There’s no doubting that a large email list is an extremely valuable thing to have, but actually growing one usually requires considerable amounts of time, effort and perseverance. Generally speaking, it just doesn’t happen overnight. But what if you could accelerate and grow your email list in a matter of weeks, or even days?

While there are many ways to grow your email list, one method has often been proven to provide more rapid and effective results than traditional tactics like offering a free downloadable eBook…

Introducing Promotional Giveaways

One of the toughest challenges with list building is actually persuading people to hand over their email address. People are already bombarded with promotional emails on a daily basis, so it can be tricky to convince someone to sign up for yet another email newsletter.

But one effective way of getting over this barrier is by launching a giveaway, whereby people get the chance to win a valuable prize in return for signing up to your promotion.

Launching a Giveaway

Choose a Prize

One of the biggest factors in determining the success of your giveaway is the prize you choose to offer. The prize must be highly enticing to the people you want to attract, meaning it must be extremely relevant and valuable enough to gain a good level of interest.

What do people in your niche REALLY need? What could you offer that would make your target audience fall over themselves to be in with a chance of winning?

Your prize could be a physical product, or it could be something like a free subscription to a paid service. The prize you choose doesn’t have to bankrupt you, but it must be valuable to your target audience.

Pro Tip: get some sponsors on board who are willing to donate a prize. This also provides opportunities for cross promoting your contest and making it more visible to a bigger audience.

A couple of my most popular giveaways at Natural Family Today have been Plant Therapy Essential Oils & Kitchen Appliances.

Decide on Entry Options

Since you are looking to build your email list, you will want to offer people the chance to enter your giveaway with their email address. You can setup your giveaway to integrate with your autoresponder (e.g. MailChimp or Aweber) so that entries are automatically added to your email list.

In addition, it might be worth offering people additional ways of entering. As an example, you could let people enter by making a Tweet or a Facebook post, which could help your giveaway spread over social media and potentially go viral.

Set Up Your Giveaway

In order to run a giveaway, you’ll need to create a landing page containing details of the prize and a sign-up form to collect entries. This will need to be integrated with your autoresponder service, social media accounts and any other entry options you are offering. You will also need a way to store entries and choose the winner.

Perhaps the easiest way to set up a giveaway is to launch it through one of the popular giveaway management tools like Rafflecopter or PromoSimple. These services essentially provide you with everything you need to launch and manage a promotional giveaway.

Promote Your Giveaway

In order to be successful, you need to place your giveaway in front of as many people as possible. The more people who see your giveaway, the more entries you’ll receive, and the more you will be able to grow your email list.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Post your offer on giveaway lists

A good strategy to begin with is to add your offer to giveaway lists and directories. There are literally thousands of these online, with two popular sites being Online Sweepstakes and PromoSimple Giveaway Directory

Advertise it on your website/blog

Whether it’s through a blog post, a banner advertisement or even a pop-up, your website or blog is a great place to let people know about your giveaway.

Share it on social media

While your content is running, it is essential to be active on social media – and this doesn’t just mean making a few Tweets and then forgetting about it. You should be consistently active and make posts that people will want to share themselves.

Ask sponsors to promote it

If you have sponsors on board, it’s well worth getting them to promote your giveaway to their audience.

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Growing your email list by hosting promotional giveaways is an excellent idea for many businesses, although it does take some work before you will start seeing effective results. In order to succeed, you must make sure you offer a great prize, partner with the right people, and generally shout loudly to put your giveaway in front of as many people as possible.