In this article, we’ll show you how to limit the number of participations in a Qualifio campaign.
In this article
- What do participation limits do?
- Why limit campaign participations?
- Individual participation limits
- Collective participation limits
- How to limit participations in Qualifio
What do participation limits do?
Qualifio participation limits allow you to limit entries in campaigns and control who can participate and how many times your campaign can be taken part in.
Why limit campaign participations?
Limiting or capping campaign participations can be extremely useful. If you’re seeking brand awareness, you may want as many people as possible to enter. But, for example, if you’re running an online sampling campaign, you can limit the number of participations so that only a specific amount of people can register.
While limiting participations is definitely something worth considering, it’s up to you to decide what makes the most sense for your particular campaign. Ultimately, single or multiple participations depend on the objective of the campaign 😉
When it comes to limiting the number of participations, there are a few different options. Here’s a quick overview of what they mean:
Individual participation limits
Individual limits based on IP addresses, email addresses, or phone numbers
Limit participants to a defined number of participations.
- Limit participations by IP address: only one person using an IP address can take part in the campaign. If spouses, roommates or colleagues share the same home/office and internet service, only one of them could be able to participate, while the others might be blocked. However, this is a useful option for limiting participants to your anonymous campaign, which may not have any other identifying information. Note: depending on one’s internet provider or plan, an IP address might remain the same over time or it might change at certain intervals.
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Limit participations by email address: each email address can participate once. This means that if a participant has two email addresses registered, they could enter your campaign twice.
Note that we normalize the email addresses for limitation purposes by lowercasing the email used and avoiding taking in consideration the dots and + (and what comes after) in gmail addresses. Eg: qualifio@gmail.com OR qualifio+test@gmail.com / qualifi.o@gmail.com / qualifio@GMAIL.com / QUALIFIO@gmail.com will be considered identical. - Limit participations by phone number: each phone number can participate once. This means that if a participant has two phone numbers registered, they could enter your campaign twice.
You can avoid users to participate with the same browser when the limit is reached. This will place a (necessary) cookie to avoid this from happening again. The cookie expiration will follow the one set as limitation. E.g. If you set a limit to one participation every 1 hour, and someone enters at 10:08, the cookie set on the browser will last until until 11:09.
If you combine 2 limit types (eg: email & IP), any limit reached will block the participation. Here is a concrete example with a brother and a sister trying to participate to the same campaign, while the setup is to limit participation on email & IP to 1 participation forever:
- Participation 1: john.doe@qualifio.com & IP: 192.0.2.146
- Participation 2: jane.doe@qualifio.com & IP: 192.0.2.146
In this case, Jane will be blocked from participating as the IP limit is reached. The same goes if, later, John tries to participate with the same email but on another IP. This was built this way to avoid abuses in participations.
Individual limits with frequency capping
Limit how often participants can enter your campaign. This type of participation limit means that each user, personally, can only enter once per time period. They can enter multiple times, but they have to wait between participations.
Rolling time periods
The possibility are hours, days, weeks or months. Of course, if your retention policy (duration after which you delete a participation) if shorter than the participation frequency capping, the limit will not work effectively.
If you set a limit to one participation every 1 hour, users will need to wait 60 minutes to participate. So if one enters at 10:08, they cannot enter again until 11:09.
Calendar periods
The possibility are hours, days, weeks or months. Of course, if your retention policy (duration after which you delete a participation) if shorter than the participation frequency capping, the limit will not work effectively.
If you set a reset every day at 12:00 (= 12p.m.) one can participate at any time between midday and 12:00 the next day.
Custom limit (based on secure token)
Limit participations based on custom actions. To do this, you can fetch external information to define in real time who can participate in your campaign.
Read more: How to set a custom participation limit
Collective participation limit
Limit the total number of participations.
First, you’ll need to activate the Limit collective participations setting.
Upon activation, you will see that it’s all easily configurable with comprehensive options!
Now, do you simply want to limit the total number of participations allowed in your campaign? For example, say you need to create an event RSVP form with limited seats. To do this, just enter the number of participations you want to allow.
Once you’ve done that, you can further configure your collective participation limit with the options below.
Collective limits with frequency capping
So knowing the total number of participations allowed is the first step, but there’s another step to consider, too: how often is that limit going to reset? This is the time period for the collective limit.
You can establish limits on the number of participations for a monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly time period. To do this, expand the forever dropdown and choose with a regular frequency.
For example: You may want to place a weekly participation limit. For this specific example, let's imagine that you have set the weekly limit to 480 participations. And your week starts at 7:00 on Wednesday.
With this setting in place, the system will allow 480 participations from the start date of your campaign until 7:00 on the first Wednesday following it. Then, we will allow 480 more until 7:00 on the Wednesday after that, and so on.
This is particularly useful in the case of a sampling action, or anytime you want to ensure that participations are spread evenly over time.
👋🏼 Heads up! The time of the day will be calculated based on the time zone defined in your website settings.
Global capping
Additionally, the global cap controls the maximum number of participations a campaign can get across channels.
Global capping overrides frequency capping settings. This means that if your campaign has reached the global capping limit on day 5 out of 7, users will not be able to participate for the other two days.
How to limit participations in Qualifio
Follow these easy step-by-step instructions:
- Create a new Qualifio campaign or navigate to the editor of your existing campaign.
- Go to the Settings step of your campaign setup.
- Under Limits, select the type of limit you wish to enable.
- Configure a custom message to display when the campaign is not available to a participant or when the limit is reached.
- When your setup looks good, click Save.
How are limits enforced when I delete participations?
When you delete participations in the statistics of your campaign, it's important to note that the limits are not directly affected by this action. The participation counter increments by one each time a user participates in the campaign. However, the participation count does not decrease when individual entries are deleted. In other words, the system does not retroactively adjust the count based on deletions, except if you completely reset ("purge") the campaign statistics. Keep in mind that this process will wipe out all existing data related to the campaign.