When WPBeginner turned 14 years previous in 2023, we threw a giveaway to rejoice, which is a long-standing custom we’ve been following for over a decade now.
With the giveaway, we wished to say thanks to everybody who helps WPBeginner and use the chance to supercharge our development
The birthday giveaway was an enormous success. You might be questioning precisely what we did so you need to use the identical technique to develop your individual electronic mail listing and conversions.
On this article, we’ll share how we deliberate and ran a giveaway on WPBeginner that grew the our electronic mail subscribers whereas boosting our social media followers and extra.
Notice: This text is a part of our WPBeginner Insider sequence, the place we introduce you to the merchandise we use at WPBeginner. We publish WPBeginner Insider each different Thursday.
Why We Used a Giveaway to Develop Our Electronic mail Checklist
Earlier than we get into nitty-gritty particulars of a viral giveaway, you is likely to be questioning why we determined to run a giveaway.
Operating the birthday giveaway within the first week of July, is a long-standing custom we’ve been following for over a decade at WPBeginner.
It’s, certainly, one of many methods we select to present again to the WPBeginner group.
Over time, we’ve gifted a number of giveaway prizes like laptops, premium WordPress plugins, 1-hour mentoring calls with our CEO, Syed Balkhi, and even an all-expense paid journey to go to him for a 1-1 mentorship.
It’s additionally the time of the 12 months once we look again on issues we did within the earlier years, talk with our viewers and plan a 12 months forward.
To rejoice the birthday to the fullest with our viewers, we wished to make sure most attain for our giveaway.
We use viral sharing (refer-a-friend) to unfold the phrase out, which in flip additionally helps us supercharge our consumer development when it comes to electronic mail subscribers, social media customers, web site engagement, and extra.
Listed here are the teachings we realized by operating annual birthday giveaways at WPBeginner.
1. Choose the Proper Prize That Connects with the Viewers
The very first thing you should do is select a beautiful prize that may generate pleasure and encourage your guests to take part within the giveaway.
So, it’s a terrific thought to decide on a prize that connects with your online business and audience. For instance, many on-line shops award free merchandise, free delivery, or reward playing cards.
At WPBeginner, we frequently give away free licenses of WordPress plugins and themes to our winners. Our sister model, WPForms, runs month-to-month giveaways of cool devices equivalent to MacBooks.
As a result of our 14th birthday was a giant celebration, we provided a giant prize: premium plugins value $50,000. On high of that, we provided a 1-1 mentorship name with WPBeginner founder, Syed Balkhi.
We additionally determined to have a number of winners to encourage our readers and supply them a much bigger probability to win.
2. Select the Proper Giveaway Software
To create our birthday giveaway, we used RafflePress, which is the WordPress giveaway plugin created by our staff that allows you to create every kind of contests utilizing a easy drag-and-drop editor.
We designed it to make creating giveaways straightforward, highly effective, and reasonably priced. It additionally integrates with fashionable social platforms and electronic mail providers that will help you create viral giveaways.
Whereas we used the premium model, there may be additionally a free model of RafflePress that you need to use to get began. Notice that the free model lacks some superior options, equivalent to viral sharing, electronic mail advertising and marketing integrations, and bonus actions.
We rapidly created a brand new giveaway utilizing the Basic Giveaway template. As an alternative of itemizing the entire prizes on the entry kind, we simply entered a easy and descriptive title. We then described the prizes in additional element in our birthday weblog submit.
On the plugin’s Setup web page, we entered the beginning date as July 4th, WPBeginner’s birthday, and an finish date 9 days later. That gave our readers loads of time to enter the competition whereas nonetheless being quick sufficient to create a way of urgency.
On the high of the entry kind, we displayed the consumer’s variety of entries, the overall variety of entries throughout all customers, and the time remaining earlier than the competitors closed.
3. Select a Purpose for Your Giveaway
It’s vital to maintain your giveaway marketing campaign targeted by setting a aim. For those who goal at nothing, then you definately’ll most likely hit it.
On-line manufacturers typically use giveaways to encourage their prospects to submit critiques on assessment web sites like Resolution Heart, TrustPilot, and G2.com. This helps manufacturers to foster belief amongst their potential prospects when the purchasers evaluate the merchandise on-line.
One other fashionable aim web site homeowners typically set is to rising electronic mail subscribers. Your electronic mail listing is essential as a result of it offers you direct entry to our customers’ inboxes and permits you to ship them personalised content material, gives, information, and extra.
Reality: Based on the Direct Advertising Affiliation, electronic mail advertising and marketing, on common, sees a 4300% return on funding (ROI) for companies within the USA.
Equally, you’ll be able to incentivize customers to hitch you on social media, go away a weblog remark, and extra.
Here’s a screenshot from our final 12 months’s giveaway:
4. Use Viral Sharing to Supercharge Your Progress
At any time when we run a birthday giveaway at WPBeginner, we guarantee it’s straightforward for our readers to unfold the phrase out concerning the giveaway. One of many best methods to unfold the phrase out is with viral sharing, which is a technique of incentivizing customers to supercharge your development.
