How to Do a Back to School Giveaway to Boost Traffic & Sales

Running a giveaway is one of the fastest ways I’ve seen a small business get attention, especially during the back to school rush.

Over the years, I’ve helped launch everything from school supply raffles to gift card giveaways for local shops and online stores. And every time, the same pattern shows up: the right prize + the right entry method = more traffic, more leads, and more sales.

If you’ve never run a giveaway before, don’t worry. I’ll walk you through everything step by step. You’ll learn how to plan your back to school giveaway, promote it across the right channels, and make sure it actually brings in results.

You don’t need to hire a developer or use expensive tools. Just a good idea, a simple setup, and a few smart choices along the way.

TL;DR: A successful back to school giveaway needs 3 things: the right prize, a clear goal, and smart entry methods. Use a giveaway plugin like RafflePress to set it up quickly on WordPress, then promote it through your website, email list, and social media. Track the results to see what works, and what to tweak next time.

Quick Steps to Run a Back to School Giveaway:

Step	What to Do
1	Pick a prize that appeals to students or parents
2	Set goals like sales, signups, or traffic
3	Choose entry methods that match your goals
4	Create a giveaway page using RafflePress or SeedProd
5	Promote your giveaway via email, social media, and popups
6	Announce the winner and measure your results

Let’s get started.

What Is a Back to School Giveaway?

A back to school giveaway is a limited-time promotion where businesses offer free school-related products or services to attract new customers, grow their email list, or increase brand visibility during the back to school season.

Also, a school supply giveaway is an excellent way to reach a broader audience. New shoppers may discover your brand through the giveaway promotion, ultimately becoming regular customers.

So how do you run a back to school giveaway from start to finish? The best approach is to start with a robust giveaway plan.

How Do You Plan a Back to School Giveaway?

Careful planning is essential for a successful giveaway. This involves selecting the right prize, setting clear rules, and developing a robust promotional strategy to reach your target audience.

Let’s look at each part of the planning process to ensure you’re on the right track.

Pick the Right Prize

What’s a giveaway without a prize? The right prize can attract the right audience and generate enough excitement to potentially go viral.

Make your giveaway prize relevant and enticing to your ideal audience. Consider free school supplies that are essential to starting the new school year, such as:

• Free haircuts
• Back to school backpack
• School bookbag giveaway
• Free food
• Fun activities
• Gift cards
• High school stress ball
• Budget lunch bags

You can even offer to donate to a local nonprofit or food truck for kids experiencing homelessness or who are on a low income. Gestures like this are a great way to give back to your local community while growing your business.

Set Clear Giveaway Goals

Once you know what prize to offer, consider what you hope to achieve with your back to school giveaway. Setting clear and measurable goals is critical to determine your giveaway’s success and guide your strategies and tactics.

Before launching your giveaway, outline what you want to achieve. Your objectives could be increasing brand visibility, boosting sales, growing your email list, or improving customer engagement.

Make your goals specific and measurable. If your goal is to increase sales, specify a target percentage or dollar amount. If you want to grow your email list, set a specific number of new subscribers you wish to acquire.

Here are some back to school giveaway ideas to help you out.

This brings us to choosing the right entry methods for your giveaway, which we’ll explain next.

Choose Entry Methods That Match Your Goals

Your giveaway entry methods are the tasks users should complete for the chance to win your grand prize. These entry methods should align with your giveaway goals. However, each goal may require a different strategy.

Let’s look at a few examples.

• To boost sales, think of ways to convert participants into customers. For instance, you might offer a back to school supply discount to those who didn’t win.

• If growing your email list is your goal, ask participants to sign up for your newsletter to enter the giveaway.

• To boost website traffic, consider methods to draw people to your site, like sharing your back 2 school giveaway on social media or partnering with influencers.

• If you want more social media followers, you can ask participants to follow your social media profiles.

• To collect user-generated content, ask users to submit an image of their back to school bash or first-day-of-school snaps.

Write Simple, Legal Giveaway Rules

Transparency is key in any giveaway, so setting clear rules is essential for managing expectations and keeping your giveaway fair. Clearly state the start and end dates for your back to school giveaway, how to enter, eligibility criteria, and how you’ll select and notify the winners.

You should also ensure your giveaway complies with all local laws and social media platform rules to avoid any legal ramifications.

Pro tip: later in this guide, we’ll share a super easy way to generate giveaway rules automatically. For more information, see our guide on how to write giveaway rules like a pro.

With your giveaway plan in place, it’s showtime. Now you can start building your giveaway to promote to your target audience.

Build and Launch Your Giveaway

The easiest way to run a giveaway is using a giveaway tool designed specifically for that job. They make setting up and running your giveaway promotion a breeze and include essential actions to help meet your giveaway goals.

