Achieving email list growth with a giveaway can skyrocket your subscriber numbers, but it’s not that easy.
You’ve received 8 great tips to grow your email list, but applying those may be a challenge. There are some things to specifically keep in mind when using a contest or giveaway to grow an email list. This post will lay some of those challenges out and help you defeat them.
Contests and giveaways are relatively cheap to run, and there are hundreds of different websites and plugins that will help you do it. They can also get you tons of new subscribers to your email list.
Though you can increase your email list from 20-500 in a short amount of time, the leads you get probably vary in quality. If you’re in B2C then you can get more quality leads than B2B because your audience may reach further into the general population (for this reason, coupons may work better for you also), but that’s not always the case.
When you set up a contest or giveaway, it’s usually an option to drop entrants into your email list automatically. You have to be sure you point out that you’re doing this in the contest rules and regulations though because there are legalities to keep in mind.
Even if you point it out in the fine print, that doesn’t mean people entering your contest will read it or understand it. You can do a few things to make sure people are entering your contest and subscribe with full disclosure, and you should be doing this.
Full disclosure
You should be doing these things to make sure people entering your contest know what they’re getting themselves into, or at least give them options. You may think it doesn’t matter if they know as long as it’s in the rules, but it does matter.
People don’t read rules, especially online, they don’t read at all. Not only do people not read rules, for giveaways there’s a large group of people who are only looking for free stuff. There’s no genuine interest in your organization, so this is the group you have to be careful of when opting them into your email list without making it obvious or asking.
The group who wants to enter a giveaway for a chance to win and that’s it, they won’t remember entering your giveaway and will be surprised when they get one of your newsletters. You’ll either lose them as a subscriber or worse, they’ll report your email as spam.
How do you defeat the unnecessary unsubscribers and reports of spam?
Don’t make it mandatory to subscribe to your email list to enter the giveaway or contest. One of the options on the entry form should always be an opt-in option to the email list. The opt-in should never be automatically selected because that would defeat the purpose.
It is true you’ll cut the number of subscribers you’ll receive, but you will get high-quality subscribers who care about your product or service. The opt-in is a great way to filter out those interested only in free stuff from ever getting into your email list, a place they don’t belong.
Reach your target audience
With each contest and giveaway, you’ll reach a number of people not in your target audience. That’s OK, you’ll also reach many people in your target audience. Once you reach some people in your target audience, you have the potential to reach more.
When your giveaway first starts, be sure to tell your current customers, they’ll appreciate being the first to know. This will get you started in entries, but it won’t grow your email list more because your customers are probably already there.
It’s ok that your customers are already on your email list, though, because they’ll be telling others about your contest.
Why would your customer’s tell others about your giveaway?
Giveaways almost always have (or should have) a social element to them. The more people tell others about the contest, the more entries they get giving them a better chance of winning. This is called viral sharing entries. It ensures you don’t have to continue driving new entrants to the giveaway, the sharing takes care of most of that.
Resources for giveaways
You’re hitting your target audience and making it known to those outside your audience exactly what they’re getting themselves into by entering, great! You’re on your way to expert email marketing status by growing your email list with a giveaway. But there’s a lot more to learn about giveaways and contests.
Where should you start?
The first place you can start is by subscribing to this blog and the online brand newsletter. I cover tons of great topics that will help you grow your business’s online brand which in turns helps your business grow.
Another great place to learn more specifically about giveaways and contests is the Rafflecopter blog. Rafflecopter lives and breathes giveaways and their blog has some great posts on all topics that will help you do giveaways right.
Rafflecopter is a great tool, but it can be a bit pricey. I was able to do many of the things Rafflecopter does but right in my WordPress site with WP Contest Creator, it even has viral sharing built right in.
There you have it, some great tips to help you grow your email list with contests and giveaways. Be sure to also catch other tips: 8 great tips to help you grow your email list.
