CommentCrateHow to announce a giveaway winner
The draw is done. Here is what to post, what to send the winner and what to do if nobody answers.
Check before you announce
Open the winner's profile and check the conditions from your rules, such as following you or tagging friends. The extension cannot check those for you. If the winner does not qualify, go to the first backup before anyone has been told.
The announcement post
Say who won, how the winner was chosen and when. Something like this:
WINNER: congratulations @[username]! The winner was drawn at random from the valid comments on [date, time, time zone]. [Number] backups were drawn too. @[username], please message us within [X] days to claim your prize.
Tagging is up to you. If the rules did not mention it, post the username without a tag.
The message to the winner
Send a private message as well, because a tag is easy to miss. Keep it short:
Hi [name], you won [prize] in our giveaway! Please reply by [date] with [what you need, for example a delivery address]. If we do not hear from you by then, the prize goes to the next person.
Ask only for what you need to deliver the prize, and say what you will do with it.
If the winner does not answer
- Wait as long as your rules said, not a day less.
- Then contact the first backup, in the order of the draw, and say in the post that the winner changed.
- Keep the record of the draw: it shows the order of the backups, which is why you drew them before.
If people doubt the result
Show the record of the draw (date, rules, entries, winners and backups) instead of arguing. What it contains is explained in the giveaway record.
Before and after the announcement
The rules you published are in the rules template, and the whole process from post to winner is in how to run a giveaway from comments. To draw with backups and a record in your browser, see the giveaway picker.