Best Raffle Winner Announcement Templates & Tips
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Raffles are a great way to boost brand visibility and engagement across your audience.
Usually, they start via social media or a landing page, but the much-anticipated raffle winner announcement comes as an email.
In this guide, we explore the best ways to announce raffle contest winners (and non-winners!), with effective examples and templates to help you start the process quickly and stress-free.
Announcing your raffle contest winner is the exciting part. Here are some possible routes you could take.
Before making any public announcements, share the good news with your raffle winner.
You can use this email to make sure the person is eligible, i.e. do they meet all entry requirements laid out when you first promoted the raffle?
This email also serves to make sure the winner is responsive and open to claiming their prize. As a general guide, give them a 7-day window to respond to the email. If you hear nothing, you can offer the prize to a runner-up.
Go for fun, upbeat language to build excitement. Use the space to ask for the best address to send the prize to (or confirm their preferred email address if it’s a digital prize). You could even ask them to send a celebratory photo, which you can use as user-generated content to keep the buzz going across social media.
As far as design goes, be sure to follow all best practices to maximize engagement.
Here’s a winner announcement email template to get you started.
Subject line: You Won the [Brand] Raffle!
Hi [Name]
Congratulations, you’ve won [prize] in our raffle!
We hope you’re as excited as we are!
Please follow these steps to claim your prize:
- Confirm that you meet all our entry requirements
- Let us know which address we should send your prize to
- Let us know if you’re happy for us to share your name on our social channels. (Even better, send us a photo of you celebrating and we’ll share that!)
Please reply to this email within 7 days with your answers and your prize will be in the post!
Thanks,
[Company Name]
Think about which social media channels you advertised the raffle on and make a raffle winner announcement there.
Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, X or TikTok, entrants will be keeping a close eye on your pages.
Thank all entrants for joining in, share a description of the prize, and tag the winner and share their photo if they’ve given permission.
Example of a contest winner announcement on Facebook:
Join us in wishing a huge congratulations to [Name], the winner of our latest raffle!
[Name], your number was picked at random from over 1000 entries and your prize is already on its way to you. Judging by the photo our winner sent, they’re super happy!
Thanks to everyone who entered and stay tuned for our next big giveaway!
Example of a contest winner announcement on X (previously Twitter):
🎉 Huge congrats to [Name], our latest raffle winner! 🎉 Your number was picked from 1,000+ entries and the prize is on its way! 📦
Thanks to everyone who entered—stay tuned for our next big giveaway! 👀 #Giveaway #Congrats #Winner
If you want a little more space to tell the story or background of your giveaway, a blog is the way to go. For example, you might have launched a raffle to highlight a new product, and the winner gets that product for free.
You can use the blog post to announce the winner and even link to the product to try and drive more sales.
An added benefit of writing a blog post announcement is that you can link to the blog from your social media platforms and/or your email newsletter.
It’s best to use an email builder to design winner announcement emails. This is a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor containing hundreds of beautiful, highly engaging, fully customizable templates.
If you do choose to link to a blog post from your email newsletter, an email builder could save you lots of time and effort. These tools come with a dynamic web scraping feature. Just copy and paste the blog’s URL and the tool will populate all the necessary information (including title, image, description and link) directly into your newsletter. So, you won’t have to re-type sections or summarize the blog manually.
Don’t forget to break the bad news to non-winners.
Remember these recipients will likely be disappointed that they didn’t win. Be empathetic, let them know there will be other raffles in the future, and offer a consolation prize, such as a discount.
We think this email template would be perfect.
Subject line: [Brand] Raffle: Everyone’s a Winner!
There’s something exciting about announcing a raffle to your audience. It’s a great way to boost visibility, and the best contests could even go viral.
But don’t let standards slip once it’s time to announce the winner. Here are the best practices that your winner - and non-winners - will appreciate.
First thing first: Get in touch with the winner to let them know they’ve won.
The best way to do this is with a raffle winner announcement email. Use an email builder to create a professional email easily, without hiring coders or designers.
Don’t publicize the results until you get a response from the winner. If you can’t reach them, they’re not eligible or they simply no longer want the prize, you can offer it to another person.
End the contest at the day and time you said when you first advertised it.
Once the deadline rolls around, notify the winner and announce the result to everyone else quickly. Those who entered could be waiting anxiously, so don’t keep them in the dark!
