Giveaways to grow your email list

Giveaways can be 10x to 1,000x ROI

I've been a part of the company ​AppSumo​ that sends out daily software deals, and one of the fastest email list growing techniques they've done is giveaways.

BUUUUTTTTTTT.....it depends what type of giveaway you do that determines the quality!!! There's two types of giveaway:

Generic Giveaways:
Lots of people register, but lower quality.

Literally everyone will want $1,000 so everyone and their mom will signup.

Industry Specific Giveaways:
Lower number of emails collected, but WAY higher quality.

This is very specific giveaway, so only people in your industry will want this and share it.

Let's dive into some examples!

GENERIC APPSUMO GIVEAWAYS:

#1.) Noah's Free Car Giveaways

This was a giveaway contest where if you signup other people you get extra points in the giveaway.

100,000+ people signed up, but of course everyone wants a free car so the quality of the 100,000 emails will be lower.

They also did the same thing by giving away a CyberTruck when it first came out. Same result: LOTS of signups, but lower quality:

#2.) Apple Vision Pro Giveaway

This was another "generic giveaway" that took advantage of the hype over the Apple Vision Pro when it first came out.

This got 30,000+ email signups, but low quality, because when this first came out it appealed to many people if they got it for free instead of paying $3,500 for it.

So when you give away a generic product, you get generic people signing up, and they are often not your target customers!!

INDUSTRY SPECIFIC APPSUMO GIVEAWAYS:

#1.) Swag sticker giveaway to promote StickerMule

So this is a giveaway of swag stickers.....which is gonna get a LOT less engagement than giving away a car!

However the quality of these people was a lot higher, and many of the entrants ended up buying an AppSumo deal promoting StickerMule (that makes custom stickers):

#2.) Digital Nomad Airbnb Giveaway

This was a great giveaway aimed at digital nomads, who are typically very good AppSumo customers.

All the giveaways around digital nomads involved some kind of travel prize, or travel gear specific to digital nomads.

This of course got very high quality email signups because it targeted a specific group:

#3.) Attract AI buyers by giving away AI tools

Talk about specific! This giveaway focused on people buying AI tools for content creation.

It only gave away tools like Suno, Higgsfield, or ElevenLabs.....most people not making digital music or video wouldn't even know what these are:

A very specific giveaway like this will get less mass attention, but get shared amongst a very specific target audience, leading to a very high quality list of signups.

I personally did a "Copywriting Books" giveaway that did really well:

I packaged up my top 10 favorite copywriting books in a bundle, and talked about why each was so valuable.

People would signup and share the giveaway on a page like this:

I would promote this giveaway on social media and my email list:

It ended up doing about a 400x ROI over the course of a year:

It ended up doing about a 400x ROI over the course of a year:
Cost: $250 in books
Return: Approx $100,000 in sales over a year from the new emails.
ROI: 400x

Lesson to take away:

You can grow your email list in your industry with a specifically targeted giveaway.

But be warned, if your giveaway is too broad (like just giving away money), you may get lots of subscribers but maybe not your target audience.

Hope this email sparked some ideas for you!

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