Wishpond
Are you slightly overwhelmed by the number of contest types out there? Are you wondering which one will work best for your business, and how to ensure you get the most out of it you possibly can?
You’re in the right place, then.
This article will break down our most popular contest type, give you a few case studies of real-world giveaways and give you the exact reasons why they were successful.
Let’s get into it.
Giveaway Best Practices:
Before we get rolling with examples, let’s just quickly go over a few Facebook giveaway best practices you need to keep in mind (and you’ll see in the real-world Facebook giveaways below):
- Because of the low barrier-of-entry, ensure your prize is directly related to your brand (a product or gift card, for instance). This decreases the number of entrants who are only interested in the prize (increasing the long-time value of those who do enter).
- Focus on visuals – your prize, your brand logo, a random smiling face – it doesn’t matter, so long as your giveaway page is colorful, clean and professional. This will have a huge impact on your number of entrants.
- Consider multiple prizes over multiple days (for multiple winners).
- Coincide your giveaway with a season, holiday or special event. Tap into what people are thinking about.
Now let’s move onto a few examples of real-world giveaways which implement these best practices (and more) to drive some serious engagement and entries…
Real-world Giveaway Example #1:
The Numbers:
This giveaway received 57,100 views and an impressive 85.94% conversion rate, giving them 49,000 emails for prizes worth about $ 1200.
Why This Giveaway Was so Successful:
- The date: Running a fitness-related giveaway in February is a recipe for success. People haven’t yet given up on their New Year’s resolutions, and a prize pack of athletic gear and health-bars is a great offer, tapping into exactly what people are thinking about.
- Teaming up for success: Fatherly (the merchant running this giveaway) teamed up with Greatist and SkinnyMom. They’ve agreed to split their leads and promote together. This is a great way to spread the giveaway love (so long as your target market overlaps with theirs).
- The prize: Prize packages are a great way to increase the chance of someone entering your giveaway as even if an entrant doesn’t want one of the prizes they’ll enter for a chance to win another.
- Only Asking for an Email: This is the information these merchants really need, so they don’t ask for more. This will have been a huge part of the reason for their astonishing conversion rate (more than 85%).
Real-world Giveaway Example #2:
The Numbers:
This giveaway had 24,400 views and a conversion rate of 45.69%, generating 11,200 email addresses for 10 prizes worth about $ 30 each.
Why This Giveaway Was so Successful:
- Simplicity itself: They’re giving away one mop each day. The terms of the contest are written clearly and in the main body of the contest. This increases trust between entrant and contest host (as there’s no hidden conditions).
- Visuals: They’ve clearly designed two images based on their contest page builder’s template specifications (810px x 300px and 274px x 274px). This is a great idea, as it saves you time in the long run (you don’t have to resize images that look stretched or are too small).
- The visuals are also very professionally put together and grab the eye well with blue and beige and a contrasting red for the headline and the word “giveaway.” If there’s one thing I’d recommend investing on for your contest it’s not the prize itself, but the visuals associated with it (for instance, the prize above is probably worth about $ 30, but drove 11,200 leads.)
Top Giveaway Tip to Test: Make your prizes smaller (but offer 10) instead of one large prize worth 10x as much.
Real-world Giveaway Example #3:
The Numbers:
This Facebook giveaway got 37,100 views and had a 31.20% conversion rate, garnering the merchant 11,600 email addresses for $ 500.
Why This Giveaway Was so Successful:
- The prize: Featuring the dollar amount in large font and with a slight drop shadow really makes it stand out and grab the eye. Dollar amounts (provided they’re in the form of gift cards or – as in this case – online and store credit) are a great way to capture the attention of your giveaway’s page’s visitors.
- The merchant also included a bit more detail about what they offer (best practice when your prize is a gift card or store credit) which worked to give them an insight into what they could buy with their winnings.
- The two images: These two images were well chosen to show the full breadth of the product’s ability (from beautiful, long extensions to luxurious curls). The images were also very professionally done.
Real-world Giveaway Example #4:
The Numbers:
This giveaway had 5,103 views and a 64.59% conversion rate, giving the merchant 3,296 new email addresses for a prize worth about $ 200.
Why This Giveaway Was so Successful:
- Seasonal: Giving away a Christmas ham and all the fixins is a great seasonal prize which taps into what people are thinking about and really making their season a special one. This is the best kind of prize (the kind that really hits people emotionally).
- The Copy: The giveaway’s copy is very focused on the prospective entrant, using “you” five times. This is a solid best practice.
- Template: Though you can’t tell it within this one campaign, all of this merchant’s campaigns are created with the same optimized designs within the same template (see below for their impressive conversion rates). Doing this (provided the design elements are proven) alongside a straightforward giveaway building platform makes it easy to create a lot of consistently successful campaigns.
More to Brag About:
This merchant has an average giveaway conversion rate of 51.59% and they’ve generated a total of 12,081 leads with giveaways alone. Their policy, of coinciding every meat-related event (from national holidays to football events) with a giveaway has proven over and over again to be a successful one. Oh, and their prizes are never valued at more than $ 200.
Check it out:
Conclusion
Hopefully these four examples have given you a bit of inspiration and guidance for starting your own giveaway.
Focus on timely promotions, run based around a theme or event your target market is already thinking about (like getting fit in February and Christmas above) as well as eye-catching visuals. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out in the comment section below.
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