Beginner's Campaign Launch Checklist for Gleam
You've setup your Gleam Competition. Now find out what you can do next to get your campaign launched and double up on the actions that matter to your business.
• Check that all entry actions work correctly using the widget preview
• Review post-entry settings like confirmation emails, redirects, and tracking
• Decide where your campaign will be installed so entrants can access it easily
• Double-check prizes, dates, and terms before making the campaign public
• Line up at least one promotion channel so people see the campaign on launch day
For marketing teams, launching a campaign successfully depends on more than just setup.
Effective pre launch planning and execution requires clear launch plans, structured launch activities, and a defined marketing strategy that aligns the product or service with the right target audience.
Using real time feedback from social media, click through rates, and conversion rates helps track key performance metrics, measure return on investment, and identify areas for improvement.
A practical campaign launch checklist, supported by a launch checklist template or marketing campaign checklist, gives teams a repeatable framework for successful marketing and more confident launch plans.
Once you've saved your campaign, you'll be able to see the widget preview on your campaign summary page. Feel free to test your campaign by completing the entry methods you have configured to make sure they are working as expected. And don't worry, your entries as an admin will be automatically invalidated.
• Open your Competition from the dashboard and review it using the widget preview on the campaign summary screen
• Complete each entry method yourself to confirm actions are working as expected
• Test social, form, and bonus entry actions you have added from the Actions library
• Admin test entries are automatically excluded from reporting and winner draws
• Edit your campaign at any time from Competition setup before launch
If you'd like to add additional entry methods to the campaign, now would be the time to do so! Just select 'Edit' and you'll head back to the campaign setup form.
If you'd like to give your entry methods more pop, you can jazz it up a notch by customising the entry method's colour and its associating icon. We have a library of 5,000+ icons from FontAwesome.
• Edit your Competition and open any action from the how to enter tab
• Change the colour of the entry method to better match your branding
• Select a custom icon from Gleam’s built-in icon library
• Preview visual changes instantly in the widget preview
• Save your changes to apply the updated styling across all installations
If you haven't already, here are some simple tricks you can use to drive more entries and increase campaign engagement:
- Offer Secret Codes: You can schedule for secret codes to be released on social media channels to keep entrants alert and engaged throughout the event.
- Offer Bonus entries: You can offer an incentive for entrants to complete all the actions you setup by rewarding them with bonus entries.
- Use the Viral Share action: You can get entrants to share your campaign with friends & families so that everyone gets more entries for referring/entering. To avoid overwhelming your entries by sweepers, we recommend setting a maximum limit of users each entrant can refer. * Use the Promote action: If you're running another campaign at the same time, you can try using the promote action to send traffic from one campaign to another. This will also work well if you're partnering with another business and they're also running a Gleam campaign.
• Add Secret Code or Bonus Entry actions from the Actions library to reward deeper participation
• Encourage sharing by enabling the Viral Share action
• Set sensible referral limits to reduce low-quality entries
• Use the Promote action to drive traffic between multiple Gleam campaigns
• Review action performance using the Actions reporting view
While we cannot provide legal advice for your terms & conditions, here are some important points that often come up when setting up a campaign.
You can enter your Terms & Conditions in the Setup tab.
Depending on where you are running your campaign from, as well as where entrants will be entering the campaign from; you may need to include a No Purchase Necessary statement to make sure entrants understand that making purchases will not increase their chances of winning.
Australia has pretty strict rules around trade promotions. If you are an Australian brand or company, you may need to apply for a permit before running your campaign.
Here is an non-exhaustive list of items you may want to cover in your terms & conditions:
- Name and contact information of the promoter: This is you.
- Total prize value: To avoid ambiguity, this should be in your nominated currency.
- Who may enter the campaign: Do entrants need to be of legal age or reside in a certain country?
- Campaign dates: Specify when the campaign winners will be drawn and how you intend to contact them. Also specify how long the winner has to respond and what would happen if they didn't respond.
- No Purchase Necessary statement.
- That the campaign is not affiliated with third party platforms that you promote on: This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram or Facebook.
If you're happy with the campaign entry experience, let's move on to post-entry steps. In this section you'll be able to configure what happens after an entrant has completed some entries from your campaign.
You can configure your post-entry options in the Post Entry tab.
You can enable post-entry emails so that entrants will receive a confirmation email after entering your campaign. If they have not completed all the actions available in your campaign, we'll remind them to do so in this email.
• Open your Competition and go to the Post Entry tab
• Enable post-entry emails for new entrants
• Automatically remind users to complete remaining actions
• Include unique referral links when Viral Share actions are enabled
• Save your changes to apply emails to all new entries
If your campaign contains Viral Share actions, we'll include the entrant's unique sharing link in this email.
To further customise your campaign, you can head to Site Settings to setup custom branding for your emails. You'll be able to customise the brand logo as well as pick an accent colour.
Get the benefit of full control over your traffic by redirecting entrants to a preferred site when they complete all your entry methods. Here are some ideas:
- If you are promoting your campaign from within Discord, you might want users to come back to your community after completing their entries.
