Social media site creators like Mark Zuckerberg want you to believe their networks have everything you need to market your business, including built-in analytics and contest planning capabilities. Yet, any savvy marketer knows that these bare bones tools may be fine for the masses, but there are always more powerful platforms out there — if you’re willing to pay. Wishpond is by far our favorite platform, so we’ll review that and give you a brief rundown of other alternatives to help you orchestrate your next promotion across channels.
Our Pick For Social Media Contest Apps: Wishpond
When it comes down to customer service, cost and features — Wishpond is, by far, our personal favorite. “They have nice landing pages and better quality than other builders I’ve used,” says Mod Girl digital marketing consultant, Natalie Boyd.
The tutorials make the platform beginner-friendly, although the menus are intuitive enough to stumble through on your own as well. “Wishpond is so easy to navigate and everything is so simple to customize and integrate,” Mod Girl Consultant Hannah White explains. “There are so many drag-and-drop templates with different layouts for all of their campaigns, but more advanced designers can edit the CSS or JS of the template that they choose as well. With the more advanced account, you can create A/B split testing for some of the contests.”
Wishpond includes features that other contest landing page builders do not — like pop-ups. “I love their contest feature and the fact that they include the Facebook contest rules and disclaimer they require, which makes compliance easy,” Natalie adds.
“I like the group offers feature for businesses offering smaller services,” says Hannah. “It’s like a different version of a punch card — associated with your Facebook page.” The app integration and ability to request more makes it a very robust tool for marketers with heavy tech investments to run a seamless operation.
“In the past, we’ve had contest participants sending in submissions through private messages, hashtags and page comments on sites like Pinterest and Instagram — so we had to check all over the place to compile entries,” says Natalie. “Wishpond contests allow participants to submit entries right there on your campaign landing page or website.”
The great reviews, email support for free users, and all-in-one features makes Wishpond top of its class, in our humble opinion. You can give it a try for 14 days, free of charge. After that, monthly plans are $45, $78 or $130 — with 35% off for annual plans.
Other Social Media Contest Apps:
Woobox – Woobox offers both paid and free versions. With the free version, you can add custom tabs to your profiles and select random winners for your promos. You’ll be able to track likes and comments and monitor promotion statistics. The paid version lets you post coupons.
On the downside, you’ll need some HTML knowledge to post a fangate page. You’ll also need a premium account to access Woobox sweepstakes, polls, rewards, group deals. the prize claim app, and ad creation. For $30/month, you can run promotions for one social network, but most people will need to scale up to the $100/month plan to manage up to five social networks.
Offerpop – Offerpop is scalable, with pricing based on the size of your fanbases. Advanced social analytics with real-time tracking and integration are where Offerpop shines. You’ll be able to easily build and enrich your promotions over time based on what works. Multi-channel retailers with complex blends of email marketing, social media and ad buying who frequently experiment and run campaigns tend to benefit most from this platform. Some of their clients include Disney, the NBA, Quiznos and Pepsi.
One disadvantage is the lack of call-in customer support. Also, if you have large followings, but don’t plan to run a lot of promos, then this platform could be rather expensive for your enterprise. The Social Agency found the design templates to be slightly limiting and reported that they had to manually enter some of the Instagram entries.
ShortStack – With customers like NBC News, Mrs. Butterworths, NewEgg.com, Black & Decker and Intuit, ShortStack is another contest platform with a robust suite of features. There’s a bit of a learning curve involved, but you’ll find features beyond Wishpond’s offerings here (like running QR code promos or campaigns that show different content to users based on country). And how could you not love a company where the CEO is listed as “Overlord and Pancake Guy”?
On the downside, some of their templates look dated, so you might want to design your own — which means some knowledge of CSS/HTML is helpful. The pricing structure can get a bit confusing with its differences in size and functionality.
Strutta – If you are looking for a small business-oriented platform for businesses with limited resources or first timers, then this is it. Their Contest Builder is about as non-technical as they come. Users can create, manage and track a wide variety of campaigns, including photo and video submission contests. Campaigns are easily integrated with Google Analytics for conversion tracking. A unique offering is the ability to track key influencers. Users include Starbucks, Hilton Hotels, Adidas, Toyota and Red Bull.
On the downside, Strutta doesn’t support adding custom pages to promotion for all plans. Their whitelabel services are only available for Professional plan users at a high premium.
Heyo (Acquired by Votigo) – Heyo contests look beautiful, with an impressive array of templates to choose from. Charbroil, Axe Body Spray and The Economist have all run promos through this platform. Users report excellent email leads, conversions and impressions from their campaigns run through Heyo. The company has improved its interface vastly since its re-brand; like Wishpond, their dashboard and visual editor are both really simple and intuitive — ideal for business owners who want to hit the ground running. All campaigns are mobile-optimized.
Votigo – Votigo is the go-to app for Sharpie, the AARP, Corona and Starwood Hotels. On the plus side, Votigo offers great customer service, flexible customization options and plans as low as $29/month for small businesses (up to 5,000 entries and 25,000 fans). They feature everything from sweepstakes, photo and video contests, and coupons, to social listening, campaign calendars and landing page creation.
On the downside, other apps have more in-depth analytics and less obtrusive branding at the lower price points. Features like social listening or phone support are extra with Votigo, but may be included with competitor packages. Also, CRM integration is only offered at the $500 enterprise level, which is a huge step up from entry-level pricing.
AgoraPulse – There are rave reviews across the board for the print-out reports and top-of-the-line customer service. Users also make mention of the app’s ease of use and the ability to work with many different social managers on one project (without paying to scale up this way). In-depth social monitoring features are also a huge perk.
The downside is that all team members working on campaigns need Facebook accounts, although some may consider the ease of signup a perk. It also lacks functionality for emailing individuals outside of the AgoraPulse network (like company CEOs).
