🏆 TikTok Shop Contests let you invite a large number of TikTok Shop creators at once and reward them for creating content about your products. Instead of hiring creators one job at a time, you set the prizes, invite creators, and let them compete to post and sell. TikTok Shop Contests are available to all brands with a connected TikTok Shop.
🌟 We handle the outreach for you: JoinBrands sends the TikTok Shop messages and the email invitations to creators on your behalf, so you don't have to contact anyone yourself.
📋 Setting Up a Contest
When you create a contest, you define:
Shop: the TikTok Shop the contest runs on.
Eligible products: the products creators must feature to qualify for rewards.
Contest type: for example a Content Posting Sprint, where creators are rewarded for posting videos.
Audience type: for example an Open contest that any eligible creator can join.
Duration: the contest start and end dates.
Maximum payout: the total budget you are willing to pay out in rewards.
🎁 Rewards Structure
Rewards can be based on the number of videos a creator posts, the GMV (sales) they generate, or both. You can set up several reward tiers, and a leaderboard shows which creators are leading.
📓 Example: Tier 1: post 10 videos and generate at least $100 in GMV to earn $50. Tier 2: post 20 videos and generate at least $100 in GMV to earn $100. Each tier shows how many creators have qualified so far.
🔗 Your Contest Page
Every contest gets its own personal contest page that you can share in your own channels. It shows creators the contest banner, the prizes, the eligible products and how many days are left. Use Copy link on your contest to grab the link.
📨 Inviting Creators
From the Promotion section of your contest you can reach creators in two ways:
Message outreach: invitations sent to creators through TikTok Shop messages. Click Invite more creators to reach more. You'll see how many creators were targeted, how many invitations were sent and how many creators were not eligible.
Email outreach: paid email invitations sent to matched creators. Click Manage outreach to set it up. You'll see the emails targeted and sent, the delivery rate, the open rate and the total cost.
⏱️ Weekly TikTok Message Allowance
TikTok gives every shop a weekly allowance of creator messages. The Message outreach panel shows how many of your weekly messages have been used and when the allowance resets.
When the allowance runs out, message outreach pauses automatically (you'll see Paused: weekly limit reached) so TikTok doesn't start rejecting messages. It picks back up on its own after the weekly reset, so there's nothing you need to do.
✉️ Minimum Charge for Email Invites
⚠️ Important: Paid email invites have a minimum charge of $1, which means at least 21 matched emails are needed. If fewer creators match, the Continue button is disabled and you'll be asked to lower the minimum GMV so more creators match. This applies both when managing outreach and when inviting a fixed audience.
📊 Tracking Your Contest
Open a contest to see everything in one place. The contest page has three tabs: Overview, Participants and Videos.
On the Overview you'll find:
Participants, videos, contest GMV and items sold.
Budget usage: how much of your total budget has been spent.
Rewards structure: each tier and how many creators have qualified.
Top creators: ranked by videos, GMV and units sold.
Top videos: each video with a link to the post, its posting date and its affiliate GMV.
From the top of the contest you can also Invite creators, Edit the contest, View the public contest page, Copy link or Archive the contest.
📓 Note: The All contests overview sums up GMV, tracked videos, creators and your top running contest, with a daily chart and a comparison to the previous period. Each contest's numbers only count activity that happened between that contest's own start and end dates, the same way contest payouts are counted.
💸 How Creators Get Paid
Creators who earn a reward in your contest simply sign up or log in to JoinBrands, and their reward is deposited directly into their JoinBrands wallet. Creators don't need an existing JoinBrands account to take part.
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Got more questions? The Brand & Creator Assistance Team is here for you! Send us a message!