Choosing Your Winners
Picking your winners with Rafflecopter is easy. Since Rafflecopter is a sweepstakes platform, you’ll be given the tools that will allow you to choose winners at random from your pool of entries.
On your giveaway’s entries tab in your Rafflecopter dashboard, clicking ‘add a random winner’ will randomly select an entry -- similar to randomly picking a name out of a hat. After that button is clicked and the winner chosen appears, you’ll be able to view a winner card of the chosen individual which will show you their name, email address, a link to their Facebook account (if they logged in with Facebook), when they entered, what entry option they completed, their IP address and country associated with the IP (approximate location).
Here is an example of a 'winner card':
You’ll be able to add as many winners to your giveaway as you’d like. The number of winners you should decide to choose isn’t affected by the number of prizes you have. Rafflecopter integrates with Random.org, which means when you choose a winner through Rafflecopter, your winners will be selected at random.
On the entries tab, you’ll also be able to view your giveaway’s entries by clicking on the ‘show me the entries’ button, or get a csv sent to your email address by clicking the ‘export entries to excel’ button.
Once you’ve selected a winner, you’ll be given the chance to verify the entrant before announcing them as a winner. Check out how the entrant entered and find if they’ve properly entered as per your terms and conditions. If you asked them to answer a question through the ‘invent your own’ entry option for example, you’ll be able to read their answer and see if it qualifies as an entry. If they tweeted a message to enter, you can verify if they completed the action by visiting the tweet URL they left.
Timing of choosing your winners
You’re probably familiar with the term ‘strike while the iron is hot’. When your giveaway ends, your entrants are going to want to know who won. If you wait a week to announce the winners, your participants will lose interest. As a best practice, you’re recommended to choose your winners within 24 hours. The sooner you pick your winners, the better.