Today we're rolling out a big change to the way Viral Share links are created and tracked. This change adds additional URL tracking parameters to ensure switching between in-app browsers and Safari when sharing links doesn't lose tracking.

This improvement requires us to change how Share URL's are generated, as such you will not longer be able to generate or guess the share link for a campaign without entering it directly.

We've made improvements to our Question action to allow the validation of correct answers.

Try it out below:

Rewards Codes Improvements

We've pushed out a number of improvements to handling bulk files in Rewards campaigns:

• You can now Upload codes/URLs via CSV
• The Claims tab now allows searching and bulk actions on individual claims (rather than just Reset All)

Today, we're rolling out a range of 17 new Capture templates to help you convert more leads and customers.

This includes a new Notification Bar category to help with onsite announcements.

Today, we've released a new feature for Business customers on our Gallery plan.

When your Gallery is Fullscreen you have the ability to automatically switch between approved media within a given timeframe, you can enable this by turning on Presentation Mode in the Advanced tab.

This update also features:

• Live refresh if your Gallery is showing Most Recent
• Scroll to preview will move the background Gallery to where the image is located when showing it

We've added the ability to track conversions from Google Adwords campaigns via our Pixel Tracking feature:

We've improved the styling of redemption buttons inside the widget for Rewards to match the new Post Redeem Emails that were rolled out in August:

New Integrations: Customer.io and ZOHO Campaigns

We now support integrations for both Customer.io and ZOHO Campaigns across Competitions, Capture & Rewards.

We've released a new Floating template called Avatar for Capture customers.

Mailchimp GDPR Support

We're now supporting the new GDPR API permissions on Mailchimp when you use the Subscribe action with a consent checkbox.

We've released a new action on all plans that allows you to ask users to Submit a URL of their choice into Competitions and Rewards.

We've added a new rule to Captures that allows you to trigger a Capture on a page when an element(s) defined by a CSS Selector:

• Is present
• Is not present
• Contains a specified value
• Does not contain a specified value

This provides you with an easy way to trigger Captures on pages which contain certain elements.

Learn more about Selectors in our in-depth guide.

Changes to Twitter Actions

In July, Twitter announced new Developer requirements for their API.

This included a change to the default rate limits for POST endpoints, which is one that we use heavily for one click Tweets, Follows and Retweets in campaigns.

At this stage Twitter has not approved our application to maintain previous POST rate limits for the following reason:

Do not (and do not allow your users to) simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts.

This means that any Twitter actions that were once click to enter will now require multiple steps to first complete the action, then verify it (if you already Follow a specific account it'll continue to be one click).

We apologise for any impact this might have and we're continuing to explore options with Twitter to restore some (if not all) of this functionality.

Today we released a feature that allows you to use Coupons inside both Competition and Rewards campaigns as an individual action.

The Coupon can be in a number of formats:

• Codes
• Links (i.e. for clickable Shopify coupons)
• Download (for printable coupons)

Coupons use up your Reward claims limit on each redemption and do not award any entries. They are available on Business Rewards and above or any Package Plan.

We now support a full integration with Sendlane across all our products.

Today we've released two new case studies from our customers Jane.com and Color Theory.

Many customers have been asking for a way to ensure they can filter out low quality social profiles from entering specific campaigns (particularly Rewards).

Today we've add a new option for Twitter actions that allows you to prevent users with throwaway, temporary or low quality accounts from completing certain Twitter actions.

This looks at a number of factors in the users Twitter accounts to determine the quality of the account and can be enabled or disabled per campaign.

Autopilot Integration

We now support a full integration with Autopilot across all our products.

Intercom Integration

We now support a full integration with Intercom across all our products.

Backend Avatar Improvements

Until today we only ever showed a users Avatar inside a campaign if they had a Gravatar setup. This made it difficult to glance through users or Winners (ask they all appeared to have no profile images).

We're now pulling Avatars from social sources that the user authenticates with and gives us permission to use, this should give your data a much more real feeling rather than seeing blank avatars for most users.

You can now add an additional layer of security to your Gleam account with Two Factor Authentication using any Authenticator app, via your User Settings.

Capture + Gallery Integration

We've added a new rule to Captures that allows you to integrate them with any live Gallery that you're running.

