Start/End Time Considerations

It’s not so much when your giveaway should start and end but making sure that when you promote your giveaway, your audience is online, listening, and ready to participate. Below are several considerations you should keep in mind when picking the start and end dates of your giveaway.

When should the giveaway start?

• Time of week. More people are browsing the web during the beginning of the week vs the weekend; think about starting and promoting your giveaway during these peak times. If you plan on promoting your giveaway when you launch (which is recommend!), starting your giveaway Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday is the most optimal time, followed by Thursday and Friday, and then the weekend. Here’s an infographic where you’ll learn insights into when giveaways are entered you should check out.

• Time of month. Running monthly giveaways are very popular, but they don’t necessarily need to start on the first and last day of the month. Try starting and ending your giveaways on the first Monday / Tuesday of each month, especially if the first and last day of the month falls on a weekend.

• Holidays. Running promotions around certain holidays is always a great way to celebrate but make sure you don't end your promotion on the exact holiday as it's very unlikely you'll get much engagement on that day. If you look at your site’s analytics, you should notice a reduced amount of visitors to your site on days such as Christmas, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, etc. Everyone is too busy celebrating! If you run a Thanksgiving-themed giveaway, it wouldn't be ideal to end the giveaway on Thanksgiving, but rather a few days before or after to achieve a higher level of engagement.

How long should the giveaway last?

In general, the length of time your giveaway lasts should depend on the prize you’re giving away.

If you’re giving away a few t-shirts & stickers to your fans, you probably wouldn’t want to run that promotion the same length of time as a giveaway where the prize is an all-inclusive vacation to the Galapagos Islands. It would be a waste of time and money to run a giveaway with such a high value prize for a short duration.

Below is a chart that provides recommendations on how long your promotion should last based on the ARV (average retail value) of the prize you’re giving away.

Flash giveaways on your Facebook page

A flash giveaway generally refers to a promotion that lasts less than 24 hours. Often times, running a flash giveaway on your Facebook page is a great way to revitalize your fanbase and can be a fun way to give back to your fans as well.

On that note, check out the app that makes it easy to manage a giveaway on your Facebook timeline: Rafflecopter's Facebook flash giveaway app. You can read about how the Rafflecopter Facebook flash giveaway app works here.

If you're running a giveaway on your Facebook timeline, here's an article that describes 5 best practices for your Facebook timeline giveaway.

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Next: Read about setting up your giveaway's terms and conditions