In the saturated e-commerce marketplace, standing out and creating a memorable brand impression is a necessity. Free giveaways is an ideal strategy as they provide your audience with a sample of your products and have a significant impact on customer loyalty - an impressive 94% of customers recall a brand from which they received a gift.
This guide will help you navigate the world of online giveaways, from initial planning to successful execution, ultimately boosting your brand recognition and sales.
Find Your Target Audience
Before initiating any type of giveaway, it's crucial to understand your target audience. Ensure you are clear about your ideal participant's age, interests, and the problems your products can solve for them. This demographic insight will help you tailor the giveaway to their needs and expectations, ensuring maximum audience engagement.
Glossier, a popular beauty brand, excels at offering exclusive giveaways to its primary audience: skincare and beauty enthusiasts. Their giveaways often include popular skincare sets, appealing directly to their audience's interests.
Establish Your Giveaway Goal
This goal is like a roadmap - it helps you plan your viral giveaway and then measure the success of your campaign.
Perhaps you're focusing on driving sales to boost revenue, aiming for an upturn in customer acquisition. You might also seek to generate more website traffic, increase your mailing list, collect user-generated content, or expand your social media follower count. Or maybe you want to create buzz with giveaways for a new product or service launch.
Once you know what you want to achieve, it's easier to run an effective giveaway campaign. Plus, you can measure the success by looking at things like how many new followers or email subscribers you have. Remember, setting a well-defined goal prevents your giveaway from becoming a time-consuming exercise with no clear outcome. Instead, it becomes a strategic tool that contributes to your overall business growth and helps achieve marketing objectives.
Check Sephora's "Pick your free birthday gift" giveaway, where the goal is to encourage website visitors to sign up.
Choose an Exciting Giveaway Prize
Research shows that online giveaways can increase the conversion rates up to 34%.
Your prize should reflect what you sell. Besides being an enticing prize, its value and relevance can significantly boost participation - people love freebies, but they need to be worth their effort. Prizes can range from a new product, a whole collection, gift cards, to unique experiences. However, ensure it aligns with your brand - a mismatched prize could confuse your audience and dilute your brand message.
For example, TOMS grabs attention of customers and ask to sign up for their email list by giving them a chance to win a free pair of TOMS shoes.
Set the Giveaway Rules
It's crucial to establish the rules and entry requirements for your giveaway contest. This includes eligibility criteria (such as age and location), the entry process, the selection of winners, and how they'll be notified.
Rules and requirements could include tasks such as following your brand, liking and sharing the social media post, commenting on a post, reviewing a product or service, tagging friends and family, signing up to an email list, or purchasing a specific product or service.
Also, determine the timeline for your giveaway. When will it start, and when will it end? When will the winners be announced? Give your participants enough time to enter and carefully plan your announcement to sustain excitement.
For example, if your aim is to build your email list, you might ask participants to subscribe to your email newsletter or follow your online store to earn a chance to win. This not only promotes customer engagement but also provides you with valuable data for future marketing strategies.
Many e-commerce businesses list 2-5 expectations, and candidates who meet all or most of them have a higher chance of winning. But, keep in mind that a simpler entry process could encourage more people to participate.
For instance, the handcrafted soap company, Melted Soapy, did a great job setting the rules for their giveaways. To be eligible for their social media contest, participants were asked to follow the brand, share the giveaway post, and tag friends in the comments section.
Choose a Platform to Design Your Giveaway
Choosing the right platform is crucial for the success of your giveaway. involve.me is an interactive content platform that facilitates the creation of engaging and visually appealing giveaway campaigns. It offers 300+ customizable templates, making it easy to create a giveaway that matches your brand.
For instance, you can use its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface to create dedicated landing pages with online giveaways designed to capture leads and spur customer engagement or create a fun quiz about your brand or products, and offer contestants with discounts or giveaway entry to participants upon completion.
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Collect Emails with involve.me
involve.me excels in facilitating the collection of email addresses from participants. In order to collect personal information from your participants, simply add a "Contact Form" element to one of your project's pages.
It can seamlessly integrate with a variety of email marketing platforms, ensuring that any email address you gather is automatically added to your email marketing list.
All data collected by the Contact Form element is available to be used in any of the native integrations or Zapier integration.
This feature can be highly beneficial as it allows you to send automated follow-up emails, keeping participants engaged and informed about the giveaway process, and potentially converting them into loyal customers.
Create and Use Coupons
If you want to give coupons as a giveaway, here is how you can do that with involve.me.
