A complete guide to running UGC contests on Shopify.

Open ReelWin

Open ReelWin from Shopify Admin → Apps. If you open the app URL directly outside Shopify Admin, ReelWin will tell you to use the dashboard instead.

Dashboard

The Dashboard gives you a quick view of what needs attention and shortcuts into the main parts of the app.

What you see

• Welcome & shortcuts: Start a new campaign or jump to your campaign list.
• Activity: Counts for live campaigns, recently expired campaigns, submissions, items pending review, and winners. Use the time period control for last 7 days, last 30 days, or all time.
• Status cards: Quick checks for Review Submissions, Promote Campaign when there is an active campaign to promote, and Pick a Winner when ended campaigns are missing a winner.
• How it works: A plain-language loop: create a contest, add it to your theme, collect entries, pick winners, and download media.

Billing & plans

Many actions require an active paid subscription or trial, including creating campaigns and designs, saving settings, promoting campaigns, and marking winners. If you are not subscribed, ReelWin prompts you to choose a plan.

Plans

Trial and billing interval

You can choose monthly or annual billing. Annual messaging references about 17% savings compared with paying monthly. After you approve a charge, Shopify may briefly show a billing welcome step before returning you to the embedded admin app. The subscribed page explains the 3-day free trial and that billing begins after the trial unless you cancel.

Plan changes

If you downgrade from Pro to Growth while you have more than one live contest, extra live contests may show as Downgraded until you end another live contest or upgrade again. The campaign editor explains affected campaigns in context.

Campaigns

Use Campaigns to create contests, edit drafts, review status, view entries, and duplicate existing contest settings.

Campaign list

The campaign table shows title, status, end date, and actions such as View Entries and Duplicate.

Statuses

Active

A live contest, subject to your plan limits.

Draft

A contest that has been set up but is not live. Drafts do not accept entries and are not visible to customers. You can keep unlimited drafts on both Growth and Pro, so a draft is a useful way to prepare a contest in advance or to stay within your plan's active-contest limit.

Expired

A contest that is past its end date and no longer accepting new entries. An expired contest is not gone, it enters a 30-day review window during which you can review entries, download media and pick winners. After 30 days from the contest end date the contest will automatically delete.

Downgraded

A special state that occurs when a plan change forces a contest out of Active. If you downgrade from Pro to Growth while running more than one active contest, your oldest active contest stays live and the others are set to Downgraded. A downgraded contest can be made active again by upgrading back to Pro, or by deleting your current active contest and republishing the downgraded one.

Campaign wizard

The guided setup walks through the parts entrants see and the parts you manage in the app.

Details

Add the title, schedule, description, and URL-related fields such as slug or submission page identity. Start and end dates use your store's timezone in the editor.

Prizes

Choose the prize type, such as a custom prize or discount. Configure what you show publicly versus any secret codes, allowed media types, max entries per person, and form fields such as email, name, and optional social handles.

Terms

Set the rules, rights, and eligibility text entrants must accept. ReelWin includes a strong default focused on content usage rights, but you should review and edit it for your brand and legal needs.

Email templates

Customize the thank-you / entry confirmation email and winner email. Each template includes a subject and HTML body, with variables for contest and entrant details.

Submissions

Set the look and feel for the public submission page and thank-you page, including colors, copy, optional countdown, and related page details.

Publishing rules

You can save as a draft or go live depending on the available buttons and your plan. Growth allows one active campaign at a time. If another contest is live, save as draft, end the other contest, or upgrade to Pro.

The end datetime must be in the future before you can publish.

Public entry URL

Entrants use a URL on your store under the ReelWin app path, built from your primary domain and your campaign's submission page slug, or the main slug as fallback. You will see this pattern when using Promote and viewing the submission link preview.

Designs

Designs are reusable storefront visuals for your contests. Templates may include hero, split layout, frosted card, or a simple button/link.

What you can do

• Create a design.
• Edit an existing design.
• Copy the Design ID to your clipboard.
• Delete a design after confirming.

Connect a design to a campaign

When editing a design, associate it with the campaign it should promote so the CTA and content align with that contest.

Storefront & theme

ReelWin uses a theme app extension so the contest experience can appear on your own storefront.

Enable the app embed

In your theme editor, enable Reelwin App Embed. The embed description says it is required for proper storefront behavior.

Add the UGC Competition block

Add the UGC Competition block to any theme section. Paste the Design ID from ReelWin. The block loads your design and respects layout options such as width, typography, and template-specific tweaks like split or frosted card layouts.

If the Design ID is missing

The storefront shows a clear message asking you to configure the block in the theme editor.

Customer-facing experience

Submissions happen on your domain, not on a third-party form host. Media uploads and terms acceptance follow the campaign settings you configured.

Submissions

The Submissions hub lists campaigns that are active, ended, or downgraded. You can sort by ending soon, entry counts, newest, or oldest.

Each campaign shows time remaining until the contest ends. After it ends, ReelWin shows how long remains until automatic deletion of submission data.

30-day review window

After a campaign ends (at its scheduled end date and time), you have 30 days to review entries, pick winners, and download media. When the review window ends, submissions are permanently deleted. In-app banners may use wording such as auto-deletes or pending deletion.

Submissions & media downloads

Submission detail view

The submission detail view shows everything captured for a single entry: the entrant's email and name, social handles, submission timestamps, a preview of the uploaded media, a favorite toggle, and a link to the Shopify customer record when the entrant is a recognized customer of your store.

Media actions

How you save submission media depends on the device you are using.

