Is there a free plan I can start on?

Yes. Gleam Competitions has a free plan where you can run fully functional campaigns, collect verified entries, and use standard social and email actions. There is no time-limited trial of the paid tiers, but you can upgrade anytime and your campaign data carries over.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. Cancel from the Plans tab in your dashboard at any time. You keep full access to paid features until the end of your current billing period, then your account drops to the free plan. Your campaigns and data are not deleted.

Can I upgrade later, even after I have launched?

Yes, anytime, including mid-campaign. Upgrading unlocks your existing campaign data and adds entry methods, customisation, and integrations. We pro-rate the credit left on your current plan against the new one, so you only pay the difference.

What happens to my data if I cancel or downgrade?

It stays with you. Entry, user, and media data from any campaign you ran on a paid plan remains exportable after you downgrade, and you can upgrade again later if you need it.

How much does Gleam cost?

Gleam is subscription-based, with separate plans for each app (Competitions, Rewards, Capture, Galleries) and discounted Package plans for all four. Pay monthly, or yearly to save up to 25%.

Beardbrand Added 1,001 Email Subscribers a Week

Beardbrand drew a new beard oil winner every day in 2013 and reported 1,001 new email subscribers a week. Here's how they ran it.

Author

Stuart McKeown

Australia

Co-Founder

Products Used

Competitions

Competitions Add your prize, choose your actions. Embed on your site, all in under 3 minutes.

Competitions

Competitions Add your prize, choose your actions. Embed on your site, all in under 3 minutes.

Date of Publication

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Weekly Gains During One Beard Oil Giveaway

Beardbrand gave away its beard oil collection to a new winner every day and tracked social and email gains each week.

Email Subscribers per Week

1,001

Facebook Likes per Week

1,502

Instagram Followers per Week

674

Average Daily Sales on Launch Day

4x

Total Entries With 47 Hours Left

19,580

Prizes, Worth $560 at Retail

8

I was reached out by the Gleam team after a post on Reddit. Typically I get contacted by a large number of people wanting me to use their products, but the Gleam product really impressed me.

Eric Bandholz

from Beardbrand

Overview

We read the Startup and Entrepreneur subreddits almost daily, and I sometimes reach out to people there to offer help.

I came across a Reddit post from Eric Bandholz, the owner of Beardbrand, about reaching 2,000 orders. In the comments he said sales had plateaued and he needed help breaking through.

Contacting Eric

I messaged Eric through the Beardbrand contact form on October 16, 2013 and offered to help for free.

I was reached out by the Gleam team after a post on Reddit. Typically I get contacted by a large number of people wanting me to use their products, but the Gleam product really impressed me.
Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand

Eric replied on October 23, seven days later. I upgraded him to the Pro plan and left the campaign design to him.

We’ve run contests in the past and had moderate success, but nothing that really managed the process. Basically we’d post a photo on Facebook and get about 100 comments and pick a winner from there. It was a very manual process and it didn’t flow like I think a contest should flow.
Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand

8 Prizes, 10 Ways to Enter

Eric gave away the Beardbrand Oil Collection to a new winner every day.

Gleam lets you draw a winner every day or one winner at the end. Eric drew one a day and announced each winner on Facebook.

For this campaign I thought about our giveaway. We had just launched our beard oils in June and wanted to get a little more exposure for it. I thought of just giving away one set of free oils (retails for $70), but that that was a small prize. So, I thought a good way to keep our customers and fans engaged was to do a daily drawing for our beard oils in preparation for No-Shave November aka Movember. All told we would give away 8 prizes valued at $560.
Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand

The giveaway ran into No-Shave November, also called Movember, and Eric themed his posts around it.

Eric connected Gleam to Mailchimp, so Entrants who signed up for his newsletter went straight onto his mailing list.

Eric also added custom Actions, such as Place an Order on Beardbrand, which gave +20 entries, the highest value on the widget.

Entrants could Tweet for +1 entry or share their unique link for +7 entries.

Here’s the entry widget with 47 hours left:

Beardbrand's Gleam Competitions campaign widget

Six Channels, $50 in Ads

Eric started with his own customers and fans, then posted on social channels.

Beardbrand promoting their campaign on Reddit

We promoted our contest on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit/r/beards, Instagram, and to our email list. Basically we used the image we used on our Gleam page and posted that on each channel. We paid $50 to boost our post on Facebook, and did no other out of pocket marketing buys. We did reach out to other Tumblr blogs and ask them to reblog the post and had one largely followed blog share it for us. Our Facebook post has gotten over 19000 views (both paid and organic) and our Tumblr post got 75 notes and reblogs. It was our most popular Facebook post ever!
Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand

Entrants could also tag @Beardbrand in a beard selfie on Instagram for +1 entry a day.

Beardbrand's Gleam Gallery with user-generated content

Weekly Gains Before and During the Giveaway

Eric kept weekly records of his social and email numbers.

We keep detailed records of our social media numbers and here are the results:
Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand

Average weekly gains, Eric Bandholz’s records, for the three weeks before the giveaway:

Facebook: 673 Likes
Twitter: 26 Followers
Instagram: 76 Followers
Email: 135 Subscribers
Tumblr: 71 Followers

Average weekly gains during the giveaway:

Facebook: 1,502 Likes
Twitter: 408 Followers
Instagram: 674 Followers
Email: 1,001 Subscribers
Tumblr: 123 Followers

In addition to that, the day we launched our campaign, we had our best sales day ever. We did about 4 times our daily average in sales that day and the momentum has continued.
Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand

Run Your Own Giveaway

Want to grow your store with a giveaway like this one? Start from the template below.

