How We Used a Giveaway to Grow Our Email List by 6k

Looking for a way to grow your email list quickly? We recently ran a giveaway on SeedProd that added 6,507 new subscribers to our email list in just 25 days. Today, I’ll show you exactly how we did it.

At RafflePress, we’ve run and helped thousands of businesses run successful giveaways. But this time, we wanted to try something different for our Black Friday campaign. Instead of just offering software discounts, we decided to give away a MacBook Air M2.

The results surprised even us. Not only did we add thousands of new subscribers, but these leads were highly engaged with our follow-up emails.

How to Grow Your Email List with Giveaways:

Why Use Giveaways to Grow Your Email List?

Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with customers and increase sales. But getting people to join your email list can be challenging.

Here’s why giveaways work so well for growing email lists:

• They’re cost-effective: Running a giveaway often costs less than paid ads. Our MacBook Air giveaway brought in each new subscriber for less than $1.
• People take action quickly: The time limit on giveaways creates urgency. When people see they only have a few days to enter, they’re more likely to sign up right away.
• Entries can multiply: By adding social sharing options, your giveaway can reach more people. In our case, many entrants shared the contest with friends, which brought in even more subscribers.
• You attract interested leads: When you pick a prize that matches your business, you’ll get subscribers who are actually interested in what you offer.
• It’s easy to measure results: You can track exactly how many new subscribers you get and see which promotion methods work best.

We’ve found that giveaways work especially well during major shopping seasons like Black Friday, when people are already looking for deals and special offers.

How to Run an Email List Giveaway

Let’s walk through the exact steps we used to set up our giveaway. You can follow these same steps to grow your own email list.

Choose the Right Prize

Your prize needs to attract the kind of subscribers who will be interested in your business. When we planned our giveaway, we carefully considered what would appeal to our target audience while still being valuable enough to drive signups.

We chose the MacBook Air M2 because many of our readers are web professionals who use Macs for their work. The high value of the prize matched our ambitious goal of getting at least 1000 new subscribers, and it naturally appealed to our audience.

If you need some inspiration, see my roundup of proven giveaway prize ideas.

Choose a Tool to Run Your Giveaway

While there are many tools you can use to run a giveaway, including social media contest apps and standalone giveaway platforms, we chose RafflePress since our website runs on WordPress.

RafflePress is a WordPress giveaway plugin that makes it easy to create an online contest on your website. You can add entry methods like joining an email newsletter, following social media accounts, or visiting web pages.

Plus, it connects with popular email marketing services to automatically add new subscribers to your list.

To get started with RafflePress, install and activate the plugin on your WordPress site. Once activated, go to RafflePress » Add New in your WordPress dashboard.

Next, enter a name for your giveaway. We used “Black Friday” to keep it simple and clear.

Then, choose the “Grow Your Email List” template, which comes pre-configured with the best settings for collecting email subscribers.

After selecting your template, add your prize details and upload an attractive image. Using high-quality photos of your prize is important for making it stand out.

We made sure to include professional images of the MacBook Air M2, since people are more likely to enter when they can see exactly what they might win.

Connect Your Email Marketing Service

Before launching your giveaway, you’ll need to connect it to your email marketing service. This ensures that anyone who enters your giveaway is automatically added to your email list.

RafflePress works with popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, and many others. At the time, we used Drip for our email marketing, so connecting RafflePress was straightforward.

To connect your email service, click on the “Join Newsletter” action in your giveaway template. Then select your email provider from the dropdown menu and follow the connection steps.

Each email service has slightly different setup requirements, but RafflePress walks you through the process.

Once connected, choose which email list you want to add subscribers to. We created a special “Black Friday” list to keep our new subscribers organized. This made it easier to track results and send targeted follow-up emails later.

Make sure to enable the “Trigger on Signup” option for the newsletter subscription. This ensures everyone who enters your giveaway automatically becomes a subscriber.

Set Up Your Giveaway Rules

Every successful giveaway needs clear rules to protect both you and your participants. We made sure our rules covered all the important details about how our giveaway would work.

