What to ask entrants, and what to skip
Every field on an entry form costs you entries. Not many, individually. But the effect compounds, and a form asking eleven questions will collect a fraction of what a form asking two does.
The temptation runs the other way. The form is right there, people are motivated, and it feels like free data. Then the campaign ends and you have four thousand records with a job title field nobody will ever query.
Don’t ask what you could collect. Ask what you’d actually do with it.
On this page: the test · what you actually need · fields that earn their place · fields to skip · consent · what to do after · FAQ
How do you decide whether a field belongs?
Ask what you would do differently based on the answer. If you can’t name a specific action, the field is costing you entries for nothing.
Run it honestly on each field:
- Email address. You’ll contact winners. Keep it.
- Country. Your prize can’t ship everywhere, so it changes eligibility. Keep it.
- Company size. Segment which list, for which campaign? Cut it.
Most forms fail this test in the same place: fields added because someone in marketing might want them later. Later rarely arrives, and the data is stale when it does.
What do you actually need to run a contest?
Two things: a way to contact the winner, and a way to tell one entrant from another.
That’s genuinely it for a simple giveaway. An email address usually does both jobs at once.
Everything beyond that pair is serving a second purpose, which is fine as long as you know which purpose and can name it:
| Field | Keep it when | Skip it when |
|---|---|---|
| Almost always. It’s contact and identity in one | You’re collecting a phone number instead and don’t need email | |
| Name | You’ll announce winners publicly, or ship a physical prize | The prize is digital and you announce by initials |
| Country | Eligibility or shipping varies | You ship everywhere and there are no regional rules |
| Phone | It’s your main channel, or the prize needs delivery coordination | You already have email and no reason to call |
| Postal address | You are shipping a physical prize | Collect it from the winner after the draw, not from everyone up front |
| Date of birth | There’s a genuine age restriction | You could ask “are you 18 or over” instead |
The postal address row is the one people get wrong most often. Asking four thousand people for a delivery address to send one parcel is a poor trade: it depresses entries, and it leaves you holding four thousand home addresses you have no use for. Collect it from the winner.
Which fields earn their place?
A single identifier you can rely on. Whatever you pick, use it consistently. If you run more than one draw and want to exclude previous winners, the identifier is what makes that possible. Mix email in one stage and a social handle in another, and the two lists will never line up.
Eligibility fields, when eligibility is real. Age and location change who can win, and finding out afterward that your winner is ineligible is a real problem. Ask when it matters, and ask the narrowest version: “are you 18 or over” tells you what you need without a full date of birth.
One optional question you’ll actually read. A single open field, clearly marked optional, often produces genuinely useful material: why they want the prize, which product they use. Keep it optional and keep it to one.
Which fields cost more than they return?
Anything you’d call nice to have. That phrase is the tell. Nice to have means no defined use.
Marketing consent bundled into entry. Making a newsletter signup a condition of entering is prohibited in some places and resented nearly everywhere. Separate it and make it optional. More people tick it that way.
Demographics with no plan attached. Age brackets, gender, income. If you have a specific analysis in mind, ask. If it’s for a report nobody has commissioned, don’t.
Anything you’d rather not have in a breach. This is a good filter regardless of jurisdiction: for each field, imagine explaining to an entrant that this specific piece of information about them has leaked. Some fields are obviously fine. Others suddenly look like a bad trade for a giveaway.
A worked example: the same contest, two forms
One prize, a coffee machine, shipped to one winner. Here are two ways to collect entries.
The nine-field form asks for first name, last name, email, phone, postal address, date of birth, country, company, and how the person heard about you. Newsletter signup is required to enter.
The two-field form asks for an email address and a country, with an optional unticked box for product news.
Both find you a winner. The difference is what you’re holding afterward.
The first leaves you with several thousand postal addresses for a parcel you’ll send once, several thousand dates of birth you needed as a yes-or-no age check, a phone number you’ll never dial, and a mailing list where nobody chose to be. Every one of those is a field somebody hesitated over on the way in, and a field you have to account for if anything ever leaks.
The second leaves you with an email address, an eligibility check, and a smaller list of people who actively opted in. You ask the winner for their address after the draw, once, when they’re delighted to give it.
How should consent work?
Keep entering and marketing separate, and make the second one optional.
Someone filling in your form is agreeing to enter a contest. That’s the deal in front of them. If you also want to email them about products later, that’s a different purpose and it needs its own clear opt-in, unticked, in plain words.
Two practical points:
Say what happens to the data. A line near the form saying who you are, what you’ll use the address for, and linking your privacy policy costs you nothing and answers the question people actually have.
Don’t pre-tick anything. Pre-ticked consent boxes have been ruled invalid in the EU and read as sneaky everywhere else.
Rules vary meaningfully by country, and this guide isn’t legal advice. If you’re running across borders or collecting anything sensitive, have someone qualified look at your form.
What should you do after the campaign?
Delete what you don’t need, and know what you kept.
Contest data has a natural end. Once winners are confirmed and prizes are sent, most of what you collected has no further purpose. Keeping it indefinitely creates an obligation without a benefit.
A workable default: keep the winner records you need for your own accounting, keep anyone who explicitly opted into marketing, and delete the rest on a schedule you decide before the campaign starts. If you don’t set that schedule now, you won’t set one later.
Publishing is separate from collecting. However much you collect, decide separately how much appears on a public winners list. How to prove your giveaway was fair covers how to pitch that.
What goes wrong most often?
Fields added at the last minute. Someone asks for one more question the day before launch, and nobody recalculates what it costs.
A required field that shouldn’t be. Optional questions marked required is the most common form bug, and every one of them turns a hesitant entrant into no entrant.
Collecting an address you won’t use for months. Physical prize campaigns often gather delivery details from everyone at entry. Collect from the winner instead.
No identifier consistency across stages. Covered above, and it only surfaces when you try to exclude previous winners and can’t.
Asking for data the platform already has. If entries arrive through an account or a connected service, re-asking for the same details wastes goodwill.
Frequently asked questions
How many fields is too many? There’s no fixed number, but every field past the third has to justify itself, and most can’t. Simple giveaways commonly run on one or two.
Should I ask for a phone number? Only if it’s how you’ll actually contact them, or the prize needs coordination to deliver. Otherwise it’s a field people hesitate over for no return.
Can I require a newsletter signup to enter? It’s restricted in some jurisdictions and unpopular in all of them. A separate optional checkbox performs well and avoids the question entirely.
What if I need an address for shipping? Ask the winner after the draw. You need one address, not four thousand.
Should the form ask people to confirm they’ve read the rules? A single checkbox linking the rules is reasonable and useful if a dispute ever arises. One checkbox, not three.
Can I use contest entries to build a sales list? Only with separate, explicit consent for that purpose. Entering a contest is not agreement to be sold to, and treating it as such is the fastest way to make a successful campaign into a complaint.
Raflia collects entries through custom forms, works with email, phone or other identifiers, and lets you choose how much of each entrant appears publicly. Join the waitlist and we’ll email you when Raflia opens.
Running the draw itself? How to prove your giveaway was fair covers what to publish so the result holds up.