If you want to get a ton of participants for your contest then give away a holiday or a car. But if you want to generate leads, you need to make the whole experience relevant to your ideal prospects. Everything from the way you market the giveaway to the prizes you offer, should all align with the goals and interests of your target customers.

Holiday Parks New Zealand does a great job of qualifying prospects in the example below by using a quiz to narrow potential participants.

Relevant giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Trivia Quiz template. Urgency makes us act now, instead of later. When it comes to promotional giveaways, you can create urgency with participants by limiting the amount of time the promotion is running. Visual triggers such as countdown timers or expiring prizes on your landing page persuade people to enter the competition.

Urgency giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Multi-Day Giveaway Calendar template. Which is why the offer you present to giveaway participants is a vital part of lead generation. Your offer needs to have a high perceived value with your ideal customers in order for them to want to enter the contest.

If you want to make the most of the leads you capture from your contest then you need to also think about nurturing those leads and guiding them through the buying process. Here are some tips for doing so. The best lead-nurturing campaigns are multi-channel.

On top of social media, your giveaways and follow-up process should make the most of pay-per-click campaigns, remarketing ads, blog posts, email campaigns, and any other channel that makes sense for your target audience. The goal is to generate visibility for your brand before the giveaway, during the giveaway, and then after the giveaway when you are trying to close sales.

Creating a multi-channel experience for your prospects is one thing, but it needs to be consistent for it to have the biggest impact. Your offer, branding , timing and messaging all need to align across every channel you use.

Consistency is what instills brand recognition and recall. By the time you have a conversation with a prospect, they should already recognize your business. This creates a sense of familiarity and trust, which accelerates the sales process.

For example, you may test conversion elements at each stage of the campaign. With this information, you can improve the performance of your promotional giveaway next time. Even though the virality of your contest is somewhat left to luck, there are a couple of things you can do to increase the chance of this happening.

Here are some ideas Before launching your giveaway, take a moment to conduct some research and identify a topic or idea that has a proven track record. For example, you could use a keyword research tool to determine if your giveaway topic has a lot of Google search volume.

If it does, optimize your giveaway landing page for SEO and try to rank in search. This not only attracts more participants but reinforces that your topic is one of interest to people. Keyword research for giveaway ideas Another way you can determine if your topic has a chance of going viral is to look at other promotional giveaways on the same topic to see how they performed on social media.

BuzzSumo is a great tool for researching specific key phrases and seeing the highest performing content on social media:. Promotional giveaways almost always have an element of virality already built in.

For example, you can give entrants additional entries for every other person they get to sign up. All they need to do is share it on social media with a unique link!

Like this example:. Incentivised sharing giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Refer-a-Friend Giveaway template View and Create Your Own. The final idea for making your giveaway viral is to tap into the world of social media influencers.

If you can find a group of micro-influencers who have an audience closely aligned with your target customer, they can significantly increase the reach of your giveaway.

If your promotion is a success it can be both a blessing and a burden. On the one hand, you have lots of new leads. But on the other hand, you have a lot of customer service requests coming in and need to be prepared to handle these with professionalism and speed.

Here are some tips for doing so Make the most of new technology such as Chatbots to automate some of the customer service process. This may be hard to do if this is the first time you are running a giveaway, but over time you will become familiar with the types of questions asked at every stage of the campaign.

By automating low-risk parts of your customer service interactions you create space for your team to handle the more important requests. Make an effort to connect with your giveaway participants using Live Chat on your website and contest landing page. Live Chat not only provides a quick and easy way for potential customers to ask questions, but it also helps you engage with users and improve your conversion rates.

Live Video is a great way to create a personal connection with your audience without physically meeting them. Ok, now to the fun part - the prizes! Your prize needs to have a high perceived value. It needs to excite your prospects, and persuade them to engage with your contest.

