Image the scene: you’ve stumbled upon an unfamiliar ecommerce website.
First impressions appear constructive; you want their model and merchandise. Their costs and delivery prices appear cheap. Nonetheless, you’re not one hundred pc bought. With actually thousands and thousands of different manufacturers on the market, why not store round?
Then you definately spot a message like this:
All it’s worthwhile to do is enter your electronic mail handle for an opportunity to win a completely free product. What have you ever received to lose?
In fact, product giveaways aren’t only a win for customers. They assist manufacturers develop their advertising lists, giving them the chance to remodel one-off web site guests into engaged ecommerce leads and, ultimately, paying clients.
That will help you reap the benefits of this extremely efficient—but underutilized—advertising tactic, I’ve gathered collectively a few of my favourite ideas and greatest practices for operating efficient giveaways.
And I’ve even included 11 high-converting promotional giveaway concepts from real-world manufacturers that you may steal on your subsequent marketing campaign.
What’s the Purpose of Your Giveaway?
As with any marketing campaign, step one to planning a promotional giveaway is to outline the target(s) you hope to attain. Frequent targets embrace:
Gathering Emails
It’s honest to say we’re huge followers of electronic mail advertising at Drip; hardly stunning provided that electronic mail generates a return of $36 for each $1 spent.
Utilizing giveaways for electronic mail seize is usually about focusing on web site guests who’ve by no means purchased from you earlier than. You shouldn’t have to depend on free items to steer current clients to join your electronic mail checklist.
When you’ve received your arms on their electronic mail handle, you possibly can attain them with customized campaigns based mostly on their preferences and onsite behaviors. In the event that they love shopping necklaces or purchase a brand new mattress cowl each six months, you possibly can hit their inbox with a focused promotion at precisely the proper time.
Boosting Your Social Following & Viewers Engagement
Many manufacturers use promotional giveaways to extend engagement on social media and develop their follower counts, similar to on this instance from our friends at Haute Hijab:
Most of those contests observe an analogous format, providing followers the prospect to win a prize in change for:
- Liking, commenting on, and/or sharing a selected social media submit
- Tagging mates within the feedback
That is a simple strategy to attain new audiences on social media—though, clearly, there aren’t any ensures that these individuals will observe you or interact together with your content material (not to mention purchase from you).
Capturing Consumer-Generated Content material
With four-fifths of customers saying user-generated content material (UGC) extremely influences their buying choices, it’s straightforward to see why many manufacturers are desperate to seize as a lot of it as potential.
However UGC doesn’t simply occur by probability. Most consumers aren’t going to basically do your advertising for you and not using a little incentive.
That’s the place promotional giveaways are available in. Slightly than asking clients to remark in your social posts or provide you with their electronic mail handle, process them with sharing images and movies of them utilizing and having fun with your product.
Run these giveaways repeatedly and also you’ll quickly construct a library of useful user-generated product photos, opinions, and testimonials to make use of in future campaigns.
Producing Buyer Referrals
Referred clients are useful clients.
In reality, one examine revealed that they generate increased revenue margins, are extra loyal, and present a better buyer lifetime worth than “common” (non-referred) clients.
However, similar to with UGC, you possibly can’t afford to easily sit again and hope buyer referrals will magically seem—it’s worthwhile to incentivize the method.
Referral campaigns are usually about producing gross sales as a substitute of leads. So they have a tendency to supply extra engaging, assured rewards. Slightly than giving contributors the prospect to win a prize, you would possibly provide a free product (or perhaps a money incentive) to each the referrer and the referred buyer.
When Ought to You Launch a Giveaway?
Like every sort of promotion, it makes most sense to launch your giveaway marketing campaign throughout slower gross sales intervals on your model. As a result of there’s little level in providing extra incentives at occasions when consumers are already trying to purchase (plus nobody wants the trouble of operating a contest within the buildup to BFCM).
Past that, construct your launch round occasions when engagement is highest throughout your chosen promotional channels.
