How Make runs large-scale creator contests with a community challenge app

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The Problem

Make wanted to engage more “Scenarios Creators” in its community by running bimonthly challenges. However, manually processing hundreds or thousands of creator submissions wasn’t feasible for the small community management team.

“Our main challenge was handling the sheer volume of submissions from so many of these creators’,” said Pierre Lombard, Make’s Vice President of Customer Experience. “The second problem was finding a way to build a system to manage this ourselves, without pulling resources from the dev team.”

The team needed a solution that could: 

• Engage creators interested in the community challenge and send them contest details
• Automatically collect and pre-qualify submissions, populating them in a secure database
• Distribute submission review assignments to 50+ Make team members
• Reduce manual back-and-forth communication

The Solution

Make built a no-code community challenge project system: Softr serves as the front-end application, MySQL is the system of record for structured data storage, and Make automates workflows and communication based on information in the database.

This “magic triangle” allows the Make team to efficiently manage community challenge submissions at scale. Here are the 5 main workflows the application supports: 

• Automated entry creation: The community manager posts a challenge announcement. When a creator expresses interest, an entry is automatically added to the database, triggering a personalized invitation to them to submit their proposal.
• Submission processing: Once a proposal/entry is submitted, it goes through a pre-screening process: data is extracted and structured in MySQL, attachments are stored in the cloud, and a summary is generated for internal team members. 
• Internal review assignment: The system assigns internal team members the approved creator submissions to review. When a reviewer claims a submission, it’s locked from other reviewers so there’s no duplicate work. 
• Status tracking: The database updates in real time, moving submissions through different review stages until a winner is selected.
• Automated notifications: Creators receive updates on their submission status, and the system automatically notifies winners and produces an announcement post for social media to review.

The system took one month to build, including designing the database, building the interface with Softr, and configuring the back-end automations. 

The Impact

Make’s community management team has run three successful contests with the new system, and it’s now a critical part of their creator engagement strategy. 

The app has processed 1000+ creator submissions per contest, making it easier for the community management team to run and for 50 Make team members to participate in the review process. Automated workflows reduce manual effort and increase transparency with creators. 

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The success of the app has spurred the Make team to expand its use of Softr to build other internal tools, including an HR-led Learning Management System (LMS) for employee learning and professional development, and an AI Chatbot Testing System that enables rapid prototyping of AI chatbot interactions for the support team.

Make’s experience shows the power of no-code apps in speeding up internal workflows, without the need for developer help.