If you sell clothes, then this is an obvious one. Clothing giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Giveaway template. You may even give away a gift card for another business, like Amazon for example. Bundle a few high-value items together! Just make sure the bundle components complement each other, like this Halloween movie-deal example:.

There is no better way to ensure that giveaway participants have an interest in your product or service than to offer it as a prize.

KitchenAid followed this simple formula below:. One way to increase the chance of a participant liking your prize is to give them a choice. Pick a prize giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Pick Your Prize template View and Create Your Own.

This giveaway prize idea is especially good if you run a service business. Instead of giving away a physical product, you could offer a free trial or bundle a package of the service you offer. Anatomy did this with personal training sessions:. Food and hampers have been given away as prizes in raffles or sweepstakes for as long as any of us can remember, so why not now?

Well, it depends on your business, but for this office catering company, it made perfect sense! For event companies or entertainment venues, giving away tickets is the perfect prize that complements your business offering.

But if you are in the travel industry like Topdeck, Busabout, and Etihad Airways, then they make perfect sense:.

Annual events are a topical reason to run a promotional giveaway and engage your audience. If you are running a giveaway for a specific event, then make sure you tailor the prize to align with the event!

The final promotional giveaway idea on the list is to offer a prize that gives participants exposure. This tactic is very common with photo contests when you have a big social following. Or, when you produce a collated output at the end of the giveaway which provides people with additional exposure.

See the example below from a pet company that featured photo contest participants in a yearly calendar:.

This contest requires people to create their own creative Lego build. Contestants will have to either purchase new Lego pieces or use the ones they already own. When a contestant has finished their build, they will have to submit their entry for review.

The next phase will be the crowd voting phase, after which winners will be announced. The prizes included four exclusive Lego packs as pictured above. The prizes are somewhat unique, yet desired by a broad audience. This means that this campaign can potentially generate low-quality leads.

However, some of the prizes are advanced Lego sets that hardcore Lego enthusiasts will appreciate. Lego could have just given away a Lego Death Star or Harry Potter set.

But they were careful in choosing something that experienced users will love. The contest is hosted on a dedicated website that has no useful links that direct visitors to an online store or any other Lego owned franchise.

Lego can use their contest as an opportunity to bring awareness to their properties movies, games, and toys. The Lego contest is an excellent lesson in using an online contest for brand building.

Dove held a selfie contest with the grand prize being a spa experience for two people. Facebook Users were required to take a picture of themselves holding a Dove Beauty Bar.

Then submit that picture into the comments section of the giveaway post. VYPER allows you to create bonus actions for your giveaways.

If your goal is to gain Instagram followers, you can choose to set up an Instagram action as pictured above. A spa experience for two people. An audience that has an interest in beauty and wellness. Apart from that, the only other goal Dove achieves is brand awareness.

The giveaway took place within a single Facebook post, which is great. However, Dove could have used a service like VYPER to manage their giveaway instead of manually going through entries. Facebook users were required to sign up to receive notifications when the giveaway started.

Free Pizza for a year is as good as it gets! This means tons of new email and phone leads that they can market their business to in the months to come. However, the prize is a bit too general and would have attracted a broad audience.

In other words, they had to deal with plenty of new leads wanting to opt-out of their email and SMS marketing campaigns. The giveaway prize might be the only issue here. Of course, it is a wonderful prize.

People with little to no interest in pizza yes, these people exist! may still enter to win the prize so they can offer it to someone else.

They could submit their email address to enter and then opt-out of future marketing emails. This way, the entry method would filter out some poor-quality leads Similar to the Lego Contest. Looking for more Contest Ideas? We compiled tons of contest ideas into a single blog post.

Read the full post here. DC Comics hosted a giveaway to promote the release of The Suicide Squad Blu-ray. The giveaway was hosted on their YouTube channel and promoted on the DC Comics website. Comic Book enthusiasts were requested to visit the giveaway entry video on the DC Comics YouTube channel to submit their entries.

