The new Simple Giveaways update 2.27.0 has a lot to offer. It makes both free and premium much better. You can now create polls/survey with the question action, define multiple prizes to display and if you use BuddyPress, people will see the sign ups in the activity feed thus provide much more engagement from your community.
Here is the full changelog:
- New: Evergreen Giveaway Type – every subscriber can win if he/she gets to the defined entries.
- New: Multiple Prizes option.
- New: Sharing Links in Shortcode (from 2.26.3).
- New: User Activation – if a subscriber was already subscribed to a different giveaway, he/she does not need to activate again.
- New: Report Options – you can now hide the report options to have a bigger view on the report data.
- New: (Premium) BuddyPress Integration – feed activity stream when someone subscribes. Add Giveaways tab under Profile.
- New: (Premium) Question Extra Action – action for people to gain entries when answering questions. Perfect for running polls for your business.
- New: (Premium) Edit Subscriber’s Email.
- Fix: Show Content Button threshold – Content button will show only if there is enough content about the Giveaway
- Fix: CSS for entries on sharing method.
- Fix: Powered-by button opens in new window/tab.
- Fix: (Premium) MailChimp – Group/Tags selection shows on change through AJAX. No need to reload the page to see data.
- Update: Free and Premium slowly are separated so people can use both version activated.
Let’s now go over several new features.
Evergreen Giveaway Type
There is a new giveaway type that allows every subscriber to become a winner. They will become winners only once they get enough entries. That is, once they get the exact (or more) entries as we define in the Winner Threshold option.
This option can be found under the Prize Info.
Once they get to that threshold, they will immediately get the email about winning the prize(s).
Multiple Prizes option
Multiple prizes can now be define as well under the Prize Info tab. For each prize you can define the title, description, value and image. Once entered, a slider will appear under the giveaway content with the prizes info.
For now, this option is only for showing the prizes. In 2.28.0, the premium version will give more features so you can define how a prize can be won (be the 1st, 2nd or something else). Each prize will also have separate instructions so the winner of that prize (or multiple prizes) will get all those instructions in the winner email. So stay tuned for 2.28.0 as well 🙂
User Activation
With all previous version, every new giveaway sign up required an activation confirmation (if such option is active). That could be somehow cumbersome if a user was already subscribed to a previous subscription and activated.
In 2.27.0 we check for each email if there is already a user subscribed and activated. If so, they will become active for the new giveaway as well without needing to confirm the activation from their email.
BuddyPress Integration
This premium integration will enable your users to see when someone subscribes to a giveaway in their activity feed. All users will also get a tab under the profile where they can see all the giveaways where they have subscribed to.
When a logged-in user subscribes to a giveaway, their action will also feed the activity so all others in your community will get notified on that.
Another BuddyPress feature is the “Giveaways” tab where you can see all the giveaway you have subscribed to.
Question Extra Action
Another premium feature is the question action where you can add the question and possible answers. Then, people can choose an answer to get the entry. This action is a useful one for running polls or survey so you can check what your audience is thinking and help you grow your business.
Conclusion
More and more features are coming into this plugin so I hope everyone can grow their business with giveaways!
With the evergreen giveaway type, you can run an all-year giveaway and have people try to win a prize. For them to win it, they’ll have to bring more people by sharing so that means you could get more traffic all year long.
If you have any feature request you can contact me directly or submit your idea.