Customer Success Stories

Your success is ours, see how we've helped others grow.

"
17k+
New Social Followers
The Shark X campaign showed us how a striking design coupled with a Gleam giveaway can capture attention worldwide.
Kevin Piangenti
Cooler Master
"
900+
UGC Collected
We’ve had a great deal of success with campaigns that include customers posting photos, memories, or favourite products to Instagram.
Elise Sabak
AdoreMe
"
100K+
Twitch Followers
The results have been great, our social media and Discord has really blown up in a positive way, and we have gained a lot of new members.
Khaljiit
Twitch Kittens
"
2.6M+
Actions in 1 Event
Gleam has the widest tool kit of gates and features, the best interface and overall the best value for money proposition.
Johannes Schiefer
ESL
"
1k
New Spotify Followers
Our Gleam competition boosted my Spotify following by 50%, from 2,000 to 3,000 followers, in a week.
Brian Hazard
Color Theory
"
4M+
Actions in 2 years
Jane.com uses Gleam to run weekly co-branded giveaways to acquire a constant stream of customers
Carissa Flinders
Jane.com
"
Most Revenue in a Single Day
The day we launched our campaign, we had our best sales day ever. We did about 4 times our daily average in sales that day and the momentum has continued.
Eriz Bandholz
Beardbrand
"
We use Gleam to create giveaways on a weekly basis. Gleam provides a visually stunning, highly interactive, and (most importantly) safe way to interact with our clients, and we recommend them to everyone.
Melissa Storm
LitRing
"
Using Gleam for the giveaways on the website has been a fantastic way to not only build up the social media followers base but has also given me the opportunity to easily create an easy way to run giveaways that are simple for people to enter and to spread the word of the prizes and of the website.
Karen Woodham
Blazing Minds
"
Out of all the giveaway/contest tools I have researched Gleam had everything I was looking for. We have used the Gleam contest widget over the past 1.5 years with great success. Having the ability to pick and choose different entry methods for our customers is a great tool to mix up our monthly giveaway.
John Hipsher
YakAttack
"
Gleam has transformed how I host and manage giveaways on my blog. Allowing my readers to enter via the various entry methods whilst I can select a winner at the click of a button.
Sarah Anguish
Boo Roo and Tigger Too
"
Gleam has helped us reach people all around the world, that would have been impossible otherwise! Gleam helps us build our email and social subscribers, so we can grow!
Adam Jacobson
Emergence Boardgame
"
With 3 years of using Gleam to build Video Game community outreach programs, no other suite has provided more value to my campaigns.
Keith Weisglas
Define Human

All Success Stories

Customer Success Stories

Your success is ours, see how we've helped others grow.

"
17k+
New Social Followers
The Shark X campaign showed us how a striking design coupled with a Gleam giveaway can capture attention worldwide.
Kevin Piangenti
Cooler Master
"
900+
UGC Collected
We’ve had a great deal of success with campaigns that include customers posting photos, memories, or favourite products to Instagram.
Elise Sabak
AdoreMe
"
100K+
Twitch Followers
The results have been great, our social media and Discord has really blown up in a positive way, and we have gained a lot of new members.
Khaljiit
Twitch Kittens
"
2.6M+
Actions in 1 Event
Gleam has the widest tool kit of gates and features, the best interface and overall the best value for money proposition.
Johannes Schiefer
ESL
"
1k
New Spotify Followers
Our Gleam competition boosted my Spotify following by 50%, from 2,000 to 3,000 followers, in a week.
Brian Hazard
Color Theory
"
4M+
Actions in 2 years
Jane.com uses Gleam to run weekly co-branded giveaways to acquire a constant stream of customers
Carissa Flinders
Jane.com
"
Most Revenue in a Single Day
The day we launched our campaign, we had our best sales day ever. We did about 4 times our daily average in sales that day and the momentum has continued.
Eriz Bandholz
Beardbrand
"
We use Gleam to create giveaways on a weekly basis. Gleam provides a visually stunning, highly interactive, and (most importantly) safe way to interact with our clients, and we recommend them to everyone.
Melissa Storm
LitRing
"
Using Gleam for the giveaways on the website has been a fantastic way to not only build up the social media followers base but has also given me the opportunity to easily create an easy way to run giveaways that are simple for people to enter and to spread the word of the prizes and of the website.
Karen Woodham
Blazing Minds
"
Out of all the giveaway/contest tools I have researched Gleam had everything I was looking for. We have used the Gleam contest widget over the past 1.5 years with great success. Having the ability to pick and choose different entry methods for our customers is a great tool to mix up our monthly giveaway.
John Hipsher
YakAttack
"
Gleam has transformed how I host and manage giveaways on my blog. Allowing my readers to enter via the various entry methods whilst I can select a winner at the click of a button.
Sarah Anguish
Boo Roo and Tigger Too
"
Gleam has helped us reach people all around the world, that would have been impossible otherwise! Gleam helps us build our email and social subscribers, so we can grow!
Adam Jacobson
Emergence Boardgame
"
With 3 years of using Gleam to build Video Game community outreach programs, no other suite has provided more value to my campaigns.
Keith Weisglas
Define Human