You can choose to trigger:

• On Load
• On Vote

This provides an easy way for you to collect email addresses for marketing purposes when using Galleries.

Today we're happy to announce new improvements to our post entry emails that users receive after entering a campaign.

The new emails include:

• Customisable logo + header colours
• Customise the text and button colours
• Feature Image will show in the email
• Call to action to complete remaining entries
• Better isolation of the viral share link
• Better visual display of any uploaded photos from Photo Contests
• Reward emails include better links for redemption
• Contest Promotion emails have also been updated and include a better CTA

Check them out below 👇

We've rolled out a new integration with Goodreads, as an author or publisher you can now ask users to Follow you in Competitions or Rewards.

Goodreads is available on the Hobby plan and above

Product Hunt Integration

We're excited to roll out another new integration with Product Hunt, as a product creator you now have more tools at your disposal to help you launch to the world.

With this integration you can award entries if a user has:

• Followed you on Product Hunt
• Voted for Your Product

Product Hunt is available on the Business plan and above

We've introduced a new provider (Rebrandly) that allows you to use your own custom branded short domains for Viral Share links. Simply activate from your Settings > Integrations tab.

The ability to use custom link shorteners is now a Business feature, if you had this feature active before this change it'll remain active.

Today we've rolled out a way to search our documentation, just use the search bar in the header 😎

Competitions and Rewards now allow you to explicitly ask for a separate First and Last Name when users signup.

We're happy to introduce a new Premium feature that allows Artists, Labels and Agencies to Pre-Save an Album, Track or EP on Spotify.

This works liked a scheduled Save that will automatically add the item to the users Spotify Library on a specified date.

Today we've rolled out a new version of our Leaderboard embed for Premium customers. You can embed this on any page to show user their total number of entries or position on the Leaderboard.

Improvements to Facebook Check-in Action

We've added a few improvements to the Facebook Check-in action to help users better understand how to Check-in. We also now show the time of the last Check-in for each user on the Actions tab.

We've added a new Open Graph option to our Visit actions on the Pro plan and above. This pulls in the Open Graph tags from your page and provide a visual view of what the user is about to visit.

If you export from the Users tab now we show the last known location for that specific campaign as a column in the CSV export.

We've added a new verification step for YouTube Subscribe actions on the Hobby Plan and above, simply use the Verify option during setup.

This will turn the YouTube Subscribe into a two step action that requires the user to connect their YouTube account to Gleam so we can verify if they subscribe to the channel or not.

YouTube has a set number of API calls allowed per day for developers so we'll be keeping an eye on how this Action performs and whether it has the potential to impact API usage across all customers.

We added additional support for users who are using the new gtag.js implementation of Google Analytics, this should ensure that Cross Domain tracking works correctly with this implementation out of the box.

New Twitter View Tweet Action Type

We've introduced a new Action type that allows you to display a specific Tweet to users:

Support For Sendy Custom Fields

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports Sendy.

We've released a new Premium feature for Captures which allows you to dynamically control the text in a Capture with variables from your page.

Check out the Dynamic Capture Text documentation for more information on this feature.

Gallery Voting Improvements

We've added a few more options to help you control how voting is handled in your Gallery, you can now:

• Set a Start or End Date for the Voting period
• Include or Restrict which countries can Vote

HasOffers Added to Pixel Tracking

We've added a new provider to Pixel Tracking (HasOffers) to help you better track your own referral links or affiliate offers:

CTA Improvements to Captures

The CTA option in Capture has been moved to the Design tab and added to all plans now. Business has the ability to further customise the behaviour of the CTA to redirect instead of close.

The Competition Subscriber List signup checkbox now includes the name of your Site.

This change is designed to give users more transparency into the name of the Business running the campaign so they can decide whether or not to give consent.

You can update your Site Name in the Site Settings button in the left sidebar

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports HubSpot.

Support For GetResponse Dedicated Instances

We now support dedicated GetResponse instances via our integration.

Today we're rolling out the first of our integrations with Discord. If you have the Hobby plan or above you'll be able to use these two new actions to start growing your channels:

• Discord Entry
• Join Discord Server

We've rolled out a new checklist format to the Promote tab to help you better understand our recommended ways to promote your Competition or Reward.