YouTube users were required to complete their submission by leaving a comment on the video. The prizes on offer are exclusive products and items that will draw a specific audience. The audience being hardcore DC Comics fans and comic book collectors. DC could have mixed things up here by adding Batman and Superman products to draw a larger audience.

However, they took a more focused approach to promote their new Blu-ray release by sticking to a Suicide Squad themed giveaway.

This suits DC just fine as they are mainly trying to attract Suicide Squad fans to the giveaway. Its the Suicide Squad fans that will most likely want to own the blu-ray.

They will probably buy the Blu-ray afterward if they were not successful in the giveaway. The concept of this giveaway is indeed excellent. However, it seems like this giveaway is reserved only to DC comic book readers. There are tons of Suicide Squad fans out there that do not necessarily read the comics.

Why not leave this giveaway open to them as well? Also, DC could have used this giveaway to build their email list and social media followers. DC has an online comic book service which could have also been promoted.

They could have used this giveaway to direct entrants to their service. We all know how passionate comic book enthusiasts can be. You can only imagine the disappointment in those that did not win this awesome prize. DC could have given a gift to everyone that entered.

This can be a coupon for their store or a free digital comic of their choosing. They then had to upload the image to a website to complete their entry. Five winners were selected daily, adding to a total of winners. This works out to 50 bags of chips per winner. This prize can potentially attract a lot of low-quality leads.

However, the giveaway still makes for a great PR stunt that creates brand awareness. This giveaway is an excellent example of using a giveaway to build brand awareness while generating tons of UGC. Lays could have also used bonus actions to get social media users to share the giveaway and refer friends.

These actions will generate more exposure for the giveaway, and it will increase the number of people who enter. com hosted a giveaway that had one lucky winner walk away with a new car! The giveaway was hosted on VYPER and was used to generate a ton of new email leads and followers.

People were requested to register with their email address to enter. Giveaway entrants were allowed to complete bonus actions to earn additional entries into the giveaway.

A massive prize in the form of a new or used car from the Shift platform. com that are below that price. Shift was also kind to allow the winner to take a car that costs more. As long as the winner pays in the difference. The prize is fantastic! But then again, it is a prize that can potentially attract too many poor quality leads.

Assuming that the best leads for Shift are people who need a car and can afford one. The format of this giveaway is superb. They could have potentially acquired more or doubled leads from this giveaway if they were more persistent in their marketing efforts.

Shift could have aggressively promoted the giveaway on social media, email, and on their website. They could have also invested in paid ads on social media and Google.

The reason why they may not have invested further in marketing this giveaway is that they already put a lot of cash into the prize.

Sure, an awesome prize will bring in more leads. However, if you invest just a bit more in marketing, your giveaway can get much more exposure.

More exposure can lead to more referrals and social media shares. This means more leads and social media followers. See our case studies for examples of brands using these to collecting 50k emails and social followers in 3 weeks.

All the giveaways above giveaways might seem very different from each other. However, they do share some similarities. These growth hacks can potentially be the recipe for hosting a successful giveaway.

While there were some giveaways that were hosted exclusively on social media, most of the giveaways above had their own dedicated landing page. Their entry method requires participants to submit some form of media.

People had to create their own Lego build to enter the Lego Contest. Apart from getting other people to produce tons of branded UGC for them, these brands used their giveaways to create a buzz around their brand. Imagine a bunch of friends getting together to create the ultimate Lego build.

The Lego brand name will be deeply rooted in the minds of those people for the hours it takes to create their build. In the giveaway and sweepstakes examples above, the prizes were carefully selected to match the expectations of the brand.

You can see that the goal of every brand was to attract the most significant amount of high-quality leads with their prize.

Determine the main goal of your giveaway. Then structure your giveaway to achieve that goal.

Rather than running the promotion on their own, Colorful Natalie is able to expand their reach by collaborating with Syd and Ash.

And judging by the fact that the post had over 3, likes in less than 24 hours, it obviously hit its mark. Many are open to it, and you can DM them with an inquiry. Sorry if I sound like a broken record for using TOMS in many of my blog posts.

