In 2022, we made a Panel Extension for The Pokémon Company to give away codes and promotions to their Twitch viewers. The initial Extension was a success and updates alongside additional giveaways were released to keep the momentum going.
In 2023, we created a self-serve interface that allowed The Pokémon Company team to create and release giveaways on Twitch to coincide with events and tournaments. Rather than creating or updating a new Extension each time and waiting on approval, this evergreen panel Extension lets them: add codes and track codes, see code metrics on giveaways overall and by day, create giveaways and customize art and copy, control the dates of the release day, and more. Creating this Panel Extension removed all the friction involved in releasing giveaways for Twitch and helped reward the existing and new Twitch Pokémon community.
What is a Panel Extension?
Twitch Extensions appear in one of the three views: chat, over the video, or below the video. Panel Extensions display in a box below the video. The box is around 300x500px, but clicking on the panel pops it out and can be expanded to any size. Panel Extensions will not interfere with any video content being broadcast on your Twitch channel. Panel Extensions also appear for viewers on the Twitch mobile apps.
The Pokémon Panel Extension: A Simple Way to Reward Viewers
The Panel Extension works similarly to Twitch Drops, but there’s no need to click off the video to claim your rewards and no need to connect games to redeem rewards. Viewers only needed to take a few steps to get rewarded:
Share their TwitchID
Watch for 15 minutes (or whatever length of time the giveaway required)
Claim their reward by clicking a button
Once the reward is claimed, it appears on a page with all the rewards they’ve received from The Pokémon Company. The rewards are all codes with a link to redeem the code wherever it’s relevant. Viewers can also view the Terms & Conditions for all their collected rewards. Since all the giveaways are codes, this creates flexibility for types of rewards: share codes for money or a percent off at your shop, codes redeemable on steam, or codes redeemable in-game. For example, during an event, codes were given out for Pokémon Go that could be redeemed in-game. These codes opened up time-sensitive activities in Pokémon Go (Timed Research) that Twitch viewers could participate in. As a Pokémon Go player, I was aware of the giveaways from working on the project. But, I also saw articles and incentives shared repeatedly in the local player communities I’m involved in. This specific giveaway activated current and dormant players and had them excitedly engaging with the Pokémon brand. People were amped about it. But that’s just my personal experience with the activation.
Want your Own Panel Extension?
Here are some tips to increase engagement:
We learned, after the first couple of giveaway activations, some ways to drive more Twitch viewers to the giveaway, growing the already successful campaigns.
If you have an overlay Extension, you can set it up to give alerts that a giveaway is active. This will help viewers watching the stream who haven’t scrolled down or noticed the panel below the video stream to find and interact with the Extension.
Set up a chatBot to periodically tell viewers in-chat about your giveaway. This gives viewers key details in one of the more active areas of a Twitch stream.
Want a panel Extension to reward viewers of your game? To give Twitch fans prizes during your live event? Contact us at muxy.io/contact to get started.