We’ve recently updated TextMe to allow our customers to manually select or deselect winners for a sweepstakes campaign.  This was an often requested feature, and comes in handy in a few different scenarios.

Select alternate winners

The first scenario is the ability to select an alternate sweepstakes winner, in the case that the original sweepstakes winner is determined to be ineligible.  At the end of your sweepstakes campaign, you are presented with a list of winners.

You will now see an “X” next to each of the sweepstakes winners.  Clicking this “X” will remove them from the list of winners.  TextMe will keep track of previous winners in a new “Previous winners” section on the campaign details page.

To select a new winner, choose “Manually select winners” from the list of actions on the side.

Simply enter the number of new winners you would like to select, provide an optional message to send to the new winners, and click Submit.  The new winners will be randomly selected from the list of participants who are not previous winners, and will be displayed on the campaign details page.

New “Manual” sweepstakes type

The second scenario is the ability to select random winners throughout the course of the campaign.  To satisfy this scenario, we’ve introduced a new “manual” sweepstakes type.

With this new campaign type, no winners are automatically selected when the campaign is in progress, or when it ends.  Instead, the user can manually select winners from the pool of participants, using the process described above, when the campaign is in progress or after it has ended.  This gives you a ton a flexibility, letting you pick the number of winners you want, when you want.

Questions, comments, suggestions?  Please, let us know what you think!