As an example, the greatest time to ship emails is usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays…
…with emails despatched at 8 AM, 1 PM, and 5 PM performing greatest by way of open and click-through charges.
Methods to Run a Profitable Enterprise Giveaway
Executed effectively, promotional giveaways can develop your advertising checklist, generate buyer referrals, and drive gross sales and income. However these outcomes aren’t assured. Get it incorrect and also you threat devaluing your model and turning off loyal clients.
Listed below are 5 greatest practices to spice up your possibilities of operating a profitable giveaway…
Select the Proper Platform for Your Giveaway
Whether or not you’re giving freely a pair of socks or the winner’s physique weight in gold bullion, nobody’s going to have interaction together with your promotion in the event that they don’t understand it exists. For that cause, it’s important you select the very best platform on your giveaway; one which helps you attain the proper viewers.
The “greatest” platform on your marketing campaign will naturally depend upon the aims you are trying to obtain.
As an example, should you’re trying to attain and have interaction new audiences, it is smart to make use of a platform with built-in shareability, similar to Fb or Instagram. Or if you wish to seize extra electronic mail addresses, strive focusing on new clients visiting your web site through onsite popups.
Acquire Emails & Nurture Giveaway Members
Bear in mind: you’re not operating a giveaway since you simply love handing out your merchandise freed from cost; you’re doing it to attain some type of broader advertising aim.
Almost definitely, that aim will contain rising and/or participating your viewers, with the final word goal of producing extra gross sales and income.
Meaning constructing some type of viewers nurturing course of into your marketing campaign.
Collect contributors’ electronic mail addresses after they enter your giveaway contest. And in case your giveaway is operating for an prolonged interval (say, any longer than 48 hours), make sure to share common competitors updates through electronic mail and/or social media.
Your giveaway electronic mail sequence may look this:
| Electronic mail quantity | Days after launch | Function |
| 1 | 0 | Affirm giveaway entry |
| 2 | 1 | Remind entrants of the competitors prize and any key phrases and circumstances |
| 3 | 3 | Inform individuals what number of entrants have signed up; share UGC examples if related |
| 4 | 5 | Announce the giveaway winner(s) |
| 5 | 6 | Share a reduction code with non-winning contributors |
In fact, there’s no one-size-fits-all method right here. You’ll have to tailor your communications based mostly on a complete vary of things, from the size of your competitors to the entry necessities and the prize you’re providing.
Hyperlink the Prize Again to Your Enterprise
Apparent as it’d sound, it’s greatest if the product or expertise you’re giving freely has a logical tie-in together with your model.
The simplest answer is to present away your personal merchandise. However that’s not the one viable method to operating a giveaway. With just a little creativity, you would possibly have the ability to establish a theme and prize that makes for a extra participating contest.
For a model like The White Firm, which sells luxurious homeware and clothes, the obvious technique is to supply up a flowery cover set or a botanical candle as a prize. As a substitute, it gave clients the prospect to win a mini-break at a luxurious cottage on the English coast:
Why? As a result of The White Firm helped type the property, successfully making a bodily case examine for its complete aesthetic; one thing aspirational to encourage its viewers.
By providing up the mini-break as a contest prize, the model was in a position to showcase its work in a extra participating manner than merely saying: “Come check out this cottage we embellished.”
Get Engagement on Social Media
Whether or not or not you’re operating your giveaway by way of social media, it is best to completely use your social channels to drum up extra curiosity.
As with the Haute Hijab instance I shared earlier on this article, the obvious method is to make social engagement a key ingredient of your marketing campaign—prompting followers to touch upon a submit or tag a buddy in an effort to enter.
However you possibly can additionally leverage platforms like Instagram and TikTok to boost consciousness of your giveaway and direct followers to register on a devoted competitors touchdown web page.
Be Clear About Your Guidelines
Within the advertising world, easy is at all times greatest, and giveaways aren’t any completely different.
Certain, your authorized group will seemingly need to cowl your again with a bunch of phrases and circumstances. That’s positive. However the overarching guidelines of the competitors— enter, what the prize is, and when the winner might be introduced—must be simply digestible.
