Giveaways are a great thing to have in your email marketing toolbox. Email marketers use them to get people excited and interested in a product. We like to use our giveaways as a way of generating sales.It seems like the opposite of what you should do. Giving stuff away for free [to make money]. But it’s a tried and true strategy that works, when done right.Here’s how we make money with our giveaways.

How we Organize Our Giveaways

Every giveaway has to start with some pre-hype, and an announcement. We like to send out 3-4 emails about the giveaway, and set a time limit for people to enter. It looks something like this:

• Giveaway announcement: let people know about the giveaway. Explain what they can win, and tell them how long they have to enter before the giveaway entry expires.
• Giveaway reminder: about halfway between when you sent the first email and when the giveaway expires, we send a friendly reminder about entering the giveaway.
• Last chance: this email is all about the urgency. Let them know that they’re about to miss out. They only have a few hours left to enter to win.

These three emails are the essentials you should run with every giveaway. They satisfy all three stages of the giveaway cycle prior to announcing a winner. You’ve got an announcement for pre-hype, a reminder, and a last chance for urgency.Here are some stats from a recent giveaway campaign we ran for a client:

As you can see, the reminder and last chance emails helped provide a huge boost to this campaign. This is why it’s so important to use multiple emails for each giveaway.Quick tip: one of the best times to run a giveaway automation is during a product launch, when you're building excitement and hype around that product.

How to Make the Most out of Giveaways With Email Automation

The next step after you’ve created your campaign is to write out the post-entry automation. This is where you’re going to close customers and collect sales. Here’s what one of our automations looks like:

• Email 1: thank your customer for entering. Also offer them a small discount (we usually do 10%) that they can use for a limited time as thanks for entering. You won’t typically get a ton of sales from this email. But it helps set up some more offers down the road.
• Email 2: follow this up with a content piece. This should highlight your product and create some excitement about the potential to win.
• Email 3: this should be another piece of content, but more details. This email should get down to the nitty gritty. WHY should they care about this specific product? What makes it special?
• Email 4: announce your winner! Include a link that directs to your website that your customers have to click in order to see the winner. Let them know that if they didn’t win, they can still order the product, and that they’ll have some special deals coming their way.
• Email 5: make an offer. Again, offer a smaller discount, like 10% off, to get the product they were unable to win in the giveaway.
• Email 6: last chance on the offer. Use urgency to convince your customer to buy.
• Email 7: some time in the near future, offer a slightly bigger discount (around 15%) that the customer can use on the product.

It’s a simple formula, but it’s one that’s taken us a while to perfect. Take a look at how one of our giveaway automations has fared over time:

The success of this automation comes directly from the formula we outlined above.Building hype before the announcement is important. It reminds subscribers why they entered the giveaway. It makes them anxious to win, and disappointed when they don’t. They realize that now they won’t get that item they so desperately wanted. Then you give them hope.You make offers that let them get a discount on the item. It’s not the same as getting it for free, but they still feel validated. This strategy works great if you want to make some extra sales and produce hype for a specific product. Try it out if you want to load your pockets and get your audience excited.If you don’t have the time to put this together yourself, never fear. Just book a quick 15 minute discovery call and let us be the ones to get their hands dirty. Heads Up: Discovery sessions aren’t useful for everyone… we specialize in helping 6, 7 and 8 figure ecommerce businesses build a community of adoring fans, while making bank with their email marketing. If you don’t care about your customers, or if you don’t like testing new things, you can keep on moving.If you want to elevate your email marketing game, but your brand brings in less than $50k/month get in touch - I’m working on something special for you.