It doesn’t matter what your aim is along with your giveaway, you’ll be able to add the aim as an motion and encourage customers to take that motion. On high of that, by including social sharing motion, you’ll be able to carry in additional customers to your giveaway as effectively.
RafflePress actions are the issues that individuals must do to enter your giveaway. They’re the important thing to maximizing your giveaway’s conversions.
RafflePress comes with plenty of totally different actions, so that you simply want to decide on those that show you how to obtain your targets.
Actions are grouped into ones that allow you to get extra subscribers, get extra social engagement, and get extra visitors.
For instance, among the actions that may show you how to get extra subscribers embody becoming a member of an electronic mail publication, visiting a YouTube channel, and visiting us on Fb. These all align with the targets we set for our giveaway.
You’ll be able to add as many actions as you want. Providing a number of entry strategies encourages extra members to enter and may develop your following throughout a number of social media platforms.
RafflePress will monitor how many individuals use these actions individually so you’ll be able to see what number of new subscribers have been added to your electronic mail listing and social channels from the giveaway.
We added 11 entry strategies in whole and dragged crucial ones to the highest of the listing, beginning with ‘Be a part of the WPBeginner Electronic mail E-newsletter’.
After that, we personalized every of those actions.
We gave the e-mail publication motion a worth of ‘+3’. This offers the consumer 3 entries into the competitors as an alternative of 1. The additional worth will encourage customers to finish this motion as a result of it offers them a much bigger probability to win.
We additionally gave greater values to becoming a member of our Fb group (+5) and visiting our YouTube channel (+4) as a result of they align with our targets. We gave ‘Refer a Buddy’ the worth of +4 per referral to encourage customers to share the giveaway with their pals.
Apart from that, we enabled the ‘Set off on Signal Up’ choice. It will mechanically add customers to our electronic mail listing after they join the giveaway.
The most effective factor is that RafflePress comes with integrations for the most effective electronic mail advertising and marketing providers, equivalent to Drip. This saved us a ton of effort and time.
We arrange the ‘Be a part of an Electronic mail E-newsletter’ motion to mechanically add customers to our electronic mail listing.
5. Unfold the Phrase Out
We created a brand new submit on WPBeginner speaking about what we achieved in our 14th 12 months and introducing the competitors.
RafflePress enables you to simply add your giveaway to your WordPress web site utilizing a WordPress block, shortcode, or a devoted touchdown web page.
We selected the block choice as a result of it’s the easiest way.
All we needed to do was drag the RafflePress block into our submit and choose the right giveaway from the dropdown menu.
This allowed our guests to enter the competitors through the dates that it was energetic. As soon as the competitors was closed, it mechanically displayed a notification that ‘This giveaway has ended’ and didn’t enable additional entries.
Subsequent, we promoted the competitors on our social channels, together with Fb, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. We defined the giveaway and linked again to our 14th birthday weblog submit.
It’s all the time a good suggestion to make it clear who’s eligible to take part. RafflePress enables you to generate guidelines and phrases and hyperlinks to them on the backside of the entry kind.
6. Decide Giveaway Winners
If lots of people enter your giveaway or competitors, then selecting a winner will be tough and time-consuming. Fortunately, RafflePress makes it straightforward.
As soon as the competitors is closed, a ‘Decide Winner’ button will seem on the high of the marketing campaign.
Whenever you click on this button, you’ll be requested what number of winners you need to choose and whether or not to solely take into account customers who verified their electronic mail.
We had a terrific response to our competitors, so we ended up selecting 600 winners, and we additionally allowed unverified emails to win.
Upon clicking the ‘Select Winners Now’ button, RafflePress rapidly selected the winners for us, bearing in mind what number of entries every consumer had.
As soon as the winners had been chosen, we contacted every one by electronic mail. For those who solely have just a few winners, then you definately merely click on the ‘Electronic mail Winner’ hyperlink underneath every successful consumer.
Nonetheless, when you’ve got a whole bunch of winners like we did, then it can save you time by exporting the customers and importing them into your favourite electronic mail advertising and marketing service.
Lastly, we up to date our weblog submit to state that the competitors was closed and all winners had been contacted.
Closing Ideas
RafflePress works effectively for giveaways of all sizes, even these with tens of 1000’s of entries. We used it for our 14th birthday giveaway celebration, and RafflePress’ superior options and usable interface made the entire course of easy regardless of the 20,000+ members.
The free RafflePress plugin comes with a customizable Basic Giveaway template and is ideal for blogs, non-profits, and new companies trying to develop their social media engagement.
The RafflePress Professional plan additionally connects to the most effective electronic mail service suppliers, making it the only option if you wish to develop your electronic mail listing.
Total, we advocate RafflePress for on-line companies and eCommerce shops that want to use giveaways and competitions to get extra subscribers, enhance their social engagement, and improve their web site visitors.
Professional Guides on Utilizing Giveaways in WordPress
Now that you know the way highly effective giveaway will be, you’ll be able to comply with these guides to do the identical by yourself WordPress web site:
We hope you discovered this text useful to find out tips on how to run a profitable viral giveaway. You might also need to see our information on confirmed methods to make cash on-line running a blog with WordPress or our skilled choose of the most effective social media plugins for WordPress.
For those who preferred this text, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You may as well discover us on Twitter and Fb.