Nationwide lotteries are instance. They offer away thousands and thousands of {dollars}, but all it’s important to do to enter is purchase a ticket and match some numbers. Anybody can perceive it.
In case your contest can’t be defined in 2 – 3 bullet factors, it’s virtually definitely too complicated.
11 of The Greatest Giveaway Concepts That Work (and Methods to Execute Them)
1. Acquire Emails with Related Prizes
When you’re planning a giveaway, your prize must be the very first thing you determine on.
In spite of everything, prizes are the primary cause why individuals take part in giveaways.
Select a prize too frequent, and also you gained’t seize a lot consideration. However select a prize too huge, and chances are high you’ll entice freebie-seekers.
As tempting because it sounds, providing a brand new iPhone in your giveaway will do little good for you. Why? As a result of engaging however irrelevant prizes are spam magnets.
You’ll most probably find yourself with an electronic mail checklist filled with uninterested leads who’re solely in for the prize.
As a substitute, preserve your prize related to your merchandise and your worth proposition.
Earlier than planning your subsequent giveaway, ensure that it serves your conversion targets. In case your goal is to develop your electronic mail checklist, an Instagram contest the place customers tag their mates gained’t assist you.
Bear in mind, giveaway doesn’t converse to everybody. Slightly, it speaks to your purchaser persona.
With a related prize that resonates together with your purchaser persona, you possibly can truly promote your on-line retailer, on high of amassing electronic mail addresses.
Take this instance by J.Crew Manufacturing facility:
The corporate hosts a spring giveaway on their website and creates a devoted touchdown web page for it.
The massive prize is a package deal that features a reward card winners can spend on J.Crew Manufacturing facility’s on-line retailer.
A pattern product or a present card is a related and efficient prize, however for some guests, it’s not sufficient of an incentive. If you wish to make the prize extra fascinating, you possibly can mix a present card with different issues, as J.Crew Manufacturing facility does.
This fashion, guests will get the prospect to strive your merchandise. And it will increase their probability of turning into return clients.
Discover how J.Crew Manufacturing facility writes the worth of each the reward card (price $100) and the package deal (over $300) to make the prizes extra engaging.
J.Crew Manufacturing facility asks if you wish to join their electronic mail checklist because the final step and leaves it elective. This fashion, they seize the guests’ pleasure of coming into a contest, and so they develop their electronic mail checklist with leads.
When you’re amassing emails that you just’ll use for advertising functions, clearly write what customers are giving consent to. Give contributors the area to determine for themselves, as a substitute of preselecting the e-newsletter checkbox.
2. Enhance Your Giveaway Copy
One main benefit of internet hosting an onsite giveaway is the power to customise each a part of your contest.
Which means you could have the flexibleness to make your giveaway as engaging as potential.
With an onsite giveaway marketing campaign, you possibly can determine what actions guests ought to take, which info they need to submit, and the place they need to go subsequent.
Writing compelling marketing campaign copy and a benefit-driven call-to-action (CTA) are the 2 pillars of an efficient giveaway marketing campaign. However they’re solely nearly as good as your provide.
Check out this instance by Jysk Vin:
Not like J.Crew Manufacturing facility, Jysk Vin makes use of an onsite marketing campaign to host their giveaway. This fashion, they will inform all their website guests in regards to the giveaway with out making them go to a brand new web page.
This marketing campaign works nice for just a few causes:
- Their prize (24 bottles of wine) is very related and engaging to their website guests.
- The headline “Win $770 price of wine” is attention-grabbing and value-driven.
- They offer clear details about the draw date.
- They freely state what you might be subscribing to (an unique e-newsletter for wine lovers).
- The marketing campaign has just one enter discipline, which makes it ridiculously straightforward for his or her guests to finish.
- They use a benefit-driven CTA, as a substitute of merely writing “Signal Up” or “Enter Now.”
With a well-written onsite marketing campaign just like the one above, you possibly can simply nudge your guests to affix your giveaway and provides them a robust cause to join your e-newsletter.