After you created each campaign it'll provide you with a tailored checklist of things to remember 👋

You can now filter in high increments inside campaign tabs. The default is now 25 rows, and you can filter up to 500.

Today we're rolling out a new option for all Gallery customers that enables you to create beautiful embedded Carousels.

This has a huge range of features and allows you to:

• Show off specific #hashtags or products on specific pages
• Create a feed of moderated customer images on your homepage

Gallery Popout Mode Available on All Plans

Popout mode on the Gallery is the best possible way for users to experience your images, so from today this is now available on all Gallery plans.

Recent changes to Facebook's Link Previews means that you must install our provided Open Graph Tags onto your page when embedding a Competition or Reward on your Shopify Store.

We've rolled out a new feature that stores these Open Graph Tags into Metafields when you use our Shopify Install method, these fields can be called automatically with a simple change to your Theme files which you can find in your Code/Install tab.

To help assist with GDPR compliance we've rolled out the ability to add Checkboxes to all Capture templates.

A few template styles do not naturally suit checkboxes, so they will feature a two step agree workflow instead. You will see this during setup under Agree Step.

Autotick Custom Field Filters EU Users

To help assist with GDPR compliance for all customers, if you setup a Custom Field checkbox to Auto-tick it will no longer do this for any users in the EU.

GDPR Rollout Completed

This completes our rollout of changes for GDPR.

We've just releasted an integration with Microsoft's streaming platform Mixer:

• Enter with Mixer
• Follow a Channel
• Subscribers

The Subscribers action requires a paid plan to access, the rest are available on all Free plans.

We've rolled out the ability to lock specific actions until x other actions have been completed first:

• Custom
• Question
• Subscribe to Newsletter
• Visit Page
• Secret Code
• Promote

This will allow you to tier your campaigns better by locking certain types of actions until something else is completed first.

For example you could lock a Subscribe to Newsletter action with a specific level of coupon (sent from your email provider) until a user completes something else first.

Support For SalesForce & iContact Custom Fields

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports SalesForce & iContact.

Minor Widget Improvements

Auto Expanded Actions Now Show Terms & Conditions

When you have a mandatory single action, we auto expand it, which up until today would cover over your Terms & Conditions link.

We've fixed this so that auto-expanded actions now show the Terms & Conditions.

Hosted Page Scaling Improvements

This fix improves some of the white lines that may appear between actions due to scaling issues on Safari.

We've rolled out improvements to some of the styling options for our Hosted Landing Pages.

This change is designed to highlight how you can add default settings under Site Settings in the sidebar, but also give you more individual control at a campaign level:

New Feature Image Blur Option

We've also added a new option to allow you to quickly use a blurred version of your Feature Image as your Hosted Landing Page background.

We've had to push back our scheduled maintenance by 1 week due to a few changes in infrastructure that will take time to replicate.

We're planning some routine database maintenance on Monday 14th May at 3PM AEST (10PM PST / 5AM GMT), we're anticipating that both widgets the the admin area will be down for at least 10 minutes during this time.

We'll be Tweeting during the update so follow @Gleamapp to stay up to date.

We're aware of some positioning issues with the widget on the latest version of Chrome (66.0.3359.139), it appears the browser has introduced a bug that makes the Gleam widget flicker slightly on non-retina screens.

At this stage this appears to be outside our ability to fix, so we've reported to Chrome and are awaiting a resolution.

We've added the following continents to targeting for all campaign types, you can now include or exclued entire contintents without having to add countries separately.

This is the first of our features to roll out that is designed to make it easier for customers to comply with GDPR requirements.

As you're no doubt aware as a marketer that the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is due to roll out on the 25th May 2018. This replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC which Gleam is currently compliant for.

We've always valued privacy at our core here at Gleam and have built the platform always in alignment with the Australian Privacy Act (which shares many common requirements with GDPR) to:

• Implement a privacy by design approach to compliance
• Be able to demonstrate compliance with privacy principles and obligations
• Adopt transparent information handling practices

Gleam by nature is a consent based platform, users specifically give consent to enter campaigns and the data they provide is only ever shared with the owner of the campaign. So Gleam acts as a Data Processor on behalf of the customer (Data Controller).

For example, when a user enters a campaign that validates an entry via an API, this data is often only used at the point of validation and never stored on Gleam or shared with Customers.

