Freebie giveaway - anyone ever done this? advice...

[benji]

Hey all,

A while ago I read about someone a few years ago did a giveaway on their website for a free pen. It was a real success and managed to generate a big mailing list and even generated a few juicy links. I toyed with the idea for a while and I ran a competition a while ago for a chance to win a £25 M&S voucher if they signed up to my mailing list. I ran this for a whole month and didn't get 1 single entry!! I put this down to the fact that maybe people thought that because it was a lottery they probably wouldn't win.

So instead I came up with the idea of giving away a free bingo dabber. Since it was very relevant to my demographic I figured this would work brilliantly, better than a free pen right!?

I started promoting this last monday on my site and heavily on twitter and facebook. So far I have had all but 3 people claiming their free bingo dabber. Which is obviously very disappointing - I can't give them away!

So I'm wondering if anyone has ever tried a similar thing and what success you had if any at all? Any advice to increase the conversion rate would be appreciated!

[Scampi]

That sounds like a good idea, and if it is a branded dabber, even better. The problem is, people just don't sign up to news letters anymore. When was the last time you signed up to one? I can't recall when I did. Nowadays you can follow brands that you like on Twitter and Facebook, without the intrusion of emails coming through.
I think pushing mailing lists is a lost cause, and time could be better spent elsewhere, such as Twitter and/or Facebook.

Added bit: I worked in a shop once, and the manager was constantly trying to get the staff to get people to sign up to a loyalty card. It wasn't easy work, everyone is tired of loyalty cards, much like mailing lists. So instead of saying it is a loyalty card, we would promote it as a discount off your next purchase card, and surprisingly this had a far greater success than marking it as a loyalty card, 300%+ over the old way.
So you have to give the reader something different. Maybe something like 'for exclusive content, and a limited edition branded dabber, sign up to our customer loyalty program'.
So basically, whichever way you sell it, don't use the word 'mailing list'.

[universal4]

I think pushing mailing lists is a lost cause, and time could be better spent elsewhere

I think is mostly true, although i think you can still get newsletter signups, just not in the numbers like it used to be.

This also should be a sign for those that "buy" or "rent" mailing lists, if you do that you are spamming.

A branded dabber for a bingo site is a good idea, I had planned on doing that some time ago, but never did complete that project.

Rick
Universal4

[LukeC]

I love the give-away idea as it's very appropriate to your site. I used to enter a lot of competitions and have run quite a few giveaways before and I think that asking people for their address is putting them off - it seems too good to be true and you aren't a well known brand or a company providing a sample of their product (where it's obvious that you want me to buy something from you in future) so I'd be quite sceptical of what you'd be doing with my information. If you have a competition where people just have to submit an answer and their email I'd expect you to get more entries - they work better than pure raffles. Getting a good number of entries is also about how you seed the competition - lots of your normal visitors just can't be bothered to enter whereas if you advertise it in the right places (competition websites, free stuff forums) then you can get a lot of entries although usually the information won't be targeted (though in your circumstances, where the prize is very specific and low value you might avoid those kind of entries). You would at least pick up some links from doing this though. Good luck!

[benji]

Thanks for all the advice. The dabbers aren't branded unfortunately as I wanted to keep the cost price as low as possible for this. I think Luke might have a good point about the trust issue with giving away your address but there really isn't any other way of doing it. I've tried submitting my offer to a few freebie sites too so were see if anything comes of that. Most of the real big freebie sites charge you to place anything on their site which i don't want to do.

[LukeC]

Thanks for all the advice. The dabbers aren't branded unfortunately as I wanted to keep the cost price as low as possible for this. I think Luke might have a good point about the trust issue with giving away your address but there really isn't any other way of doing it. I've tried submitting my offer to a few freebie sites too so were see if anything comes of that. Most of the real big freebie sites charge you to place anything on their site which i don't want to do.

If I was doing this, I would turn it into a competition and you can list on competition sites which are nearly all user generated content. Then I'd have an easy, bingo related question that only requires name and email to enter (or whatever you need for your mailing list). Then by some kind of miracle a week or so later (not instantly - list a closing date and do it then) everyone that enters might be a winner... you email them and ask for address to send their prize to. Then start a new competition using the same or similar method (because this one was so popular you just HAD to do it again not to disappoint all the people who didn't win).

[ElaineGardiner]

I'm surprised the M&S Vouchers didn't work. Perhaps people aren't interested in bingo dabbers because they won't use them as they play online.

You could maybe speak to one of the companies you're promoting and ask for X amount of free bingo cards, or even pay for them and they can maybe credit the "winners" account. That way it would be something they are already there for. But I agree with Lukes comments about re-wording it and not "mailing list".