Participating in an online giveaway can be a quick way to add substantially to your email marketing list. These promotions are very popular for that reason and should be fairly easy to find. If you are unfamiliar with them, look the offer over carefully before deciding to join as a contributor and be aware that most of these promotions offer a huge variety of items of vastly different quality and subject matter. If you are overly concerned about being associated with lots of less professional looking material, you need to explore thoroughly before deciding on this list building tactic.
Here’s How Giveaways Generally Work –
- On a designated day, the giveaway website is ready and everyone involved sends a mailing to their lists and announces the giveaway on forums, blogs, social media and everywhere they can in order to generate interest in the giveaway.
- Visitors will go to the site where they are usually first asked to confirm their interest in receiving the free items by registering. This is the list building step for the person who is in charge of the Giveaway.
- Visitors will then be able to scroll through all the free offers and chose those that interest them. Clicking on the links of those items will take them to websites where individual giveaway members can collect the visitors contact information in exchange for the giveaway item.
What you need in order to participate in a giveaway –
- An item that is extremely attractive to your target market – mp3 recordings are popular. Other possibilities include an ebook, quality video, special report, access to a webinar or even a free consultation.
- A dedicated page on your website that describes your item appealingly and collects the visitor’s contact information. If you intend to continue to contact these people, perhaps by sending them your ezine, your page needs to state that.
- An autoresponder that stores your list – contact info of the people who have taken your free offer.
- A thank you page on your website that the visitor sees after they have signed up for your free item. This usually contains the option to purchase a related item.
- A short description of your giveaway item that will be included on the Giveaway page itself. Make sure to write copy that will compel people to click the link to receive it (remember the visitor may be choosing among hundreds of items).
- A quality photo of yourself or a picture of your giveaway to be listed on the Giveaway page. Using your company logo here is not usually successful unless your company is widely known.
- The ability and willingness to promote the giveaway thoroughly to your own connections. You will want to send at least one email to your current list, post an announcement on your blog and forums you belong to (being careful to follow promotion guidelines) and to notify people using Facebook, Twitter or your other social media channels.
Here’s an example of a current giveaway put together by a professional organizer. Be sure to look for Janet Slack’s giveaway called Efficient Computer Use.
You can get more ideas for growing your email list and building your business at Solopreneur.Biz. Most popular there is the free copy of Biz Tips: The Book with more than 50 more ideas for growing YOUR business.
I posted about the perils of giveaways on my blog a while ago:
http://allpathstovictory.com/2009/10/01/do-not-join-internet-giveaways/
Giveaways are wonderful both for contributors and for customers,
except for two things: (1) The stuff offered is often rubbish that
can’t be sold, or that hundreds of other people offer (2) Viruses
and trojans abound in the offerings and the websites on which they
reside, and the viewer has no way of knowing until it’s too late.
So if you are signing up as a contributor to a giveaway, be careful
which ones you join, and make sure that your offerings do not also
offer malware.
Gaye, Thanks for pointing out these important cautions. Giveaways
are an important tool if used carefully. I agree – do your due
diligence BEFORE you commit. Warmly, Janet
Any tutorials out there how to become expert in List Building ?`~.
sometimes i get some difficulty in list building, it takes a lot of
effort~`”