Why and How To Run An Ongoing Giveaway With Gleam

If your business attracts traffic consistently throughout the year, a short-term giveaway will only convert a portion of it.

An ongoing giveaway runs for months rather than weeks. Instead of launching a new Competition every time, you keep one campaign live and schedule winner draws within it.

That way, there is always an active incentive available, regardless of when someone lands on your site.

Not every visitor arrives while a campaign is live.

If you run short-term giveaways, there will always be gaps between campaigns. During those gaps, new visitors land on your site with no active incentive to convert.

Some of that traffic comes from search. Some from evergreen blog posts, documentation, YouTube, referrals, or older shared links. It does not arrive in controlled bursts.

An ongoing giveaway removes those gaps.

The campaign stays live. Links do not need replacing. Visitors do not encounter expired promotions. Every new session has the same opportunity to enter.

If your traffic is consistent throughout the year, your giveaway structure should be too.

Short-term campaigns require repetition:

• Creating a new Competition
• Rebuilding entry actions
• Rewriting terms
• Testing and publishing
• Promoting and reporting

Over time, this cycle adds creates repeated setup work.

An ongoing giveaway consolidates that work into one one long-running campaign. You build it once and update it as needed.

Short campaigns tend to focus on launch spikes. You promote heavily, traffic increases for a short period, then it ends and everything resets.

An ongoing giveaway gives you space to see how it’s actually performing rather than judging it on a short burst of activity.

Over time, you can look at where entries are coming from, test different ways of promoting it, adjust your messaging, or add and remove entry methods if needed. Because it’s the same live Competition, you’re building on what’s already there instead of setting up a new campaign every few weeks. It’s less about chasing spikes and more about improving steadily.

Ongoing giveaways are run as standard Competitions. You simply configure them to operate for a longer period and schedule multiple winner draws within the same campaign.

This usually means setting a longer end date and aligning your prize structure with the number of draws you plan to run. If needed, the end date can be extended rather than creating a new Competition.

Below are the key elements to set up correctly.

Decide how long you want the giveaway to run and structure it accordingly. The duration should align with how often you plan to draw winners and how many prizes you intend to award.

For example, a weekly draw over six months requires a different prize setup than a single monthly draw across a year. Planning this at the start makes the campaign easier to manage once it is live.

The Competition then runs continuously, with draws taking place inside that same setup rather than being recreated each time.

Define the total number of prizes based on how many draws you intend to run.

For example:

• One winner every week for twelve months
• Plus a final grand prize draw

All prizes are configured within the same Competition at the start, so each draw pulls from the planned prize pool rather than requiring a new campaign.

Instead of drawing all winners at the end, you run draws at set intervals during the campaign.

Each time you draw, you can:

• Select one or multiple winners
• Limit the draw to entries collected within a specific time period, such as the previous week or month

The campaign itself stays live the entire time. Only the winner selection happens in stages.

Because an ongoing giveaway runs for months rather than weeks, your core entry actions should support long-term goals.

Email subscriptions, referrals, and social follows tend to remain relevant throughout the life of the campaign. These form a stable foundation.

You can add seasonal or short-term actions when needed. Just be deliberate about removing or updating them once that promotion ends, so outdated entry methods do not remain visible inside a live campaign.

An ongoing giveaway works best when the base structure stays consistent, with temporary actions layered in thoughtfully.

An ongoing giveaway works best when it feels active, not invisible.

Even though the Competition stays live, participation will increase when people are reminded that winners are actually being drawn.

Announce winners publicly on your social channels, newsletter, or community spaces. This reinforces legitimacy and shows that the campaign is ongoing, not forgotten.

Each winner announcement also creates a natural moment to:

• Remind followers that the giveaway is still live
• Encourage new participants to enter
• Prompt existing entrants to share their referral links
• Highlight bonus actions they may not have completed

Because the campaign doesn’t reset each month, these announcements act as momentum checkpoints rather than relaunches.

You can also rotate creative assets, update pinned posts, or refresh on-site messaging periodically so the campaign continues to feel current.

The structure stays stable. The promotion evolves.

That combination is what keeps participation steady over time.

An ongoing giveaway does not replace event-driven campaigns. It runs alongside them.

Short-term campaigns are designed to capture concentrated bursts of attention around launches, seasonal promotions, or specific events. An ongoing giveaway covers the gaps between those moments. It remains live while traffic continues to arrive from search, content, referrals, and paid acquisition.

One captures spikes. The other captures the steady flow.