How MAINGEAR Built a Partnership-Powered Giveaway Engine Over 59 Campaigns

MAINGEAR is a boutique PC integrator with over 20 years building hand-assembled gaming PCs to order, built around a straightforward premise: hand-built by enthusiasts, tuned for performance.

Partnership is a core part of how MAINGEAR builds and sells their products: it has a whole product line, the shroud Edition, co-developed with Twitch streamer shroud (Michael Grzesiek).

That same idea shows up in its giveaway history.

For 9 years, MAINGEAR has run giveaways on Gleam with hardware and publishing partners like NVIDIA and Capcom, in an easily repeatable format.

Alongside the Resident Evil Requiem campaign this case study covers, MAINGEAR also ran a similar giveaway, a NVIDIA GeForce bundle giveaway tied to 007: First Light, plus a separate creator-partnered giveaway with streamer MooMooClover.

Three Brands, One Purchase, One Prize

This case study covers one campaign: the MAINGEAR + NVIDIA Resident Evil Requiem Gaming PC Giveaway, run across the US and Canada.

Most co-branded giveaways split the work two ways: one brand supplies the audience, the other supplies the prize. This one splits it three ways along the purchase itself. MAINGEAR builds the PC, NVIDIA supplies the GPU inside it, Capcom publishes the game it's built to run.

The prize is the actual GeForce Resident Evil Requiem bundle, live for sale on MAINGEAR's own site. MAINGEAR announced it on Facebook the day the giveaway went live, bonus-entry code included, the same daily-return mechanic that ends up carrying more actions than any other in the campaign.

How the Actions Split Across MAINGEAR, NVIDIA, and Capcom

That three-way prize split shows up in the entry list too, each brand pulling its own channels into the campaign rather than one brand doing all the promotional work. With 28 ways to enter, this campaign sits in the 98th percentile for action-list breadth among large Gleam campaigns.

Here's how all 28 tracked actions split by channel:

MAINGEAR, as host, naturally had more owned channels in that list than NVIDIA or Capcom, eight against five against four, and pulled more total actions as a result.

But channel count aside, the platforms actually mattered more than brand: a website visit, YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook action landed between about 11,868 and 13,238 actions no matter whose channel it was, while X, TikTok, Discord, and Twitch actions landed between about 1,133 and 2,783, several times lower, again regardless of brand.

MAINGEAR's channel weighting is one example of getting the balance right in a co-branded giveaway.

Want to Learn More About Entry Actions?

See how Gleam's action types work - from social follows to purchase-based entries - and how to combine them into a single campaign.

Want to Learn More About Entry Actions?

See how Gleam's action types work - from social follows to purchase-based entries - and how to combine them into a single campaign.

Want to Learn More About Entry Actions?

See how Gleam's action types work - from social follows to purchase-based entries - and how to combine them into a single campaign.

A Giveaway That Asks Entrants to Come Back

MAINGEAR added an entry mechanic called Click for a Daily Bonus Entry, and it did exactly what it was built to do:

• 31,923 actions from the Daily Bonus Entry alone, more than double any other single action in the campaign. It's not a one-off, MAINGEAR runs some version of it on every giveaway they do.

• 174,280 actions from 13,949 entrants overall, a ratio of roughly 12.5 actions per person

That works out to the 92nd percentile for engagement among large Gleam campaigns.
A follow or a visit can't be claimed twice, but the Daily Bonus Entry resets every day for as long as the giveaway runs. That's what the numbers are showing: a meaningful share of entrants came back to the campaign day after day instead of finishing everything in one visit.

What Other PC and Hardware Brands Can Take From This

59 campaigns over 9 years shows a partnership structure that MAINGEAR can repeat with different hardware and publishing partners across launches, and it teaches a few lessons for any brand pairing (or trio-ing) up for a campaign.

The first lesson is the one this whole campaign was built on: pick partners who each own a different piece of the same purchase, the way NVIDIA, Capcom, and MAINGEAR did here.

When picking a co-branded partner, look for a brand that complements what you sell or fills a real gap for your user, and ideally one that will promote the campaign to its own audience too.

Another thing to think about is that if you're capping how many actions each partner gets, don't just split them evenly. MAINGEAR, as host, ended up with eight owned channels in this campaign against five for NVIDIA and four for Capcom, a split that tracks each partner's actual role rather than an arbitrary even count, built around the platforms your audience actually uses and what each partner's role calls for.

Weight your actions by platform type, not just by partner. As the numbers above show, the platform mattered more than the brand behind it: website, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook consistently outperformed X, TikTok, Discord, and Twitch, regardless of whose channel it was. When you're deciding where to use your action slots, plan around the platform first.

Give entrants a reason to return, not just enter once and forget about you.

This keeps your brand top of mind for longer and will cement your brand in the mind consumer. Click for a Daily Bonus Entry generated 31,923 actions on its own, more than double any other single action in the campaign.

For longer campaign windows, it is a great way to keep excitement and momentum in a repeatable daily action instead of relying only on one-time asks.

Finally, tie the prize to something you actually sell.

This giveaway's prize tracks back to a real product bundle page on MAINGEAR's own site, the same approach MAINGEAR uses for other campaigns like its NVIDIA GeForce 007: First Light bundle. It makes sense to only attract people with a genuine interest in what you sell, plus it is more cost effective.

Plus, people who enter and don't win might purchase anyway as they have already shown interest in the prize.