What’s higher is, you possibly can exclude your current subscribers from these campaigns so that you just don’t ask them to affix your e-newsletter once more.
3. Leverage the Vacation Season
With Black Friday, Christmas, and New 12 months, the vacation procuring season is the busiest time of the yr for e-commerce entrepreneurs.
When you’re not already leveraging holidays with particular campaigns, you’re lacking out on a variety of income.
Including just a little twist to your vacation campaigns may help you stand out amongst a whole lot of different festive giveaways.
Many on-line shops host giveaways, particularly throughout the vacation season, and so they often provide winners just a few huge prizes.
However you can also make your contests much more engaging by letting your website guests select the prize they need themselves.
Right here’s an important instance that you may replicate in your website.
When you had been on the Chubbies electronic mail checklist final Christmas, you’d have obtained this electronic mail with the topic line “take something on our website”:
At first sight, you don’t know if it’s a giveaway or not. But it surely definitely evokes curiosity.
And that is what you see if you open the e-mail:
They ask you to make a wishlist with their merchandise, write why it is best to win, and ship the corporate an electronic mail.
And should you’re the fortunate winner, you get every little thing in your wishlist.
Chubbies efficiently leverage the vacation season with this humorous giveaway electronic mail.
However if you wish to execute this sensible concept in a simpler manner, strive making issues simpler on your guests.
Asking for an excessive amount of effort for a small payoff will scale back your variety of entries.
As a substitute, you possibly can create a easy kind with just a few enter fields and present it solely on related product pages.
If you wish to run the giveaway on a particular class, say, “footwear”, you possibly can set a situation to point out your marketing campaign on particular product pages.
And you may exclude sure pages, similar to your about or contact pages if you wish to cover the marketing campaign.
You may as well use superior scheduling to arrange and deactivate your giveaway campaigns forward of time.
When the giveaway ends, you may give all contributors particular reductions for his or her wishlist objects and convert them into clients even when they didn’t win.
4. Promote Your Merchandise
With e-commerce giveaways, you are able to do rather more than acquire emails and lift model consciousness.
If somebody needs to affix your contest and win certainly one of your merchandise or a present associated to them, it signifies that they’re concerned with your on-line retailer.
As soon as they enter your gross sales funnel, you could have an opportunity to advertise your merchandise and convert them into clients—whether or not they be a part of your giveaway or not.
However right here’s the caveat: You must do it subtly.
Try this instance by Oru Kayak:
Following frequent follow, the corporate companions up with different e-commerce manufacturers, similar to Sunski, to supply larger prizes of their giveaway.
They create all of the prizes you possibly can win collectively and use the image on their giveaway touchdown web page. Additionally they embrace the greenback worth of the prizes to improve their perceived worth.
However the firm doesn’t cease there. They checklist all of the merchandise you possibly can win with their particular person costs and hyperlinks to product element pages:
Along with supplying you with details about the giveaway, additionally they introduce you to their merchandise and promote them in a refined manner.
This can be a simpler manner of introducing your merchandise and creating pleasure for them, in comparison with merely itemizing the objects contributors can win.
5. Use Giveaways to Promote Extra
E-commerce giveaways not solely assist you acquire extra prospects but in addition interact with these prospects in a extra persuasive manner.
With onsite giveaways, you possibly can immediately improve your gross sales by focusing on each your current and potential clients, who’re at an extra stage of their purchaser’s journey.
A well timed giveaway can create a mild nudge that your guests want in an effort to change into clients. Plus, it may well assist improve their common order worth (AOV).
Check out this giveaway concept by Vinomofo:
The corporate celebrates its birthday with a “treasure hunt” sort of giveaway.
Milestones like this are a intelligent excuse to understand your clients and host a giveaway to extend your gross sales.
Vinomofo’s guidelines are easy: “Purchase something at the moment to win.”
Although this can be a good giveaway concept, internet hosting it on a touchdown web page makes it troublesome for website guests to see it.
If you wish to apply Vinomofo’s concept to your on-line retailer, you possibly can enhance it by utilizing an onsite marketing campaign and related triggers.
