Email is one of the most effective and powerful marketing strategies that a business can utilize. It is an asset to any business. In fact, 81% of small and growing brands use email as their primary marketing channel to grow their businesses. But, you need a great number of engaged subscribers to generate revenue from it. Growing your email subscribers in the early days of your business is one of the toughest things.
Many businesses rely on SEO, guest posts, and Facebook/Google Ads for building a list of engaged email subscribers but it’s expensive and time-consuming. The quickest and cheapest way to increase your email list is by creating a contest or giveaway. Here you can learn how to build email subscribers via a giveaway and then use them to boost sales.
No matter whether you have less than 100 subscribers or a giant list of 100,000+, a giveaway can help you to grow your mail list by 1000s of subscribers in a matter of days. Other than email subscribers, a giveaway or contest boosts brand exposure, social media followers & engagements, generates new leads, and builds brand loyalty. As per statistics from Outgrow, 33% of participants are ready to receive further marketing emails from the brand and partners. Thus, you not only drive massive email list growth but also nurture leads into paying customers.
Here are the steps to follow during and after the giveaway.
Send an email to current email subscribers for sharing the news of the giveaway.
Send a welcome email to new subscribers added to your list. New subscribers most likely open an email they receive just after entering the giveaway. The email can introduce your brand, different products you offer, etc.
During the giveaway, send an email to current and new email subscribers regarding the end date of the giveaway and the winner announcement. These reminder emails help you stay top of the subscriber’s mind.
Don’t leave people wondering whether they have won or not. Send an email (announcing and congratulating the winner) to all the subscribers who entered the giveaway. Also, hint about more giveaways in the future to keep them subscribed.
Even after the giveaway ends, send an email regarding promotions, freebies, and new products.
You can direct traffic to your website by including a link to it in all the above emails. If you are offering your product or services as a prize, then direct the subscribers to the product page to learn more.
Every sponsor wants more and more people to enter the giveaway but it leads to unengaged subscribers, high unsubscribe rates and a high number of spam reports. To avoid all this, you must segment your target audience who is also interested in your products rather than only in the prize.
Before running a giveaway, determine your target audience by creating an in-depth buyer persona that includes everything from demographic information to purchase behavior and from career history to personal life information. Once you understand your ideal audience, you can create a successful giveaway that brings you more email subscribers.
Picking the right prize is very important as it is the only thing that lures customers to enter your giveaway. Your prize must be related to your brand and niche audience. If you pick big, flashy prizes such as cash, iPad, iPhone, vacation or amazon.com gift card, you will attract a massive list of disengaged email contacts. So it’s better to select a prize that is appealing to your niche audience.
You must give away your own product or service like a hamper of your products, a year’s supply of your products, or your store gift card to attract quality email subscribers who would be your ideal customers. The total value of your giveaway prize must be between $250 and $500 to appeal to your audience.
Tip: Try to offer multiple prizes rather than one grand prize only. People tend to enter more when they have more odds of winning.
Decide where you will collect the email addresses of the entrants. You can set up a landing page or add pop-ups/sign-up forms at the homepage of your website. Lots of third-party websites like Gleam, KingSumo, Rafflepress, and more are available to create friendly landing pages and contact forms.
These apps create, take care of entries, and randomly selecting a winner on behalf of you. If you are running a social media contest on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, or Twitter, then make sure to put a landing page link on your social profile or bio to gather the email data.
Add the following things on your contest landing page:
Entrants won’t share the giveaway with friends and family on their own because they think sharing will decrease their chance of winning. So, when you incentivize entrants with bonus entries, they happily share the giveaway as it acts in their favor by increasing their odds of winning. You can offer bonus entries for sharing the giveaway on social media channels, following on social media, subscribing to your YouTube channel, and more.
Entrants won’t copy and paste a URL to share, you must create social buttons to make sharing easy. Sharing increases the reach of your giveaway creates linkbacks and boosts followers on social media. This is good for new businesses who need to increase numbers quickly.
You must actively promote the giveaway to make it viral and generate lots of email subscribers.
At the end of the giveaway or contest, pick a winner as per predetermined method: randomly, voting, or judged. Once you picked the winner(s), post the name(s) along with a photo and their reactions to winning on social media pages, and landing page. Also, send an email to each and every participant including the name of the winner(s) and a statement thanking the entrant for entering the giveaway, and inviting them to join again in the future. This prevents them from unsubscribing and maintains a positive relationship.
Non-winning entrants feel sad and disappointed so thank them for entering with a consolation prize in the form of a coupon code of your store to get a discount on their next purchase. Thus, you not only build a relationship but also convert leads into paying customers immediately.
The main goal of the giveaway is to grow the email list and turn the new subscribers into paying customers. So, you must stay in contact with all the subscribers by sending those promotional emails, discount codes, and more. If you don’t communicate, they will unsubscribe and all your hard work will go in vain.
One of the most important steps is to clean up the email list for getting higher open & click-through rates and saving money on email marketing. Many entrants have entered the giveaway just for the prize and never open any of your emails. So to filter them, remove the unengaged subscribers, as well as email subscribers from locations you don’t sell. Your email deliverability drop when AOL, Microsoft, & Yahoo email users mark your email as spam so you can remove them to reduce spam complaints.
If you are interested in even more business-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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