Initiating Coupons: Start by creating a new project or opening an existing one. Access the 'Coupons' option from the top menu.
In the pop-up window, assign a name to your coupon list, select the relevant platform, and choose the coupon type. You have two types to select from:
Single Coupon Code: This is a universal code used by all participants. Input the coupon code and set a usage limit, i.e., the number of times the code can be shown before it becomes unavailable.
Multiple Coupon Codes: This type generates unique codes for each participant. You need to paste your individual coupon codes here, placing each one in a separate line.
Display Coupons: It is up to you to show the coupon on any project page, or hide it to send via giveaway email.
Coupon in Follow-up Email: To send the coupon code in an email, include the coupon variable in the custom email setup. This email is sent to participants automatically.
Note: When you use this option, participants won't be able to see the code before the email is sent out.
This coupon system allows you to either provide the same coupon code for everyone or generate unique coupon codes per participant. Both can be embedded into your website quickly and easily.
Automating Follow-up & Announcing the Winner
There are 3 instances where it is important to automate email follow ups:
After users have entered the giveaway, send a thank-you email to acknowledge their participation.
Send promotional emails during the giveaway, to keep your brand at the forefront of the participant's mind. These emails could include special offers, news about upcoming products, or just a reminder about the giveaway.
After the giveaway has ended, send a follow-up email to all participants to thank them for their participation and to announce the winner. This is also a great opportunity to introduce your next steps or upcoming events to your audience. With involve.me, you can easily set up email automation at the appropriate times.
To set this up, follow these essential steps:
Click the arrow icon on your project card's drop-down menu.
Select "Configure" (or "Publish now" for draft projects).
Click "Emails" on the top left or scroll to "Email Notifications."
Tick "Send custom email to participants" (optionally, check "Send different emails for each outcome" for multiple outcomes). Compose your email content.
Promote, Promote, Promote
Once your giveaway is ready, the next crucial step is to spread the word and garner participant interest. Below are some strategies to maximize the reach of your giveaway.
Leverage Social Media Platforms
Social media network serve as an ideal platform to boost your giveaway. Tailor your messages for each platform, whether it's an Instagram post, a story, or a TikTok hashtag challenge. Giveaways often stimulate lively discussions in the comments section, increasing overall engagement.
Consider using Instagram stories to keep reminding your followers about the ongoing giveaway opportunity.
Website Popups
Captivate potential customers visiting your website with a well-designed popup for festive giveaways. This tactic not only aids in gathering email addresses but also targets high-intent visitors already interested in your offerings.
Hauser cleverly utilizes website popups to prompt their site visitors to join in the giveaway.
Influencer Collaboration
Expand your reach by collaborating with social media influencers or partners relevant to your industry. Choose those who share similar target demographics to amplify your contest. Incentivize them to share your giveaway, depending on your campaign objectives.
An example of influencer partnership: a known beauty blogger endorsing your skincare product giveaway on their platform.
Encourage Sharing by Participants
Online shoppers and your followers are your best promotional resources. Motivate them to share your giveaway on their personal social channels. Offering additional entries for every share could be an effective strategy to increase social engagement.
By establishing certain guidelines, you can further motivate participants to share the giveaway.
Track Results
Tracking the results of your giveaway prize is an essential part of evaluating its success. Here's how you can do that:
Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Depending on the goals you set for your giveaway, your KPIs might include the number of new email subscribers, increase in social media followers, web traffic spikes, or rise in product sales. These metrics allow you to quantify the success of your giveaway.
Use Analytics Tools: Most giveaway platforms, including involve.me, provide in-built analytics tools. These tools allow you to monitor user interactions, participation rates, and more. They help you understand how effectively your giveaway attracted your target audience.
Post-Giveaway Surveys: Conducting a short survey with giveaway participants after it concludes can provide valuable feedback. This can help you understand what worked well and what could be improved in future giveaway ideas.
Sales and Revenue: Finally, track your sales and revenue both during and after the giveaway. A successful giveaway should drive increased sales, both directly and indirectly.
Wrap Up
To wrap up, organizing an entertaining giveaway can propel your brand to new heights, creating buzz, driving customer engagement, and potentially catalyzing sales growth. It all starts with a strategic approach, a compelling prize, and effective promotion. involve.me offers the perfect platform to get your giveaway off the ground seamlessly and efficiently. Why not make the most of the tools at your disposal? Give involve.me a try today and kickstart an exciting giveaway journey that resonates with your audience and leaves a lasting impression!