Your rules should include basic information like:

• When the giveaway starts and ends
• Who can enter (age limits, location restrictions)
• How to enter
• How winners will be chosen
• When and how winners will be notified

We set our giveaway to run for 25 days during our Black Friday campaign. This gave us enough time to promote it while maintaining a sense of urgency.

Creating our rules was easy with the built-in rules generator.

We simply had to enter a few details and click “Generate” for an instant set of terms and conditions that we could edit and display.

You’ll also want to check local laws about running giveaways. Different countries and states have different requirements.

I recommend consulting a legal professional to make sure your rules comply with all relevant laws. You can also see my guide on how to write giveaway rules.

Promote Your Giveaway

Getting the word out about your giveaway is crucial for attracting entries. We promoted our MacBook giveaway across multiple channels to reach as many potential subscribers as possible.

First, we announced the giveaway to our existing email subscribers. Since they’re already interested in our brand, many of them shared the contest with their friends and colleagues.

We also shared our giveaway on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Each post included an eye-catching image of the MacBook Air and clear instructions on how to enter.

To make our giveaway more visible on our website, we used OptinMonster to create an attention-grabbing banner. This helped catch visitors’ attention and drive more entries throughout our site.

The key is to promote your giveaway consistently throughout its duration. We posted regular reminders as the deadline approached, which created a sense of urgency and brought in more last-minute entries.

Choose Your Winner

Once your giveaway ends, it’s time to pick a winner. RafflePress makes this process simple with its random winner selection tool.

To choose our winner, we went to RafflePress » Giveaways in our WordPress dashboard and clicked the “Needs Winners” link next to our giveaway.

Here is an example of how this would look on one of our demo giveaways

The plugin automatically verified all entries to ensure they were legitimate before selecting a random winner. Then, it’s simply a case of clicking “Choose Winners Now”.

After selecting the winner, we emailed them using the contact information they provided when entering. We gave them 48 hours to respond and claim their prize.

It’s important to be transparent about the winner selection process. We announced the winner on our social media channels and sent an email to all participants. This helps build trust with your audience and gets them excited about entering future giveaways.

Follow Up With Your New Subscribers

Getting new subscribers is great, but keeping them engaged is even better. After our giveaway ended, we focused on turning these new subscribers into long-term followers.

We sent a series of welcome emails to our new subscribers. The first email announced the winner and thanked everyone for participating.

When you’re doing this, you can include a special offer or consolation prize in this email to keep people interested in your brand even if they didn’t win.

Don’t make the mistake of letting your giveaway subscribers go cold. Instead, start sending them your regular newsletter content right away. This helps them get familiar with your brand and the value you provide.

Keep track of how many new subscribers stay on your list after the giveaway ends. In our case, most subscribers stayed engaged because we targeted the right audience with our MacBook prize and followed up with helpful content.

Results: How Our Giveaway Performed

Running a giveaway helped us add 6,507 new subscribers to our email list in just 25 days. But the benefits went far beyond just email growth. Here’s what we achieved:

• Over 22,000 referrals from friends sharing our giveaway
• Over 11,000 LinkedIn shares
• Over 3,000 YouTube channel visits
• Over 2,000 Facebook likes
• Over 2,000 new Twitter followers

The key to our success was choosing the right prize, making it easy to enter, and promoting it effectively across multiple channels.

Remember, the goal isn’t just to get more subscribers, it’s to attract people who are interested in what you offer. By following the steps in this guide and using tools like RafflePress, you can run your own successful giveaway to grow your email list.

Ready to start yours? Get RafflePress today and follow the steps above to grow your email list with contests.

If you liked this article, you might also want to check out:

• How to Run a Successful Black Friday Giveaway in WordPress
• How Agile’ Grew Their Client’s Email List by 52% with RafflePress
• How Smash Balloon Grew Their Email List by 3,584 Subscribers
• How to Create an Email Newsletter (Step-by-Step)

And don’t forget to follow us on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook for more great tips to grow your business.