An ideal timeframe to announce the winner to the public is within a week or two of the raffle closing date. Waiting any longer could give your brand a negative impression and cause contestants to lose interest.
If you created a landing page or separate page on your website to announce the raffle, it’s time to update it. You want to make sure no one stumbles across the page after the closing date and tries to enter the competition.
Many giveaways nowadays run solely on social media. Often, the social media version of a “raffle” asks contestants to like, comment and share a particular post. Each share or comment acts as a “ticket” to the raffle.
Be sure to update the post to let your audience know the competition has closed, such as in this example by Breville.
Aim to send the prize within 24 hours of notifying the winner and receiving their address. If your prizes are digital (such as a gift card or eBook), send them as soon as possible.
Postal prizes should be sent using priority/express mail so it arrives quickly and in pristine condition, and so you can track the product’s journey.
Crafting a great raffle winner announcement email doesn’t have to be hard. Consider the following points to nail the process for this, and any future raffles:
The best subject lines for raffle winner announcements choose clarity over cleverness. Be transparent about what the email is about and get specific if possible, such as by including the recipient’s name, your brand’s name, or the prize. That’s because a generic “You’re the Winner” line could seem like spam.
Here are some examples of simple and creative subject lines you can try:
Let’s break down the raffle winner announcement email into sections, to guide you through the entire copywriting aspect.
Throughout the email, use positive, celebratory language to create an upbeat tone. Keep the email relatively short, sticking to need-to-have content, to hold your reader’s attention from start to finish.
We’ve listed some sample phrases to help you build your email copy.
Some sample phrases you could use for the winner's email include:
Some sample phrases you could use for non-winner emails include:
Some sample phrases you could use for the winner's email include:
Some sample phrases you could use for non-winner emails include:
Some sample phrases you could use for the winner's email include:
Some sample phrases you could use for non-winner emails include:
Top tip: Now you have your copy, it’s time to turn it into a beautiful design!
Text-only emails aren’t the most engaging. Use an email builder to design HTML emails that are fun, modern and dynamic. For example, your email can include GIFs, videos and clickable buttons. Simply design the email using the email builder’s drag-and-drop editor and export it to Gmail, Outlook or your favorite USP.
All templates are designed to render perfectly across email clients and devices, so you can be confident the layout and elements will look as they should.
Here are three contest winner announcement examples to suit three different scenarios.
Some contests happen every month, helping to keep brands at the top of their audience’s minds.
This is a good approach if you want to boost word-of-mouth marketing and have more regular content to post on social media.
The most efficient way to make this happen is to use the same template every month, and simply update the copy to suit each winner. Save the template in your email builder library for future use, and it’ll take just minutes to update and be ready to export.
Subject line: [Name], you’re our October winner!
Share the bad news with people who weren’t successful and cheer them up with a consolation prize. This could be a physical gift like a mug or stickers, or an exclusive discount code.
Remind them that it’s the taking part that counts, and thank them for doing so!
Subject line: [Name], we have good news & bad news
The bad news: You didn’t win the raffle.
The good news: You’re still a winner in our eyes!
[gif]
[
Name],
From the bottom of our heart, thanks for entering the raffle to win a [prize].
Unfortunately, you didn’t win this time, but we want to send you something, anyway. Receive a free [Brand] mug with any purchase over the value of $20.
Just go to our website and use the exclusive discount code: XXXX
Keep an eye out for our next raffle!
The [Brand] team
Your raffle announcement email doesn’t have to be complicated.
Keep things fun and simple, like this winner announcement email template.
Subject line: Our raffle winner has been found! Hint: It’s you.
Our raffle winner has been found! Hint: It’s you.
Congratulations to [Name] - you’ve won yourself a [Prize]. Woo!
Reply to this email with your address and we’ll ship it straight to you.
Keep an eye out for our next contest 👀 Maybe you’ll get lucky again!
While promoting raffles can be a lot of fun, many businesses forget about the aftermath.
Your raffle winner announcement should be prompt and well-thought-out, so winners get their prizes and non-winners aren’t left in the dark. Doing this part well can benefit your brand image and make people more open to entering future competitions.
Start with beautifully designed, engaging templates from an email builder. A user-intuitive editor and customizable designs mean businesses can create professional winner announcement emails quickly and easily, without the need to blow their budgets on designers.