RafflePress, for example, is the best giveaway plugin for WordPress website owners. It lets you set up, run, and manage any giveaway campaign on your WordPress website without code.

Everything is handled inside your WordPress dashboard. You can get started quickly with a goal-based giveaway template, then customize your giveaway widget using the drag-and-drop builder.

That includes adding your prize details, images, giveaway duration, description, and more.

RafflePress also has countless 1-click entry actions to meet your campaign’s goals, including:

• Social media following
• Social sharing
• Automatic entry
• Newsletter subscription
• Image submission
• Podcast subscription
• Page visiting
• Invent your own

The most effective is the Refer-a-Friend action – a viral loop incentivizing users to refer others to your giveaway for more chances to win. It works by encouraging real people to share your giveaway with friends.

But that’s not all. RafflePress also lets you generate giveaway rules automatically. Simply answer a few questions, and it’ll create rules for you and display them on your giveaway widget.

To help you get started, follow this guide on creating a giveaway in WordPress using RafflePress.

Publish Your Giveaway Page

After setting up your giveaway widget, you’ll need somewhere to display it so users can enter. With RafflePress, you can publish your back to school giveaway in any blog post, page, or widget-ready area with the RafflePress WordPress block or shortcode.

Alternatively, you can use the built-in giveaway landing page feature. Simply give your page a slug in the settings panel, and the plugin will create an instant distraction-free landing page on your WordPress site – no code required!

Another way to create a giveaway page is by using a drag-and-drop page builder. That way, you can add more customizations to your page, such as testimonials, videos, slideshows, and more, to boost entries.

SeedProd is our top choice for this. It’s the best WordPress website and page builder, with over 1 million users.

This user-friendly plugin has a dedicated RafflePress block, allowing you to add your giveaway to a custom page with a few clicks.

Promote Your Back to School Giveaway

Once your giveaway is live, it’s time to get the word out. Use every available channel to drive traffic and attract entries.

Here are some popular giveaway promotion methods you can use:

• Add popups and banners to your website linking to your giveaway page.
• Send email newsletters announcing the giveaway launch.
• Broadcast your free back to school giveaway on social media.
• Partner with influencers and other businesses to increase your giveaway’s reach.
• Send push notifications to remind your subscribers to enter.
• Write a blog post or guest post on other influential websites.

You could even pin up a flyer in your local community center. The goal is to attract as many high-quality leads as possible.

Announce and Contact the Winner

Let’s not forget the moment everyone waits for – the winner announcement.

When your back to school giveaway ends, you’ll need to select and announce the winner to your audience. For this, ensuring the selection process is fair, transparent, and follows any legal requirements is crucial.

Ideally, you should have defined the selection process before launching. However, here are some popular ways to draw a giveaway winner.

If your giveaway involves a random draw, you can use RafflePress’s random winner picker to ensure a fair selection process. Simply enter your criteria, and it’ll randomly select a winner from the list of entrants.

Alternatively, you can judge the winner yourself for creative giveaways like video or photo contests. Again, communicate the criteria clearly to build trust and keep participants engaged.

After choosing the winner, plan a creative and engaging winner announcement to maintain excitement even after the giveaway ends. Be prompt and enthusiastic in your announcement, and congratulate the winner publicly.

Once you’ve announced the winner, follow up to arrange prize delivery. This is also an excellent opportunity to ask for feedback about your giveaway.

Measure Your Results and Learn What Worked

It’s tempting to stop here. However, one more task needs your attention – the results.

Monitor your giveaway metrics to measure its success.

One of the easiest ways to track your results is with MonsterInsights. It’s a WordPress plugin that shows your Google Analytics data right inside your dashboard. You’ll be able to see traffic, conversions, and engagement in just a few clicks.

Look at engagement levels. Are more people visiting your site? Are they interacting with your brand more on social media? Are these increased interactions leading to more sales?

Compare your metrics to the goals you initially set for your giveaway to see if your campaign succeeded. If it didn’t go as planned, you can use this information to improve your next giveaway campaign.

Next Steps

Back to school giveaways can be a goldmine for boosting your brand’s visibility, traffic, and sales. With careful planning, execution, and analysis, your giveaway can easily take your business growth to the next level.

Ready to run a back to school giveaway of your own?

Get started with RafflePress today!

Note: RafflePress is made for WordPress websites and doesn’t work with other website platforms.

Back to School Giveaway FAQs

There you have it!

We hope this guide has helped you learn how to run a back to school giveaway in WordPress.

You might also like the following helpful guides for further reading:

• How to do a giveaway on Etsy
• How to drive traffic to your Shopify store
• How to setup a thank you page in WordPress

If you liked this article, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for RafflePress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.