This fashion, extra website guests will pay attention to your giveaway and also you’ll improve your gross sales.
Including an exit-intent set off and a situation to point out solely on product pages will make your giveaway marketing campaign simpler.
If you wish to create a way of urgency with out being annoying, strive including a countdown timer to your marketing campaign.
In case your giveaway requires a minimal procuring restrict to enter, you possibly can nudge guests who’re near the restrict based mostly on their basket worth.
Right here’s an instance of how such a marketing campaign would possibly look:
6.Mix Surveys with Giveaways
It doesn’t matter what enterprise you’re in, you’re most likely attempting exhausting to get some insights out of your clients.
You need to discover out why your guests abandon their carts or how one can enhance your on-line retailer.
You ship out survey invitation emails again and again, however no one is concerned with responding.
Likelihood is, you’re lacking an incentive.
Combining your surveys with giveaways will interact your subscribers and improve your survey completions.
Right here’s a typical survey/giveaway instance by Brooklinen:
At first, it appears to be like like a buyer appreciation electronic mail, the place you possibly can click on by way of to enter a giveaway and win certainly one of their merchandise.
As a result of Brooklinen frames the invitation electronic mail across the giveaway, as a substitute of the survey. Finishing the survey is just a easy situation to affix and it takes two minutes.
If you click on “Enter Now,” you see that it’s a Typeform survey:
Positioning your surveys round a giveaway may help improve your completions and make your merchandise fascinating.
In the long run, you’ll get useful suggestions and engaged clients.
Following this method, Brooklinen solely reaches out to their electronic mail subscribers and asks for his or her opinion.
If you wish to attain an even bigger viewers and acquire extra insights, you possibly can create an onsite survey marketing campaign, as a substitute.
You’ll be able to add a situation to cover your marketing campaign out of your first-time guests and get extra correct suggestions. Or you possibly can solely present it to guests who spend an X period of time in your website.
Livingshop makes use of a marketing campaign to survey their clients at checkout:
It’s straightforward to recreate this easy marketing campaign and goal the proper individuals on the proper pages. Plus, you possibly can flip it right into a giveaway with just a little twist.
7. Acquire Emails on Closed Giveaways
Right here’s just a little secret many entrepreneurs don’t learn about: even when your giveaway ends, it nonetheless has potential to deliver you heat leads.
With a minor addition, you possibly can flip your giveaway web page into an automatic lead era machine.
Whereas doing analysis for this text, I clicked dozens of useless giveaway hyperlinks that result in a 404 web page.
And in lots of different instances, corporations let me know that their giveaway ended, however they did not level me to a brand new route.
There’s an important probability that your prospects will land on an outdated giveaway web page that you just shared on social media or they’ll discover an electronic mail of their inboxes just a little too late.
As a substitute of shutting down your giveaway pages, you possibly can flip them right into a lead generator till your subsequent marketing campaign.
Right here’s how Bellroy does that efficiently:
If you go to certainly one of their outdated giveaway pages, first, they inform you that this marketing campaign is closed.
Then, the corporate triggers your fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) by saying “Don’t miss out once more!”
Lastly, they invite you to affix their e-newsletter by explaining its profit for you: “Be the primary to learn about product releases and giveaways sooner or later.”
Bellroy efficiently eases your frustration and offers you a robust cause to join their electronic mail checklist. As a result of they know that should you’re on this giveaway, you’re a useful lead for the corporate.
8. Collect UGC From Current Clients
I’ve already talked about how efficient UGC may be for showcasing your merchandise and influencing buy choices. So the extra of it you possibly can collect, the higher.
GoPro is an absolute grasp at this. Try the model’s Instagram and also you’ll discover that the overwhelming majority of content material they share comes from current clients.
Admittedly, GoPro has a definite benefit: it sells motion cameras, that are fairly carefully associated to the motion of taking images and movies.
Additionally, the entire cause individuals purchase GoPros is to seize themselves doing cool stuff like climbing mountains or leaping out of airplanes, so it’s solely pure they’d be comfortable to share the outcomes with the widest-possible viewers.