If not, they can easily exit the popup and continue browsing. Like TOMS, bridal dress company Revelry runs its e-commerce giveaway directly through its website.

Drop us your email to enter! Revelry is s fairly popular brand in the bridal fashion niche, and in March alone they received over , visits. That means nearly , people saw their e-commerce giveaway offer that month. Considering that email popups convert at around 3.

They can simply exit out of the popup and go about their business without it creating any friction. But if you can sweeten the deal by raising the stakes a little, you can expect even bigger results.

This allows them to segment their email list so they could send readers highly targeted content. The more segmented a list is, the higher the open-rate, click-through, and sales should be. E-commerce giveaways are an extremely cost-effective way to generate an influx of leads.

After all, by doing something simple like providing their email address or sharing their brand on social media, they can win some amazing loot. Having success is just a matter of following the right formula, offering an attractive prize, and using smart promotional tactics, which can include creating a post about it on social media, collaborating with influencers, or displaying it as a popup on your website.

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Get closer to your customers with Drip. Try Drip free Demo Drip Sign in. Blog Ecommerce May 24, 8 min read. What have you got to lose? They help brands grow their marketing lists, giving them the opportunity to transform one-off website visitors into engaged ecommerce leads and, eventually, paying customers.

As with any campaign, the first step to planning a promotional giveaway is to define the objective s you hope to achieve. Common goals include:. If they love browsing necklaces or buy a new bed cover every six months, you can hit their inbox with a targeted promotion at exactly the right time.

Many brands use promotional giveaways to increase engagement on social media and grow their follower counts, just like in this example from our pals at Haute Hijab :. Most of these contests follow a similar format, offering followers the chance to win a prize in exchange for:. This is an easy way to reach new audiences on social media—although, clearly, there are no guarantees that those people will follow you or engage with your content let alone buy from you.

Rather than asking customers to comment on your social posts or give you their email address, task them with sharing photos and videos of them using and enjoying your product.

Referral campaigns are typically about generating sales instead of leads. So they tend to offer more attractive, guaranteed rewards. Rather than giving participants the chance to win a prize, you might offer a free product or even a cash incentive to both the referrer and the referred customer.

Like any type of promotion, it makes most sense to launch your giveaway campaign during slower sales periods for your brand. Beyond that, build your launch around times when engagement is highest across your chosen promotional channels. For instance, the best time to send emails is generally on Tuesdays and Thursdays….

Done well, promotional giveaways can grow your marketing list, generate customer referrals, and drive sales and revenue.

Get it wrong and you risk devaluing your brand and turning off loyal customers. Here are five best practices to boost your chances of running a successful giveaway….

Or if you want to capture more email addresses, try targeting new customers visiting your website via onsite popups. The easiest solution is to give away your own products. With a little creativity, you might be able to identify a theme and prize that makes for a more engaging contest.

For a brand like The White Company , which sells luxury homeware and clothing, the most obvious strategy is to offer up a fancy duvet set or a botanical candle as a prize.

Instead, it gave customers the chance to win a mini-break at a luxury cottage on the English coast:. Because The White Company helped style the property, effectively creating a physical case study for its whole aesthetic ; something aspirational to inspire its audience.

As with the Haute Hijab example I shared earlier in this article, the most obvious approach is to make social engagement a key element of your campaign—prompting followers to comment on a post or tag a friend in order to enter.

But you can also leverage platforms like Instagram and TikTok to raise awareness of your giveaway and direct followers to register on a dedicated competition landing page. In the marketing world, simple is always best, and giveaways are no different. Sure, your legal team will likely want to cover your back with a bunch of terms and conditions.

But the overarching rules of the competition—how to enter, what the prize is, and when the winner will be announced—should be easily digestible.

National lotteries are a good example. They give away millions of dollars, yet all you have to do to enter is buy a ticket and match some numbers.