On desktop

Use the Download button to save a submission's video or photo directly to your computer. The file downloads in its original quality to your browser's download location. Desktop is the most reliable way to download media, and it is the recommended device when you have many files to save.

On mobile

Mobile browsers and the Shopify Mobile app handle downloads differently from desktop. Tapping a media file on mobile often opens it inline rather than saving it, so on mobile devices ReelWin shows a Share button instead of a Download button.

Tapping Share opens the media in your device's browser, where you can save it to your device or share it to other apps. Because saving works differently on each platform, follow the steps for your device:

iOS (iPhone/iPad)

• For videos: After the media opens, tap Share or ⋯ in the browser, then choose Save to Files. Open the Files app to find the saved video.
• For photos: Long-press the image, then choose Save to Photos.

Android

• After the media opens, tap ⋮ in the browser menu or long-press the media, then choose Download. Find it in Files → Downloads, or check Google Photos or Gallery.

HEIC images

Photos uploaded from some iPhones are in the HEIC format, which not every browser can preview. If a photo does not display in the browser, use Download (or Share on mobile) to save the file and open it on your device, where HEIC images are fully supported.

Bulk actions

The per-campaign submissions table gives you a wider view of all entries for a contest. Depending on the contest, the table can show media thumbnails, submission status, favorite markers, lock state, and entrant social links.

Bulk actions let you act on multiple submissions at once and may include downloading several media files, deleting entries, and managing winners. When a bulk action affects winners differently from non-winners, a confirmation dialog explains exactly what will happen before you proceed, so you do not accidentally remove a winner or its associated prize.

Bulk downloads on mobile. Downloading many files at once works best on desktop. On mobile devices, bulk download may be limited or disabled because mobile browsers cannot reliably save multiple files in one action.

Recommendation

For the smoothest experience, download submission media on a computer. Desktop downloads work in one click, save directly to your computer, and support selecting multiple submissions to download at once — which is especially useful when a contest has many entries to review before the 30-day review window closes.

Picking winners

From a submission detail page, use Mark as winner or Remove winner. Marking someone as a winner is tied to sending the winner email.

When you mark an entrant as a winner

ReelWin sends the winner email immediately to that entrant's address. The app will ask you to confirm this action in the app.

Promote email

Promote helps you send invitation emails for active campaigns. You can browse active campaigns without a plan, but generating an audience and sending requires a subscription.

Step 1: Audience

Generate a list of customers from roughly the last 60 days who accept email marketing, aligned with Shopify's subscribed / opted-in marketing state. You can search by name or email, uncheck people to exclude them, regenerate the list, then continue.

Step 2: Email

Edit the subject and HTML body in the visual or code editor. Use variables to personalize the email and insert links, including the contest entry URL, store name, campaign title, first name, customer name, shop URL, and related campaign details. Placeholders such as {{campaign_title}} and {{customer_name}} are variables. Each variable is replaced with the recipient's real information when the email is sent.

Every promote email includes an unsubscribe link in the footer. ReelWin adds it to every campaign send so recipients always have a way to opt out of marketing emails, as required for compliant marketing. When a recipient uses the link, their marketing consent is updated in Shopify.

Review and send

Before sending, ReelWin asks you to confirm how many customers will receive the message. Results show the sent count and failed count, if any.

Marketing unsubscribe & Shopify

When someone clicks Unsubscribe in a Promote email, they land on a simple confirmation page explaining that unsubscribing stops promotional email, not transactional messages such as orders or shipping.

After confirmation, ReelWin updates the customer record in Shopify so their email marketing consent is unsubscribed. Shopify Admin reflects the customer as not subscribed for marketing, which is the same consent used for compliant marketing audiences.

If something goes wrong

The customer may see a message to contact the store directly, such as when the customer cannot be found, an API issue occurs, or the link is invalid.

Settings

Settings control reply handling and merchant notifications.

Reply-To email

Set an optional override for where replies go for contest-related emails, including promote sends, thank-you emails, and winner emails. If blank, ReelWin falls back to your Shopify store email.

Notifications

• Notification email: Where new submission alerts go. Blank means ReelWin uses your store email.
• Notify for new submissions: Toggle new submission alerts on or off.

Data & privacy

Contest submission data is available during the contest and for the review window after the contest ends. After the review window, submission media and entrant data are automatically deleted from ReelWin.

Uninstalling ReelWin

When you uninstall ReelWin, merchant data and customer data collected through your contests are deleted from ReelWin as part of the uninstall flow. If you want to keep submission media, download it before uninstalling.

Merchant responsibility

You are responsible for your contest terms, eligibility rules, prize fulfillment, and store privacy disclosures. If you intend to reuse submissions in marketing, make sure your contest terms clearly explain the rights you are requesting from entrants.

Using ReelWin on mobile

You can manage contests, review submissions, and pick winners from the Shopify mobile experience, and customer submission pages are mobile responsive.

Downloads behave differently on mobile because the phone OS controls saving and sharing. For bulk media downloads, use desktop when possible.

Troubleshooting

I cannot create or publish a campaign

Check that you have an active subscription or trial. On Growth, only one campaign can be active at a time. Also confirm the campaign end datetime is in the future.

The theme block does not show my design

Enable Reelwin App Embed, add the UGC Competition block, and paste the correct Design ID from the Designs table. If the Design ID is missing, the storefront displays a configuration message.

Entrants are not receiving emails

Ask entrants to check spam or promotions folders. For merchant notification inbox issues, check ReelWin Settings and your Shopify store contact email.

HEIC images do not preview

Some HEIC files may not preview in the browser. Download the file to view it.

Glossary / quick facts