm does Rafflecopter use for auto-selecting an entrant? Do you use RANDOM.org or something similar?
Hey Kyle! Yup, we integrate w/ Random.org.
That's most excellent. Thanks for the speedy follow-up!
Hello I am not able to see my entries,I chose as entry option comments to a blog post, people leave comments but I cant see any entries at the entry tab of the giveaway. Please help me
Hey Toula - Can you shoot us an email about this at support@rafflecopter.com? We'd be happy to look into this issue further for you.
I am trying to set up a giveaway. I guess I dont understand why I am giving points to the entries if it will be a generated pick. Also, as far as the FB entry, I obviously want the "likes" and want that to be a mandatory entry, but when I preview it says that "we appreciate "likes and comments", but it is not required....this is the only one that I want required..is that possible??
Hey Jackie - the more points an entry option is worth, the more entries they have into the giveaway, and therefore have a better chance of being randomly picked at the end. Let me know if that makes sense!
The 'like a facebook page' entry option has evolved into a 'visit a facebook page' entry option due to Facebook promotion guidelines recently changing. Here's a blog post that should help explain this a bit further:
http://blog.rafflecopter.com/2014/11/fan-gate-alternatives/