Anyone can understand it. As tempting as it sounds, offering a new iPhone in your giveaway will do little good for you. Because attractive but irrelevant prizes are spam magnets. Instead, keep your prize relevant to your products and your value proposition.

Before planning your next giveaway, make sure that it serves your conversion goals. Rather, it speaks to your buyer persona. With a relevant prize that resonates with your buyer persona, you can actually promote your online store, on top of collecting email addresses.

Take this example by J. Crew Factory :. The company hosts a spring giveaway on their site and creates a dedicated landing page for it. The big prize is a package that includes a gift card winners can spend on J. If you want to make the prize more desirable, you can combine a gift card with other things, as J.

Crew Factory does. This way, visitors will get the chance to try your products. And it increases their likelihood of becoming return customers. Notice how J. Crew Factory asks if you want to sign up for their email list as the last step and leaves it optional. Give participants the space to decide for themselves, instead of preselecting the newsletter checkbox.

One major advantage of hosting an onsite giveaway is the ability to customize every part of your contest. With an onsite giveaway campaign, you can decide what actions visitors should take, which information they should submit, and where they should go next.

Writing compelling campaign copy and a benefit-driven call-to-action CTA are the two pillars of an effective giveaway campaign. Take a look at this example by Jysk Vin :.

Unlike J. Crew Factory, Jysk Vin uses an onsite campaign to host their giveaway. This way, they can inform all their site visitors about the giveaway without making them go to a new page. With a well-written onsite campaign like the one above, you can easily nudge your visitors to join your giveaway and give them a strong reason to sign up for your newsletter.

With Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year, the holiday shopping season is the busiest time of the year for e-commerce marketers. Adding a little twist to your holiday campaigns can help you stand out among hundreds of other festive giveaways.

Many online stores host giveaways, especially during the holiday season, and they usually offer winners a few big prizes.

But you can make your contests even more attractive by letting your site visitors choose the prize they want themselves. But it certainly evokes curiosity. They ask you to make a wishlist with their products, write why you should win, and send the company an email. Chubbies successfully leverage the holiday season with this humorous giveaway email.

But if you want to execute this brilliant idea in a more effective way, try making things easier for your visitors. Instead, you can create a simple form with a few input fields and show it only on relevant product pages. And you can exclude certain pages, such as your about or contact pages if you want to hide the campaign.

You can also use advanced scheduling to set up and deactivate your giveaway campaigns ahead of time. Once they enter your sales funnel , you have a chance to promote your products and convert them into customers—whether they join your giveaway or not.

Check out this example by Oru Kayak :. Following common practice, the company partners up with other e-commerce brands, such as Sunski , to offer bigger prizes in their giveaway.

They bring all the prizes you can win together and use the picture on their giveaway landing page. They also include the dollar value of the prizes to increase their perceived value.

They list all the products you can win with their individual prices and links to product detail pages :.

In addition to giving you information about the giveaway, they also introduce you to their products and promote them in a subtle way. This is a more effective way of introducing your products and creating excitement for them, compared to simply listing the items participants can win.

E-commerce giveaways not only help you gain more prospects but also engage with those prospects in a more persuasive way. A timely giveaway can create a gentle nudge that your visitors need in order to become customers.

Plus, it can help increase their average order value AOV. Take a look at this giveaway idea by Vinomofo :. Milestones like this are a clever excuse to appreciate your customers and host a giveaway to increase your sales.

Even though this is a smart giveaway idea, hosting it on a landing page makes it difficult for site visitors to see it. Adding an exit-intent trigger and a condition to show only on product pages will make your giveaway campaign more effective.

If you want to create a sense of urgency without being annoying, try adding a countdown timer to your campaign. If your giveaway requires a minimum shopping limit to enter, you can nudge visitors who are close to the limit based on their basket value. You want to find out why your visitors abandon their carts or how you can improve your online store.

You send out survey invitation emails over and over again, but nobody is interested in responding.