We understand that as a popular platform in the space we must always maintain a high level of privacy and trust across both customers and their users.

So, as a global business it's important that we align ourselves with GDPR and also assist our customers to ensure that they are compliant with GDPR when running campaigns.

Upcoming changes that we will be rolling out:

• We've appointed a Data Protection Officer
• You can now contact us directly via privacy@gleam.io to discuss any specific concerns
• New Privacy Policy: We'll be rolling out a new GDPR compliant privacy policy (that's written in a way that's easy to understand)
• New Data Processing Agreement: Since we store data in the USA (in an EU Privacy Shield-Compliant facility) we will be updating our agreement with EU customers detailing how we process their data
• Right to be forgotten: We have always honored this since our inception, we allow anyone to request for their account or data to be deleted. For campaign owners, you already have the power to delete contestants if they exercise this request to you directly
• Any reactionary changes based on GDPR rollouts from any service that we integrate with (to comply with their policies)
• Continent targeting for all campaign types to include or exclude EU (or other continents from campaigns)
• Improving the ability to obtain additional consent on Subscribe actions
• Improving the ability to obtain additional consent via checkboxes in Capture
• EU users will no longer be able to have Custom Fields checkboxes auto select
• Rolling out new Guides to help customers understand how to ensure their campaigns are GDPR compliant
• Helping customers understand which users have or have not given prior consent in previous campaigns
• Helping customers understand the 3rd parties that we have data processing agreements with (i.e. Mailchimp)

You can expect these changes to roll out before 25th May 2018, we're looking forward to continuing providing a platform that lets you run campaigns in a way that helps you achieve business outcomes whilst protecting the privacy of users.

Instagram has introduced a bug in their app that is preventing OAuth based services from properly letting users log-in when inside the Instagram App.

This means that clicking bio links, then logging in with Instagram will return the error Failed to Load.

We recommend allowing other login types via the User Details tab until this issue is rectified.

We've just rolled out a new update to Capture that adds improvements and streamlines A/B testing of campaigns.

You can now:

• Setup A/B Testing with ease (instead of configuring via Rules)
• Assign the % of Traffic to each variation
• See the confidence that a specific variation will win the test
• View consolidated reporting for your A/B Test
• Promote your winning variation to the Main Capture

We also rolled out a few overall improvements for Captures:

• You can now Archive Captures that aren't being used
• We've made improvements to dragging and changing the priority of Captures

• Headings and descriptions not allow for specific font sizes

You can now sync individual user's shortened Viral Share URL's from a campaign to any email provider that supports Custom Field Sync.

Please note these URL's are usually very specific to each campaign so should generally not be treated as a Global field.

Support For GetResponse Custom Fields

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports GetResponse

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports ExactTarget, Sailthru, Unbounce, Vero & Zoho.

We've rolled out a new option for our Custom Field Sync feature which allows you to send hidden Custom Values for a given field.

This could be useful for sending across the name of the Campaign, Source or even that the leads are coming from Gleam.

Twitter has recently announced changes to their policies around automation and the use of multiple accounts to post similar or duplicate Tweets on the platform.

As a large commerical user of the Twitter API it's important that we react and make changes to keep campaigns in line with their policies and Terms of Service.

Effective immediately we will no longer be allowing existing (or new) campaigns to let users Tweet the same Tweet more than once inside a campaign by removing the Daily option from the Tweet and #hashtag Actions.

For some time now we've allowed you to import #hashtags via the Select actions for Facebook/Twitter & Instagram. We've long felt like this was an awkward way to do things and have longed to improve this for quite some time.

Well, that time has come!

Import sources are designed to allow you to bring data into your campaign from external sources, we all know how difficult it can be to manage a campaign when you're collecting data or asking users to do something that doesn't involve the Gleam widget directly.

Today, we're super excited to launch Import Actions as a completely new and separate Action type which you'll see when setting up a Competition.