Nonetheless, these components alone aren’t any assure of success.
Clients nonetheless want a compelling cause to ship of their snaps and vids, so GoPro incentivizes them with common gear giveaways and money prizes:
The end result? A seemingly limitless stream of user-generated content material prepared and ready for GoPro to share.
Professional tip: Discover how GoPro makes use of devoted UGC hashtags. With out them, it’d be near-impossible to maintain monitor of all these contest entries.
9. Supply Restricted-Version Merchandise
By their very nature, giveaways depend on urgency and/or shortage to drive motion. Typically talking, you’re both:
- Providing a set variety of prizes; or
- Solely making these prizes accessible for a brief interval
So why not increase the stakes by including extra shortage within the type of a limited-edition product giveaway?
That manner, clients know in the event that they don’t participate within the competitors, they’ll by no means get their arms on the product in query.
Cotton Bureau used this technique as a part of its tenth birthday celebration, giving clients the prospect to win varied limited-edition goodies by coming into a selected code throughout the checkout course of:
I like this method as a result of it’s all about gross sales and income: you possibly can solely be a part of the competition should you truly purchase one thing.
When you had been already planning to buy a brand new T-shirt and also you obtained this electronic mail, it’d provide you with all the inducement it’s worthwhile to click on by way of and make a purchase order.
10. Run a Branded Merch Giveaway
From T-shirts to pens to espresso mugs, it seems branded merchandise is a giant hit with customers.
Certainly, 53 % of People love receiving these types of merchandise from manufacturers. And since 51 % repeatedly use them in day-to-day life, branded merch successfully turns your clients into strolling, speaking billboards on your retailer.
There’s one main caveat to this promotional giveaway technique: it solely works in case your model is robust.
When you’re a brand new entrant to your market, or have restricted model consciousness, individuals may not be too excited on the prospect of sporting your brand on their chest.
Demise Want Espresso Firm is a wonderful working example. Certain, it may not be the world’s greatest espresso model, nevertheless it’s undoubtedly well-known—and it has robust enchantment amongst its target market.
So when the corporate supplied the prospect to win a branded espresso mug, clients jumped on the alternative:
Partially, the marketing campaign’s success hinged on its timing.
Demise Want Espresso launched the promotion to coincide with the Labor Day weekend, certainly one of America’s (many) huge patriotic holidays—an event that undoubtedly suits with the model’s proudly American picture.
11. Accomplice With Different Manufacturers
If the aim of your giveaway is to get in entrance of latest audiences, one efficient method is to group up with a complementary model. That manner, you get immediate entry to their clients (plus you get to share the promotional prices).
For this technique to repay, your collaboration must make sense.
Whereas that doesn’t essentially imply partnering with an organization in your trade, your respective audiences should be concerned with each manufacturers, like on this instance from Too Confronted and Pop-Tarts:
At first look, a cosmetics firm and a producer of toasted pastries aren’t pure bedfellows. But this marketing campaign labored by leveraging nostalgia.
The collaboration was a “win” for each events: Too Confronted clients received to reminisce in regards to the scrumptious breakfast snacks they ate as children, whereas Pop-Tarts was in a position to attain individuals youthful than its conventional buyer base.
Drive Actual Outcomes From Promotional Giveaways With Drip
Giveaways are certainly one of our favourite methods for producing ecommerce leads. However they solely work should you get your focusing on and placement proper.
Like, you don’t need clients who’re already signed as much as your mailing checklist to see your electronic mail seize campaigns, or to ask new web site guests who’ve by no means purchased from you earlier than to refer their mates.
That’s why you want a good advertising automation platform able to delivering super-personalized messaging to clients’ inboxes (and past).
Drip is that platform.
Our highly effective segmentation instruments deliver collectively all of your retailer, customer, and advertising knowledge—serving to you construct habits and engagement-based segments that get you in entrance of precisely the proper individuals, each time.
Discover out for your self by signing up on your 14-day free trial at the moment.
