You’re going to want some contacts to email once you launch your store. A giveaway is the perrrrfect way to do that.
We’re going to use an awesome free tool called KingSumo. It will let you give away whatever you want, for however long you want. People enter your giveaway by typing in their email only.
Then when the giveaway is over, you can export all of the email addresses so that you can market to them later!
Choosing the right product is critical. You’ll want to choose something that appeals to your audience and is relevant to your niche specifically.
If you give away something generic like a Target gift card, you’ll have all kinds of people entering. In the end, this won’t be worth it because there’s no guarantee they’re actually interested in your brand.
My general rule of thumb is to spend at least $100 on the giveaway. This way, people will actually be interested enough to sign up. If it’s too cheap, they might not think it’s worth it.
Amanda Asks
“How can I know which giveaways my audience
will really like?”
My answer: Since Amanda already knew that her target audience is young women who are into fashion, we can guess that they’re also into beauty. Those 2 industries go hand-in-hand.
So anything makeup-related is a solid choice in this case: brushes, cases, makeup sets, etc.
And since these people are incredibly active on social media – especially Instagram – I recommended that she go on these platforms to search for giveaways. Using hashtags like #giveaway is pretty straight-forward.
If you want some more ideas, there are lots of giveaway websites that you can browse through to see what kind of giveaways get people excited and ‘go viral.’ Try to think outside the box and get creative.
If you’re struggling to come up with amazing and unique ideas, you can always just go for a gift card for a niche-specific store. Just make sure that this store isn’t one of your future competitors! Best to go after related interests instead.
[highlight]Some dropshippers like to give away their own products to generate interest. I don’t like to do this, because I don’t want my future customers to think “Oh, I won’t buy this now. I’ll just wait for another giveaway.” I want to create a sense of urgency and scarcity for them to buy now.[/highlight] Amanda decided to go with a makeup set from the popular beauty line Zoeva. She also chose to give away 3 scarves from her store once it launched. (She’s a rebel.)
Her logic was that more this tactic could generate excitement for her store, and also get more sign-ups. More prizes = entrants might feel like they have a better chance of winning something.
Set up your giveaway
Now that you have your idea, let’s set it up on KingSumo.
Go to KingSumo and enter your email address to start
Fill in the giveaway’s details:
The title and description that your audience will see. Be descriptive, explain the value, and make it sound exciting.
Start/end date and time – make this last 1 week, so that it ends the day before your store launch. This way, you can announce the winner on the day of your launch.
When you’ll announce the winner (usually a day after it ends)
The name and URL of your company (just put in your Shopify URL for now)
The name of the prize and its monetary value
One or more prize images – get these from the source’s website
You can leave the sharing settings as-is
Since you don’t have any social media accounts yet, you can just keep the default bonus entries section. They’ll get 2 extra entries for every day they come back and click the link.
Also, once they sign up, they’ll have the ability to get more entries for referring their friends. This will be an awesome tool for getting more entries and giving it the chance to ‘go viral.’
Click ‘Save’ at the bottom
The next screen will ask for you to create an account. Fill in your name and a password and click ‘Register’
Your giveaway is alive! You can share on your personal social accounts and copy the link to post online.
Keep in mind that you can edit your giveaway anytime you want – even while it’s live. KingSumo is really convenient.
If you want to edit, just go to the Dashboard and click the ‘Promote’ button, then click ‘Edit.’ You can also see the page by clicking ‘View.’ Keep in mind that you’ll see the same thing everyone else does, so you can’t see a ‘preview’ if the giveaway isn’t live yet.
Here’s what Amanda’s looked like:
Collect emails through your Shopify password page
The giveaway page will have your store’s URL on it, which inevitably means that some people will click to see who’s hosting the giveaway.
Your Shopify store is password-protected and not live, but you can still collect email addresses through it, so I definitely recommend customizing it to get some pre-launch signups.
To customize the message on this page, log into your Shopify account. In the left sidebar, go to ‘Sales Channels’ ➜ ‘Online Store’ ➜ ‘Themes.’
On the ‘Themes’ page, click the blue ‘Customize’ button.
At the top left, click the ‘Home page’ dropdown and select ‘Password page.’
Click ‘Content’ in the right sidebar, and you’ll be able to edit the text and button that appears on the page when users visit your store before it’s live.
I recommend making an enticing pre-sale offer. Something like ‘Sign up to receive a 20% discount when we launch!’
This will increase your chances of getting more emails, aka more leads to potentially turn into customers through your email marketing efforts later.
When your giveaway is over, just head to ‘Customers’ ➜ ‘Email subscribers’ to collect the entrants and email them their pre-sale discount code.
Promote it far and wide
Once it’s live, you have to pump this baby out to every place you can think of.
After all, if no one sees it, no one will sign up for it!
Remember that list of giveaway websites and forums I showed you to get ideas and inspirations? Start by posting on those. You’ll likely need to make an account in order to post.
Another awesome way to get activity on your giveaway is to post it in relevant Facebook groups.
Whip out that handy list of niche-specific Facebook groups you made on Day 2.
But you can’t just go posting everywhere – you will get banned. I don’t think I need to tell you that getting banned is bad.
To play it safe, message an admin from each group to ask permission to post your giveaway.
To see a group’s admins once you’re a member, go to the ‘Members’ tab and you’ll see them all listed out.
If you’re not a member of a closed group, you can still see who the admins are on the main page.
Send them a message to see if it’s okay to post about your giveaway. Hopefully, they’ve seen your name once or twice from you being an active member.
Something simple like:
Using this technique, Amanda was able to post to a handful of groups and rack up some signups.
You should also definitely post on your own social networks.
Amanda got some great engagement and support from her friends and family.
The name of the game is post, post, post. Post it anywhere you think your target audience will see it and be receptive. But of course, don’t break rules and get yourself banned from valuable communities.
✓ Got to understand your niche better by figuring out the kind of giveaway your target audience would respond to ✓ Made a free giveaway online using KingSumo ✓ Shared it far and wide on the internet to start collecting email addresses for your marketing
