Why Are We Changing This?
Until now, sweepstakes campaigns required the end date to be at least 3 days after the online sales end date. If a user tried to set them closer together, they hit a modal blocking the save. This rule was originally in place to give mail-in entrants enough time to physically mail in their free entries before the drawing.
Two things have shifted. First, the legal/regulatory rationale for enforcing that 3-day buffer is no longer needed. Second, customers running short-turnaround sweepstakes (like same-day live event drawings, flash promos, quick-turn campaigns) have been blocked from setting up the campaign timing they actually want. Removing this constraint opens up a lot more flexibility for how customers can run sweepstakes.
What's Changing | The 3-day rule is gone
Users can now set the sweepstakes end date on the same day as the online sales end date, or any number of days after, without hitting an error. The end date field is still required and all other date validations still work as expected, only the 3-day minimum gap rule has been removed. This applies to both the front-end and back-end, and across all campaign setup versions.
Mail-in entries inside 24 hours are auto-received
When a sweepstakes is running tight on time, there isn't always enough runway for someone to request a free entry, fill out the form, mail it in, and have an organizer manually mark it as received before the drawing. To make short-turnaround sweepstakes work, mail-in entries that move into "FormFilled" status within 24 hours of the drawing end date are now automatically marked as "Received", meaning they'll show up in the View Mail-in Entries screen and will be assigned entries during the drawing without needing organizer intervention.
A few notes on how this works:
- The auto-received logic only kicks in after the entrant completes the form. Entries still sitting in "Requested" status (just an email submitted, no form completed) will not be auto-received.
- Mail-in entries requested more than 24 hours before the drawing still follow the existing flow — they stay in "Requested" / "FormFilled" until an organizer or admin manually confirms them as received.