Creating an engaging poll contest / competition is a great way to boost your brand’s visibility, encourage interaction, get leads, and gather valuable insights.
Follow these tips to make your polls stand out and deliver results.
1. Engagement Through Visuals
Enhance your polls with eye-catching visuals to draw users in. Including images, videos, or GIFs can make your poll feel dynamic and inviting.
Why it Works: Visuals break up text, capture attention, and make your poll more memorable.
Tips:
Use high-quality, relevant images.
Match visuals to the answers.
Use your own image or use one of our built-in image libraries (Unsplash, Shutterstock, iStock)
Example: To engage participants, add images instead of just having text answers.
2. Add a Lead Form
Polls are not just engagement tools; they can also serve as an effective lead-generation channel. Capture interest when participants are most engaged and eager to see the result. Note that you can optionally configure the lead form so that users can't see the result without entering their contact information.
Why it Works: Integrating a form inside an engaging experience like a poll can generate up to 5X more leads.
Tips:
The lead form should have only the needed fields - try to keep it short. For example, ask for user's email and first name, and avoid requesting last name and phone number if you don't need it:
3. Preventing Repeat Voting for Accurate Results
To keep the poll fair, you can limit each user to one vote or one vote per period (for example, allowing to vote once a day).
Why It’s Important:
Ensures fairness and credibility in results.
Prevents individuals from unfairly influencing the poll outcome.
How to Implement:
Use restrictions to limit votes per browser or IP address.
Require account logins for participation. If embedding the poll on a website, place it in a section that requires user authentication. This ensures one vote per registered user.
4. Brand Your Poll for Maximum Impact
Your poll is an extension of your brand. Incorporating consistent branding strengthens recognition and trust.
Best Practices:
Use your brand colors, fonts, and logo (you can also use CSS Override if you need detailed branding).
Align the tone of your poll with your brand’s voice.
Choose questions that resonate with your brand’s values or target audience.
5. Sharing Poll Results: When to share?
Deciding whether to share results while the vote is ongoing depends on your goals and audience preferences.
Reasons to share the results while the Poll is still ongoing:
Creates a Sense of Urgency: Participants may feel motivated to influence the outcome to support their preferred choice.
Encourages Social Sharing: Visible results can motivate participants to share the poll and rally friends, especially if their choice seems to be falling behind.
Builds Excitement: Real-time updates can make the poll feel like an unfolding event, keeping users engaged.
Reasons not to share the results while the Poll is still ongoing:
Increased Risk of Manipulation: Keeping results private helps avoid influencing participants and ensures unbiased responses. Consider sharing partial results (e.g., percentages without number of votes).
Focus on Final Outcome: Builds anticipation for the final outcome, encouraging participants to return and check the results later.
If you're worried about manipulation, keep poll results private to ensure unbiased responses. However, showing results can boost participation, as users may gather support for their choice and share the poll more widely.
6. Making the Most of Poll Results
Polls offer valuable insights, but their true value comes from using the data to take meaningful actions.
Next Steps:
Share actionable insights in newsletters, blogs, or reports.
Engage participants further by following up with related content or another poll. Because you’ve collected participant data such as emails, you can easily send follow-ups, exclusive content, or even tailored offers to maintain engagement.