Rafflecopter Q&A: Facebook vs. Email Login

Howdy from Rafflecopter HQs!

Rafflecopter released a new widget over the past week that lets you log in through either your Facebook account or your name/email address combo. The previous Rafflecopter widget tracked users based on cookies. Moving away from cookies is a win for both the blogger and entrants alike. Here’s a blog post with an explanation why.

We’d like to answer five common questions that you’ve asked specifically about the new Facebook Name/Email login system in a Q&A format:

1) When I login w/ Facebook for the first time, what happens?

Let’s say you want to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway for the very first time and you want to sign in with Facebook. Like any other app using FB Connect, when you click ‘Log in w/ Facebook’, you’ll be asked permission from Rafflecopter for some info. In connecting w/ Rafflecopter through FB Connect, Rafflecopter wants two pieces of info: your name and your email address. Why? So if you win something, the blogger can get in touch with you! In order to get your name, we have to have access to your basic information (in other words, information that you’ve already made public).

2) So how does the blogger know my name and email?

If you login w/ Facebook, we provide the blogger your Facebook name and your primary Facebook email address. This is where you’ll be contacted if you win a prize! To learn what your primary Facebook email address is, log into Facebook, go to your account settings, and you’ll be shown your email address associated with your Facebook account.

If you login w/ name and email, we simply provide the blogger the name and email address that you used to sign in.

**hint** if the blogger asks as an entry option for your name and email, kindly remind them that there’s no need to do that with the new Rafflecopter widget (an explanation can be found under tip 1 on our previous blog post).

3) What’s the difference between Facebook login and name/email login?

The two advantages you’ll get by signing in w/ Facebook vs name/email is that you’ll 1) be able to edit your entry if you’d like and 2) you won’t have to enter in your Facebook name when you enter a ‘FB like’ entry.

4) Do I have to log into every giveaway? Does this mean more work?

With the new sign in system, you’ll only have to login once. After that, all Rafflecopter widgets across the web will remember you (unless you delete your cookies of course!). With the old version of Rafflecopter, you would have to type in your name and email address for every entry you submitted on every Rafflecopter widget. Now you only have to type it in once!

5) I want to enter a giveaway with the name/email option. But when I log in, I’m logged out of Facebook. What the heck?!

If you’re logged into a Rafflecopter widget via Facebook, when you log out of the widget, it will log you out of Facebook as well. If this is happening and you want to only use your name and email address to log in moving forward, you would have to remove the Rafflecopter app from your Facebook app settings. In order to do this, sign into Facebook and go to your account settings, and then click on ‘Apps’ on the left hand side of the page. Find the Rafflecopter app, click on ‘edit’ and then ‘remove app’.

Don’t worry – disconnecting the Rafflecopter app will not lose any entries that you’ve already completed.

Questions? Feedback?

If you have any questions for us, you’re always welcome to comment below or shoot us an email – info@rafflecopter.com

Hopefully these tips have helped you!  If you think they’d help others, we’d love it if you would help us spread the word :)