- If you are promoting through your social media channels, you might want to redirect users to your Shopify store or website after.
- Another example is to redirect users to your gated content or private community chat if you have incentivised these privileges upon entry completion.
- If you have a YouTube channel, redirecting users back to your channel with a Thank You video is a pretty neat way to foster a sense of community too.
• Open your Competition and go to the Post Entry tab
• Set a redirect URL for users who complete all entry methods
• Choose whether the redirect happens immediately or on full completion
• Use redirects to send traffic to your website, store, or community
• Save your changes to enable the redirect
To build an even more comprehensive marketing campaign, you can fire a tracking pixel on Impressions or Conversions to build up audiences for future campaigns.
We currently support these providers: Adroll, Facebook, Google Ads, Has Offers & Twitter.
The Competitions widget is highly flexible and can be installed on multiple locations throughout the web. This means you are free to embed it on your website, on Facebook, through a partner or influencer's site — as many touch points as you wish.
You can configure your installation options in the Install Options tab.
Our hosted landing pages require no additional setup, it's ready to go as soon as you save your campaign.
Hosted landing pages are customisable to match with your branding. We recommend using the Custom Background or Feature Image Blur options to further customise the look and feel of your landing page.
• Save your Competition to activate the Hosted landing page
• Copy the hosted URL from your campaign
• Share the link on social media, email, or ads
• Customise the appearance to match your branding
• Update campaign settings without changing the hosted link
We recommend using this option if you:
- Have a website but don't have the time to build a landing page
- You could also mirror the link from your website
- Don't currently have a website
- Don't have traffic outside of third party platforms, i.e. you're a content creator or a vendor from a marketplace
If you have your own website, Competitions is highly customisable and will fit in nicely on any page so long as you have the embed code. Here are some examples of how other Gleam users have installed their campaigns:
Jane has a dedicated Giveaways page on their website for entrants to visit and enter. This has the added benefit of keeping users on your website after engaging with your campaign.
• Open your Competition and choose a website install option
• Copy the embed code from Add Page installation
• Paste the code into your website or CMS
• Preview the embed to ensure it displays correctly
• Publish your page to make the campaign live
In fact, we do the same internally for Gleam Contests:
Instead of having users go to your dedicated campaign page, you can bring the campaign closer to users by setting up multiple triggers across your site. This comes with the benefit of including your campaign in multiple contexts which increase the likelihood of discovery.
You can do this by manually setting up buttons and tabs where it makes sense on your website, then users can click on the link to trigger the Competition as an overlay.
We are fully integrated with Shopify, allowing you to install & embed Competitions on your Shopify store with a few clicks.
This is the big moment! 🎉 If you're happy with the overall look and feel of your campaign, it's time to upgrade your plan to unlock the draft. At checkout, we'll automatically select the plan required for you to unlock your draft.
If you're still not ready to upgrade, or want to upgrade to a lower plan instead, you can remove the features mentioned in the campaign summary so you can still upgrade to a lower plan or launch without upgrading.
If you are running a photo contest and you want to show off contestant's submissions on your website, you can setup a Gallery for it. Additionally, visitors can also vote on your submissions if you turn it into a voting contest.
Entries received from your Competitions will automatically sync with Galleries. You can also moderate submissions before they're displayed in public.
Galleries requires a separate subscription. However, a basic version of Gallery is available to you if you are on the Competitions Pro plan.
- Get instructions for setting up a photo contest →
- Get instructions for setting up a photo voting contest →
Your campaign's success will largely depend on how actively you promote your campaign as well as picking the right channels that match up with your audience.
Here, we'll show you a few examples of how other Gleam users are promoting their campaigns. If you need more, we've got comprehensive promotion guides on all major social media networks:
Use Capture to create a custom Bar notification on your website. With our wide range of behavioural rules, you can tweak to your heart's content to reach the perfect audience and capture quality entrants.
To create an even more eye-catching announcement, you can use the Popup Capture to include more details about your event as well include attractive imagery to make your prize more desirable:
Let existing subscribers know about your promotion! If you've included Viral Share actions in your campaign, remember to let subscribers know to share your campaign for more chances to win.
If you run a Discord or Slack community, let your community members be the first to know about your promotion.
To drum up excitement and to make sure all your followers get a chance to find out about your campaign, build up a good momentum by posting regularly about your campaign for the duration of the event.
We also recommend using emojis and images to show off your prize and improve clickthrough rates.
When making updates or reminders about your campaign, use the Thread feature on Twitter to piece together relevant posts so your followers can find information about the campaign in one single thread.
You can test your Competition on your website before it's live by installing it before the campaign's start date.
Yes! It's absolutely possible to install your campaign on multiple websites. If you're running a campaign with multiple partners, sponsors or influencers, feel free to distribute the embed link to third parties and have them install the campaign on their website.
Take advantage of all your available social media channels, plus tap into your existing mailing list to help generate as many actions as possible in your Rewards campaign.
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