How TECHNOID and PNY Built One Gaming PC and Pulled 10,064 Entries

TECHNOID, which builds custom gaming PCs, and PNY, which makes the graphics cards, memory, and storage that go inside them, teamed up to build a RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC for Game Con Canada to give it away through a Gleam giveaway campaign.

This case study will walk you through how they did it and what you can take from their success.

It is common for co-branded giveaways to be two companies who share an audience and then split the cost of a generic prize.

An awesome way to level this up is if you can build something together. This works really well in the tech space where different companies make hardware, games, softwares - the combinations are endless.

For Game Con, TECHNOID and PNY built an actual machine together:

• Technoid Glass White case

• PNY GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

• PNY 32GB DDR5 6000MHz kit

• PNY 1TB NVMe SSD

• Ryzen 7 7800X3D

• MSI 360mm AIO cooler

• MSI B840P motherboard

• MSI 850W Gold PSU

10,064 People Entered to Win

The campaign reached 15,201 impressions, converted 10,064 of them into entrants, and held a 66.21% conversion rate.

You might assume that's just standard for a giveaway, since everyone likes free stuff. But this one stands out because the prize wasn't for everyone.

A gift card converts easily: entering costs nothing, and anyone can use one. A high-end gaming PC only converts this well when most of the people seeing it already wanted one. If you aren't into PCs or gaming, there's a very small chance you'd enter.

That's the real signal here: TECHNOID promoted this to exactly the right audience.

Where the Reach Came From

The traffic sources tell their own story:

• Contestgirl.com: 8,882 of 15,201 impressions, converting at 92%, but 1.16 actions per entrant

• TECHNOID's own domains: 1,921 impressions, entrants doing roughly 3 actions each

• Direct traffic: 2,863 impressions, converting at 32%, also around 3 actions per entrant

Contest-listing sites like Contestgirl cut both ways. They bring incredible scale and strong conversion rates, but everyone on them is there to win free stuff, with no particular loyalty to any one brand. If your prize is targeted enough, you'll still pull in people who actually want it, and you can see that here: entrants who came through Contestgirl completed far fewer actions (1.16) than entrants who came through TECHNOID's own channels (roughly 3 each). That's likely the loyalty gap showing up in the data.

TECHNOID's own domains and direct traffic reached far fewer people than Contestgirl, but they got two to three times the engagement per person in return.

The giveaway ran directly on TECHNOID's Shopify store, using Gleam's Shopify integration to embed entry into the storefront itself instead of sending people to a separate landing page. That kept the audience shopping, not clicking away from the products they came to see.

The Six Actions Entrants Could Complete

When we take a look into the 15,632 verified actions, we can see the following options were available:

• Visit PNY Gaming on YouTube: 9,669 actions (well over half the total)

• Instagram follow: PNY Instagram follow: 1,670 actions / TECHNOID Instagram follow: 1,600 actions

• X follow: 1,230

• Facebook link: 1,032

• Game Con secret code: 431

A couple of things immediately stand out. YouTube alone out-did every other social action combined, 9,669 against 5,963, likely because that's just where PNY's audience already is.

On the other hand, the one action where both brands compete on equal footing, Instagram, they're nearly tied: 1,670 to 1,600.

The Secret Code That Tied the Giveaway to Game Con

Arguably the most valuable action in the whole campaign was the secret code.

A secret code is one of Gleam's many entry actions. It is simple, entrants have to find and enter a code you hide, whether that's printed somewhere, read out on a stream, or handed out in person.

It creates excitement by manufacturing scarcity: you have to actually find the code to enter. It acts like a treasure hunt, forcing participants to scour your content and engage more deeply than they would with a one-click follow.

Even better, TECHNOID and PNY used it to pull people to a physical place or reward those who attended. They tied the secret code to attending Game Con Canada itself.

The other 5 actions served a purpose each, but they worked from anywhere and therefore pulled in bigger numbers. The secret code only pulled in 431 entries but you can bet they are the most engaged participants and loyal fans for the fact that they showed up at the event.

It does also explain why Canada makes up 10.55% of entrants, more than 50 times the share of any other country outside the US, since Game Con Canada happened on the ground there.

How to Build a Great Prize Together

Co-branding like this is fantastic because each brand gets access to the other's audience for a fraction of the cost. Each side also borrows some of the other's credibility, plus they both contribute to the prize itself rather than just their name.

The YouTube visit action (9,669) pulled in more actions than everything else combined, almost entirely on the strength of PNY's following there.

Even with that imbalance, TECHNOID still came away with real value: new entrants, new storefront traffic, and a product now tied to PNY's audience too.

What to Copy for Your Own Co-Branded Giveaway

The same three things made this work at scale, and they work for pretty much any co-branded giveaway, not just this one:

• Build something real together instead of splitting a generic prize (this works as well by creating a bundle together, so you can still do this even if you don't 'build' your products)

• Decide at the start how you'll split channels and actions between partners, whatever happens organically will decide who gets the visibility, PNY's YouTube channel wasn't chosen to dominate here, it just did. This means it is good practice to check channels so there are no surprises

• If you're running on Shopify, embed entry straight into your storefront instead of sending entrants to a separate landing page, that's what let TECHNOID's own traffic convert without an extra click. Plus, maybe people will stop by your shop while they are browsing

From Entrant to Subscriber

A giveaway like this doesn't have to stop at the draw. Gleam connects directly to email and SMS platforms like Klaviyo and Mailchimp, so every one of TECHNOID's 10,064 entrants can flow straight into a list ready for a thank-you note, a discount code, or a nudge toward the exact products they just showed up wanting. For a Shopify brand already running Gleam on its storefront, that's one integration away, not a new campaign.

Get those right and the top-line numbers follow, of course alongside promoting it in as many places as possible and spreading the word.

Want to run something like this? See how the campaign was built on Gleam, or start your own co-branded giveaway.