I Just Started A Hatchwise Contest. What Do I Do Now?

You just hit the “Launch Contest” button and your new Hatchwise contest is active! Now, the question is, what happens now? 

The first thing that we recommend is logging into your Hatchwise account and reviewing the contest to make sure that everything is correct. At this time you may be prompted to complete filling in your personal information (if you did not do so at the time of activating your contest). 

If you see any changes that need to be made we recommend making those edits before you start to see the entries come in (you can edit your contest brief at any time while your contest is active). 

Within a few hours, you will be notified (via email) once you have some new submissions come in. We recommend logging into your account right away to review the entries and leave some feedback for the creatives. 

As your contest progresses you will continue to see more and more entries submitted. We recommend continuing to leave feedback, and ask for revisions of entries that lean toward the direction of what you are looking for. 

While it can be tempting to activate your contest and then not bother to log into your account until after the contest submission period is over, we don’t recommend that (although that is an option that is entirely open to you). Waiting to log in until after the contest submission period has ended can greatly affect the success of your contest. 

Reasons to not wait to log in and review your contest and the entries

1. There may be an error in the Design Brief that will give the creatives the wrong idea of what you are looking for. 
2. You will not be leaving any feedback fro the creatives, which will not only affect the number of total entries you receive, but gives them no feedback of your thoughts on the submissions. 
3. Once the contest submission period has ended you are no longer able to ask the creatives to upload revised entries to the contest without extending the contest. 
4. You’ll be missing out on seeing the entries as they come in, which means that you may be left feeling overwhelmed when you see the total number (especially if there are quite a lot of them) and it may be hard to weed through them to find the ones that you like best. 

The best way to ensure that your contest is successful is to monitor it, review the contest brief, and continue to view and leave feedback on the contest entries as they come in, ultimately getting the best results and finding a winning submission that you love!