How To Setup A Draw

What Are Draws?

Draws is a feature on Dot.vu that allows you to setup contests where participants have a chance to win prizes and know if they won, immediately. That’s instant gratification at its best.

Here are some example concepts that use the Draws feature:

• Christmas Calendar With Daily Draws
• A Claw Machine Game Experience
• Scratch 3 Of A Kind To Win

Types Of Draws

There are currently two types of Draws:

• Standard Draw. Here a participant will have a chance to win one of the available prizes, and gets to know immediately if it won or not.
• Stepped Draw. Here a participant will first try its luck against the first prize, and only on a loss will it try its luck against the second prize, and so on, and gets to know immediately if it won or not.

Creating A Draw

1. Navigate to your Dashboard > Data > Draws
2. Click Create a new draw
3. Define a name to your Draw
4. Select a type of draw
5. Click Confirm

Your Draw is created! See below how to configure your Draw.

Add Prizes

Start by defining what prizes will be available in this draw, so for each prize:

1. Click Add a prize
2. Give a Prize Title to the prize added

Configure Prize Amounts

You can limit the amount of stock available for each prize in the column Limit the amount of prizes available.

If you uncheck the checkbox in this column, the prize will be available without limit of stock. This can be useful for example if the intent of the Draw is to simply provide a fun and engaging experience, where the reward is a discount that is available for everyone, but where delivering it in the experience of the Draw adds a new dimension to it.

Configure Prize Probabilities

This is an important step. It determines how easy participants will win the prizes, and there are a lot of combinations of probabilities for a variety of draw flavors. Here are some examples:

• The Common Setup: a single prize with a limited amount. The probability should be the amount of prize available divided by the estimated number of participants for the Draw*.
  For example: 5 of one prize, 5000 participants, then 5/5000 = 0.001% probability for that one prize
• Win One Of Many: multiple prizes with limited amounts. The probability should be the total amount of prizes available divided by the estimated number of participants for the Draw*, and then distributed among the different prizes.
  For example: 5 different prizes, each with a limited stock of 10, 5000 participants, then 50/5000/5 = 0.002% probability per prize.
• Some Easy. Some Hard: same as the one above, with multiple prizes with limited amounts, but you can distribute the total probability so that some prizes are more likely to get then others.
  For example: you have a very hard to get single prize with limit amount of 1, and another easier to get prize with limit amount of 1000. Simply distribute the probabilities proportionally.
• All For The First Comers!: if you set each prize to 100% probability, then every participant will win a prize. If you limit the amount of prizes available, then only when there are no more prizes to give will participants stop winning any prizes.
• Hard To Get: you can of course setup a draw with very low chance of winning. For that just set a very low probability in relation to how many participants you are expecting to have.

*Draw Period: if you wish to define two or more Periods, you should consider the total probability of winning per period, as you can make certain prizes available in different Periods.

Add Custom Data

You can add Custom Data fields to a prize so that when they are won, you can use the Custom Data to show prize information to the winner. An example of two common Custom Data columns would be a URL to an image of the prize, and a prize description.

To add a Custom Data column to your prizes:

1. Click Add data column
2. Name the custom prize data column
3. Select the data type (for example a URL would be text)
4. Click Confirm

To edit or delete a Custom Data column:

1. Mouse over the column
2. Click the edit icon
3. Change the name, type or delete the data column

Prize Variations

This feature is optional.

You can chose to enable prize variations for any prize. For example:

• You have 1000 coupons to give, all with the same probability of being won, but each of those coupons must have different Custom Data, such as the discount code, discount amount and coupon name. Instead of adding 1000 coupon prizes to your prize table – that would be crazy! – you can add a single coupon prize and upload a CSV with its variations. Here’s how to do it:

1. Add Custom Data columns that you will be providing variations for. For the coupons scenario that would be for example couponcode, coupondiscount, couponname.
2. Create a CSV file where the columns can be any combination of the Custom Data columns and it must include those exact column names in the first line.
3. Then enable Use prize variations for the prize you wish to add variations to
4. Click Upload CSVand then Select and upload CSV

And that’s it! Now whenever someone wins that prize, it will be spent from the list you have provided, and its data will be shown once you export the Draw results.

If you reupload a CSV to a prize’s variations, it will overwrite the existing list of unspent variations.

Tip: if you wish to have different groups of probability for those prizes, simply create a prize for each probability group, and separately upload CSV files for each groups variations.

Add Loss Cases

This feature is optional.

When a participant loses, either because of bad luck or because all prizes have been given out, you are able to show that participant information or content related to the loss. In some cases for example you can allow them to try again (a Try again button). This is already available without the use of the Loss Cases feature.

However, since you can add Custom Data to prizes, Loss Cases allow you to setup Custom Data to also provide relevant information related to the loss. For example, where you would use an text Custom Data with an image URL for a prize, you could also add an image for when the user loses.

Furthermore, you can have multiple loss cases. This can be useful for example to create unlimited consolation rewards, such as small discounts that are available to everyone for the duration of the Draw.

Tip: if you wish to have a limited number of consolation prizes, then you should not use Loss Cases. Instead use a Stepped draw where the last actual prize is a consolation.