Here's what's new + what's changed:

• Select Actions are no longer used to setup Imports (yay!)
• Imports currently only support Images or Videos
• You can now import from Facebook Comments, Facebook Posts to Page, Instagram #hashtags, Instagram Locations, Tumblr #hashtags, Twitter #hashtags & YouTube #hashtags
• A number of the sources allow you to filter imports that only contain certain #hashtags
• Facebook Import Sources now require authenication (due to API changes), if you were using this previously you'll need to setup this action again
• Business plans will pull up to 500 historical imports then up to 250 per hour
• Premium plans will pull up to 1000 historical imports then up to 250 per hour
• Imports will respect the Start + End dates of your campaign
• You can setup a campaign to only import from an Import source (without the need to use the widget at all)
• Higher level plans can connect multiple campaigns to a Gallery
• We've got more import sources in the works 👋

Instagram Select actions now support carousel posts.

Gallery V2 Updates + Bugfixes

We've pushed a few new features and bugfixes for the new Gallery:

• Premium plan users now have granular control over the columns across every viewport size

• New Floating option so the Gallery frame can follow your scrolling when editing
• See how the Gallery looks on different device widths

• You can now force the Vertical layout for the modal

• You can now enable Sharing in two places
• Improved calculation for Highlighting

Bugfixes:

• Fixed loader in Firefox
• Improved live prefiew text rendering speed when editing
• Various speed and CPU usage improvements
• Improved resizing

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports Drip, Emma, MailerLite, Ontraport, SendGrid & SendinBlue.

We've updated the default background colour for all campaigns to match our new branding.

Set Default Page Background + Email Header Colour Separately

Customers with paid accounts will be able to now set their default Hosted Page Background colour and Email Header colours separately in your Site Settings tab.

Background Colours and Background Images set inside individual campaigns will still always override any defaults.

We're happy to release something we've been working on for a while - a rebrand of the main Gleam website (including proper Mobile/Tablet support). We're super happy with it and we hope it helps you better understand how to use Gleam for your business.

New Plans Live

Our new Plans structure is now live for the majority of customers, this also includes a few additional benefits for Legacy Users:

• Yearly plans now offer up to 25% discount
• New Plans offer double limits on all Yearly commitments
• New Yearly Hobby plan added for Competitions
• Our Teams feature is now live for all customers (including Legacy Business users)
• You can now pay for Sites on separate Credit Cards
• We've reworked our Shopify billing to make it work more like our traditional billing (which means Invoices in Gleam now)
• Rewards users have 3 months on a Trial plan to use up any remaining credits before they need to signup to a Rewards plan
• Capture users have been allocated their earned BETA credits and must subscribe to a Captures plan once they run out
• We've launched new Packages which allow you to subscribe to all the apps at once at a huge discount

If you're experiencing any issues please submit a Support Ticket so we can investigate, this is a major change to our Plans infrastructre so we're expecting some residual bugs that we haven't caught.

The File Upload action has been improved to behave more like the Submit Media action and also now supports Captions.

Our new Custom Field Sync feature now supports Benchmark Email, Bronto, Infusionsoft, Marketo and Mad Mimi.

Today we're excited to release Early Access for Capture and our completely reworked Gallery app to existing customers 🕺

For the next 6 weeks, you can take advantage of a limited time special offer to get Early Access to our New Features + more at a hugely discounted rate.

What this gives you access to:

• Competitions
• Rewards
• Gallery (New)
• Capture (New)
• Team Management
• Access to any new apps we release + ongoing feature improvements
• And heaps more!

Upcoming Pricing Changes

On February 12th 2018 we're releasing a new version of our Gallery app and also releasing Capture to the public. In order to do this we've had to make some changes to how our plans and pricing are structured.

• Pricing and features for existing Competitions subscribers will remain the same (Pro will be increasing by $10/month for new users)
• Rewards will no longer be part of the Competitions plan
• Captures is coming out of BETA and will require a paid plan to use
• We're launching a new paid version of our Gallery app (some existing Gallery features such as imports will now require an upgrade)
• We're trialing a new Hobby plan (from $10/month)
• In order to balance the new Plans, some features will be removed from the Free plan (for new signups after February 12th)
• We're offering discounted access to all the new features for existing customers
• Beyond February 12th new and existing customers will be able to buy a full package which provides access to all our apps or just choose to subscribe separately based on what you need
• If you choose to remain on a legacy Competitions plan your features will remain frozen as they are today (for as long as you remain on that plan), you will need to switch across to the New Plans to access new feature releases