Happy New Year from Rafflecopter HQ! To start 2012, you’ll have a chance at winning an iPad2 or one of two Kindle Fires in what we’re calling the ‘Rafflecopter Launch Party Giveaway’!

Say ‘Hi’ To Rafflecopter

Rafflecopter makes the whole process of running giveaways really easy. Over 80k giveaways have been created with Rafflecopter up to this point, and if you didn’t know yet, there’s a new version in town! Oh yeah, it’s free. If you haven’t used Rafflecopter, sign up and launch a giveaway in the matter of minutes.

Choosing a winner to your giveaways shouldn’t be a chore. Rafflecopter gives you the tools to make it really easy, and we want to show you how! The post below describes the most efficient way possible to moderate entrants and choosing winners to your giveaways.

An Introduction To The Rafflecopter Moderate Page

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 :)

The new Rafflecopter widget has been live now for over 48 hours. The response has been overly positive. Constant improvements are being made as we receive feedback on how we can better it (send us your thoughts at info@rafflecopter.com!). We wanted to share six quick, but important tips that will help you get the most out of our giveaway widget.

Tip 1 – Take Hold Of The Updated Extra Info Section

When creating a giveaway, you have the option to create your own entry options w/ the ‘Choose Your Own Task’ field where entrants can leave ‘extra info’ to verify or collect an entry. In the new widget, you have the ability to edit not only the title of the entry option and the description, but the sentence above the box where ‘extra info’ is left. When an entrant fills out this field, the information is collected in your giveaway’s moderate tab in the dashboard.

Because you have the ability to edit this section, put a clear message here of what information you’d like the entrant to leave. Here’s an example from the giveaway in a previous blog post where we ask you to answer a question as an entry option and how it would show up in the widget:

Tip 2 – You No Longer Have To Ask For Name/Email

The old widget relied on cookies to track entrants and caused too many problems! Rafflecopter no longer relies on cookies, as we’ve updated to a sign in system. Advantages of the sign in system are that 1) entrants will only have to enter in their name and email once only across all Rafflecopter giveaways as opposed to every entry option on every giveaway, and 2) helps the entrant remember what giveaways they entered across different computers/devices.

With the old widget, many bloggers asked entrants to leave their name and email address as an entry option. You no longer have to ask entrants to leave their name and email as an entry. If you still have this as an entry option, it will appear confusing to the entrant:

Tip 3 – More Than One Widget Per Page Is Allowed

You’re allowed to have more than one widget on a page, so please take advantage of it! Here’s a great example of two widgets running for separate giveaways on the same page.

Two things you should keep in mind: if you have a ‘tweet about this giveaway‘ entry, the URL will always be pointed to the page where the entrant is viewing the widget. If the tweet from an entrant points to your homepage, that means they entered the giveaway there. If the tweet points to your  post (preffered) that means they entered from your individual post.

If you have a ‘leave a blog post comment‘ entry, it would make it less confusing on the entrant if the widget is only on the post page as opposed to the blog page. Because of this, we’ve included the page break tag when selecting the widget code to be used on WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad in the updated dashboard. If you don’t want the more tag, unselect the box below the embed code.

Tip 4 – Call to Action! Directions vs. Words

With the ‘Choose Your Own Task’ entry option, you have complete control over customizing the title, the description, and now the extra info section.

For best results, think about using a call to action in these sections. If you want someone to share the post on their blog for example, use the title “Share This Post On Your Blog” or “Blog About This Giveaway”. Don’t just say “Share”. You wouldn’t believe how much your giveaway can improve with clear, concise directions. If you make the directions in your giveaway easy to follow, everybody wins!

Tip 5 – Take Advantage Of The New Share Code Page

You’ve showed us how often you share your giveaways with different bloggers. Rafflecopter now has a much better share code page which will help you share your widget code with other bloggers looking to use the same widget you’re using.

Check out an example: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/Z3JlZzo5Mw==/

Tip 6 – Placing HTML/Javascript In The Widget Won’t Work

With the old widget, some folks were able to post things inside the Rafflecopter entry form: RSS feeds, HTML buttons, email sign ups, etc. We estimated that for every one person that got this to work, there were about four that couldn’t. If it worked for you, of course we didn’t ask you to take it down, but we didn’t officially support this functionality.

In the new widget however, embeddable codes like these aren’t supported yet either, so check to see if you have any codes in your widgets when duplicating old giveaways. We do plan on giving you the ability to do that, but right now, its something we aren’t able to officially support.

Questions? Feedback?

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

If you want to see something built into Rafflecopter that we don’t have yet, let us know!

We think these tips will help a lot of folks enjoy the new Rafflecopter much more – we’d love it if you would help us spread the word!

Related articles

• How Many Giveaway Entry Options Should You Use? (rafflecopter.com)
• Rafflecopter Brand Showcase: SendFudge.com (rafflecopter.com)
• Outrageous Baking: Gluten-Free Baked Goods & Treats (rafflecopter.com)

Howdy from Rafflecopter HQs – it’s time to celebrate!

Today, we’re happy to announce that we’re tearing down the invite only page, and giving everyone access to Rafflecopter. Check out our new website and sign up today!

New Widget M’kay