Giveaways can be a great way to acquire new subscribers and fans, but in most cases, the magic of a giveaway doesn’t really happen only when the giveaway is live. The magic is often in the follow-up. After all, you can gain a thousand new subscribers, but those subscribers could be completely useless if you do nothing with them and let them dwindle after your giveaway is done. Knowing how and when to follow up with your new fans is a crucial, and often underestimated, part of giveaways.
Follow Up Right After People Have Entered
Hello, Welcome and Thank You
It’s important to communicate with your new subscribers right after they enter your giveaway. Following up at that point gives you the chance to say “hello,” “welcome to the email list” and “thank you for entering the giveaway.” Consider using a personal tone when you craft this message. Making people feel like they are valuable members of your community will help you to develop better relationships.
You could even go a step further and offer a “thank you gift” to your new subscribers in that welcome email. Whether that gift is a link to a free ebook download from your site, a coupon code that gives them a discount or access to exclusive content, a little gift is bound to go a long way. All of these things show subscribers that you’re grateful to them for subscribing, and, most importantly, get them to your blog or website.
Get Social
Also, make sure that you offer new subscribers the opportunity to follow your social channels. They may not have liked you on Facebook or followed you on Twitter to gain an entry into your giveaway, but they may decide they’d like to keep in touch with you after reading your welcome email. So make sure you provide links to your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. so that they can easily connect with you.
Point Them to More Chances to Win
It’s likely that people who entered your giveaway are interested in more opportunities to win. So if you’ve got more giveaways going on, be sure to mention where they can find these other opportunities to win.
You have more opportunities to follow up right away with a customized thank you message directly within your entry form. Right after your new subscribers enter your giveaway, they’ll be exposed to your own specially crafted “Thank You” message. You can fully customize this area with HTML and images – so use this message to point new subscribers to your other giveaways, content on your blog and your social channels. Learn more about how to craft the perfect congratulations message on our blog.
Follow-Up When a Winner is Announced
There are numerous benefits to following up with all of your new subscribers after the giveaway has ended. By doing this, it gives you the opportunity to:
- Let them know that a real person won, and who that real person is
- Say “thank you” again to your entrants for participating
- Offer your new subscribers something to ease the pain of defeat, whether it be a coupon code or another opportunity to win
You can follow up with your new subscribers with an email, but you’ll also be able to use your expired PromoSimple entry form to communicate with entrants.
Time-Sensitive Giveaways at Work
If you’re giving something away that’s only available for a limited amount of time, you can use the follow-up to your extreme advantage. Take it from Matt Diaz of I Love Free Concerts, who gives away free concert tickets in NYC on a normal basis. He’s had lots of success following up with people who haven’t won:
If you’re interested in seeing Jay-Z, we know you want to go see him. And we can send out an email and say, ‘hey, you didn’t win tickets to the show, but you can still buy tickets.’
Most of his giveaways will end the day before a concert, so those people who don’t win tickets could often be swayed to buy tickets on a whim, 24 hours before the big show. So following up by reminding those entrants that they can still buy tickets is a very powerful marketing tool.
(Read more about I Love Free Concerts and Matt’s giveaway tactics over at our Customer Profile of him.)
You can use similar tactics if you’re giving away something of a time-sensitive nature. Follow up and let people know that although they didn’t win, they still have the opportunity to buy (and perhaps at a discount).
Follow Up When You Have a New Giveaway
When you have a new live giveaway on your site, chances are that subscribers that you gained from past giveaways will be interested to hear about it! Make sure you reach out to your fan base and let them know that even though they may not have won the last giveaway, they’ve got another chance to win now.
Don’t Overwhelm your Users
The last thing you want to do is follow up with your new subscribers so much that they want to unsubscribe. If you told your subscribers that you’d be sending them occasional emails, make sure emails do go out occasionally and not daily. If they signed up with the knowledge that they’d be getting weekly emails, then keep those email blasts to once a week. Just make sure you communicate with subscribers but no more than you promised to.
Also, don’t try to cram a ton of information into follow-up emails. Keep it as short and sweet as possible so that you hold their attention. Have a main goal for the follow-up (whether it be to tell people about a new giveaway or to announce a winner), include some goodies in there, but don’t drone on and on for pages. Point them to content on your website or blog where they can read to their heart’s content if they so choose.
You can also check out these tips for 5 ways to optimize your newsletter growth with sweepstakes for more tips and tricks on optimizing the performance of the subscribers that you’ve gained through your promotions.
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