Limit Wins. Limit Participations.

This feature is optional.

You can Limit the amount of prizes a user can win in total in the Draw. This is a common setting to make sure that prizes are distributed through different users.

You can Limit the amount of times a user can participate in total in the Draw. This is a common setting so that users only have 1 or perhaps a few shots at winning, before being blocked from participating more.

You can Limit the daily participation for users in the Draw. With this setting you can specify how many times a user can attempt to win, per day, before blocking them.

If you limit the amount of prizes won or participations per user, then you will be able to define in the Editor what to happen when each of those limits are reached.

Available Prizes Action

This feature is optional and is disabled by default.

The Available prizes action will enable a new action that you can use to check if the draw still has available prizes to be given out.

To use this feature, first enable it on the Draw settings. Then go to the editor, where you have enabled this Draw – in the Add-ons, and you will have a new Action available to use: “Check Prizes Available”.

We recommend using this feature on page load so that you can present different scenarios for when there are prizes available and for when there is no prizes available.

Important: If this feature is enabled, it is very important to know that all your customers will have access to know if the draw still have prizes available – so if it is important to keep that information private do not use this feature.

Tip: In cases where you want to present a “no more prizes available” message to avoid users participating, it can be very useful to use this feature. 

Identify Participants With Custom ID

By default, the system will use an internal visitor id, which is kept in a Cookie, to track a users participation and prizes won. However, if Cookies are not allowed or the user simply tries on another device, then they are in fact a new unknown visitor who can try again.

This is where Custom Identification comes in. You can bind the user participation to an ID that better identifies that user, such as their email or a customer card number.

If you set this option to Yes, then you will be able to define the input for it in the Editor.

If you set this option to No:

• the system will use the internal visitor ID
• the limitation of participations and/or prizes per users becomes only based on that visitor’s internal ID on that browser

Important: if you add a contact creation form only after the Draw takes place, such as only for winners to fill in, that Draw will not be bound to that email for the purpose of limit of participations and/or prizes per user.

Add Extra Entry Data

This feature is optional.

In cases where you want to send more information when adding an entry to a draw you can you use this feature. By enabling this feature, you are presented with a table which lets you define what are the extra data fields that you want to send when a user participates in the draw.

When adding the Draw Action from your draw, you will then have access to also send the extra data you defined in this setting.

The extra entry data will then be available when you export the draw results.

Tip: It can be very useful to define extra entry data. You can, for example, add your participants contact information so that when you export the draw results you can contact the customers which won prizes.

Define One Or More Periods

This feature is optional.

If you choose not to use this feature, then content that runs this Draw will be automatically active and giving out prizes the moment it goes live.

You can however decide to define one or more periods. If you do, then any participations outside of the Draw periods will result in a loss.

To add and configure a period:

1. Select Yes from the Dropdown to enable periods
2. Select the timezone in which you will be defining the periods
3. Click Add a period
4. Configure from when to when should the period take place
5. Click the Edit icon in the Select which prizes are available during this period column to select all or some of the prizes you have defined
6. Click the Edit icon in the Select which loss cases are available during this period column to select all or some of the loss cases you have defined
7. Optionally decide to limit the amount of participations and/or wins in total for all participants as well as per participant, during this period
8. Optionally enable a latest date for giving out the prizes for this period. This will increase the probability for the available prizes the closer the date is.

Require Codes For Participation

This feature is optional.

If you enable this feature, you can provide codes which participants will be required to use to participate in the draw.

Here’s how you can set it up:

1. Select Yes from the feature dropdown to enable it
2. Create a CSV file with the following columns in the first line
   code – a unique code (e.g. JU5T4COD3)
   maxWinsPerUser – times a user can win with this code (e.g. 1)
   maxTriesPerUser – times a user can try to win with this code (e.g. 1)
   maxWinsInTotal – times this code can be used for winning a prize (e.g. 1)
   maxTriesInTotal – times this code can be used for trying to win a prize (e.g. 1)
3. Fill in the values per line of code. Note that a value not set means unlimited
4. Save as a CSV and upload it

Once enabled, this feature will be present in the Editor, in the Draw action, so that you can pass the code value from a field the user fills in.

Editor Setup And Running The Draw

After your Draw is configured and saved, you can now use it on any project.

1. Go to edit your project
2. In the Editor, navigate to the trigger where you want the Draw action to be run.
3. Click Add action set
4. Click Add action
5. Search for the draw to find its Draw action and select it
6. If you have configured the Draw to use a Custom Id, you can now link an input field to the Draw as participant id. For example, an input field that requests the user’s email.
7. If you have configured the Draw to require Codes for participation, you can now link a code field to the Draw. For example, an input field that requests the user to type in the code.
8. Then you can use the available triggers to setup what should happen in the different scenarios:
   • won – if the user won a prize
   • lost – if the user participated successfully but did not win a prize
   • cannot participate anymore – the user reached a limit of participations
   • cannot win anymore – if the user reached a limit of won prizes

Finally, you can make use of the Custom Data you have configured as it will be already available in the Editor. For example if you have setup an ImageUrl Custom Data prize column, you can now link any image to that Data so that when a user wins a prize, it will be that prize’s image that is shown.