Brands are using social media giveaways to boost social media followers, grow email lists, and increase website traffic and sales. Because of the virality of a giveaway, brands are also launching successful email marketing campaigns alongside their social media giveaways.
A social media giveaway (e.g. Instagram giveaway) is an ideal opportunity for your brand to directly engage with its audience. And what better way to do so than with personalized emails sent directly to a potential customer inbox.
Before you get started with writing emails, take a look at some of the valuable insights we have on the emails you should send out during a social media giveaway.
How social media giveaways work
With traditional giveaways, a business would allow consumers to submit their contact details to stand a chance of winning a prize. When the giveaway is over, that business should have a list of entrants’ phone numbers or email addresses that they can use to further market themselves.
With a social media giveaway, businesses host their giveaway online and on a social network of their choosing. This way, businesses can easily reach out to the massive amounts of users on platforms such as Facebook, through the Facebook giveaway that they are hosting.
source: klook
With a social media giveaway, brands can get users to enter their giveaway by:
- Exchanging their email address
- Visiting a website
- Following the brand’s page on a social network
- Watching a video
- Downloading an app
- And more
Online giveaway services such as Vyper allow brands to automate the giveaway’s entry method. Because every action takes place online, you can efficiently track and carry out actions such as guiding users to your website or requesting an email address from them.
A summary of how brands carry out social media giveaways is as follows:
- Plan the giveaway - This includes choosing a goal for the giveaway (increase followers, email list, website traffic, etc.) and choosing the best social network to host the giveaway.
- Choosing a prize - Social media users are mostly attracted to the prize of a giveaway. Careful consideration must go into the selection of the prize. Brands use prizes that will mostly attract their target audience.
- Launch and promote the giveaway - Brands launch their social media giveaways by creating a post that has instructions on how to enter. It doesn’t end here, as giveaways still have to be promoted on other channels such as blogs and emails.
It is in this giveaway promotion stage when you will have to send out emails to your current list of email subscribers and customers to notify them of your brand’s next big campaign.
Why send out emails during a giveaway?
Email is a marketing channel that can certainly be used to promote a giveaway. Apart from providing brands with benefits such as more followers and increased traffic, giveaways are an excellent brand building opportunity.
Giveaways attract a lot of attention. The sort of attention that brands love, which is why it makes sense to use your giveaway as a conversation starter. One way of getting the conversation going is by sending out emails to subscribers to inform them of your giveaway.
Your giveaway can be the subject and focal point of the email. However, there is no harm in directing the reader towards your website or the product page. People are more likely to open up an email with the subject being “We’re giving away two exclusive products” as opposed to emails trying to sell them something.
Also, you can use an email signature as a giveaway promotion element. Add a banner to your email footer that mentions you have a giveaway and links to your home page. In this way, all your recipients will know about it and possibly take part.
Types of emails to send out during giveaways
As mentioned above, you can take advantage of the high open rates of giveaway emails by including links to your website and product page. However, the window of opportunity to send out giveaway emails is small, because of the time limit a giveaway has.
You also don’t want to send out too many emails regarding your giveaway to subscribers. Those who are not interested in your giveaway could either unsubscribe or mark your email as spam.
The three types of giveaway emails you can send out are:
- Giveaway announcement email
- Engagement email
- Congratulations email
Giveaway announcement email
If you already have an active list of email subscribers, then an email to announce your giveaway is a must. If your giveaway is set up with a referral system, your current email subscribers could enter your giveaway and refer more people to enter the giveaway.
If exchanging email addresses is an entry method, then you could potentially grow your email list simply by sending out a giveaway announcement email to current subscribers.
If the giveaway prize is one of your products, then you can direct readers to the product page to learn more about the prize. This is one of the reasons why it is recommended to use your own product as a giveaway prize, as people will visit your website to get more information on the product.
To engage your audience and make your giveaway more appealing, include an email banner with the details of your giveaway. You will then have the option to also share your giveaway banner on social media.
Engagement Email
You can keep sending out engagement emails during your giveaway to provide users with more information on the giveaway, your brand, and your products. Engagement emails can be sent to both your current subscribers and new subscribers (users that recently exchanged their email addresses to enter your giveaway).
Examples of giveaway engagement emails:
- Thank you email - Send out an email thanking the user for entering the giveaway. Thank you emails have high open rates, which is why this email will be a good opportunity to direct the user to your website or latest promotion.
- Giveaway reminder email - Send out an email to users that have not entered your giveaway informing them that the giveaway will end soon. E.g. “Only 5 days left to enter!”
- Increase your chances to win email - You can set up a bonus action system for your giveaway which will allow entrants to complete additional actions to earn bonus entries. Bonus actions are an excellent way to get entrants to perform additional tasks like following you on social media or downloading your app. Send an email with instructions on how to carry out these bonus actions.
data source: checkfront
Congratulations email
A congratulations email is probably one of the most important emails for one person and the worst email for everyone else in your giveaway. The winner will be ecstatic when they open up your congratulations email, and everyone else will feel a bit let down.
You have to try and carve out an email that will give the winner a moment to remember, while graciously thanking everyone else for entering your giveaway.
Most people who don’t win won’t actually have any issues, as they understand the concept of a giveaway that has one winner. However, some people can become bitter about ‘losing’. It’s even possible that these people can throw negative rants on social media directed at your brand.
If it is possible, a good idea would be to provide all participants with a voucher for your store or a discount on the prize (if it is a product of yours). This gesture can go a long way by making everyone feel special (or like they achieved something) by taking part in your giveaway.
Conclusion
Brands that have hosted social media giveaways in the past have successfully grown their followers, email lists, and website traffic. Another huge benefit of social media giveaways is the ability to launch a successful email marketing campaign alongside the giveaway. Sending emails to announce your giveaway and engage your audience can directly translate into more traffic being directed to your website and/or the product page.
Do you send out emails when hosting a giveaway? Let us know what types of emails you send to your list.
