How To Grow Your WordPress Website’s Email List With A Social Media Giveaway
Compared to other content types – social media contests are quicker to create and can yield better results.
They’re also one of the best ways to build an email list fast.
And if you can partner with a brand to supply a prize for your contest, they’re extremely cheap to run.
But how do you run a social media contest?
In this post, you will learn how to run a social media contest that grows your email list and social media following – with the help of a SaaS app that comes complete with its own WordPress contest plugin for easy integration.
Ready? Let’s get started:
Note: While this guide is written for WordPress websites, the giveaway app we are using will work on any content management system – not just WordPress.
How to grow your email list with a social media giveaway
Step 0: Choose an email marketing service provider
If you still don’t have a dedicated email marketing service provider, this is where you’ll want to start. Skip to Step 1 if you already have one.
There are several plugins that enable you to send email from your own server through the WordPress admin area. Unfortunately, this approach comes with a lot of limitations and technical issues you wouldn’t experience had you used a third-party email marketing service from the start.
We have an entire article comparing the best email marketing services if you want a few suggestions. We especially like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse for their multi-service platforms and ConvertKit for its simplicity.
Step 1: Research your target audience
A common strategy in email marketing is to offer a lead magnet on your email opt-in form. It typically comes in the form of a freebie, such as an ebook, a cheatsheet, an email course, etc. It’s an incentive that encourages readers to subscribe to your email list.
This strategy works best when you know what issues your audience struggles with most and what their interests are. Growing your email list with a WordPress contest plugin is no different.
In order for this strategy to perform effectively, you need to know exactly what to offer your readers. That’s where audience research comes into play.
Implement the following tactics to learn more about your audience:
- Ask them directly – Ask your most active readers if you can speak to them privately in a call, Skype, DMs on social media, etc. Then, ask about their journey in your niche and what their biggest struggles are. You can also add an email in your welcome email series that asks new subscribers what their number one problem is right now. You should also ask current subscribers this question from time to time.
- Listen to them – Pay attention to your inbox along with the comment sections on your blog and social media profiles. Your audience already uses these to tell you about the struggles they’re facing. You just need to listen to them.
- Research them – Your audience hangs out in a lot of different places. See what complaints they’re making on forums, in your competitors’ comment sections, in YouTube comment sections on videos related to your niche, and in low-score reviews on books and courses related to your niche on Amazon and Udemy.
You can also ask your audience to fill out short polls and surveys. No matter what method you use, make sure you understand what solutions your audience is looking for before you continue.
Step 2: Choose a WordPress contest plugin
Next, choose a plugin that makes it easy to collect email addresses as you run a contest on WordPress.
There are a lot of social media contest tools out there, but SweepWidget is by far one of the best options for WordPress users.
SweepWidget is a SaaS app, so it can be used with any content management system. However, it comes with a plugin for easy integration with WordPress.
Its customer base includes names such as AWeber, Steam, Quizlet, Rare Beauty, Rakuten and Roblox. It’s generated over 25 million leads and counting for its users.
For lead generation, it has over 18 API integrations for email marketing services, including most of the services we recommend here at Startup Bonsai.
We’ll demonstrate how to use it in later steps. Here are some of its top features in the meantime:
- Run contests, giveaways and sweepstakes.
- Run social media and email campaigns.
- Works with 30+ social media platforms.
- 90+ entry methods.
- Drag-and-drop entry form builder with custom fields.
- Multi-tiered prizes and instant coupons users can unlock with multiple entries.
- Add leaderboards to competitions.
- Customize styles and add your own branding.
- Schedule contests for a later date.
- Embed anywhere. A dedicated WordPress plugin is available.
- Track and manage entries. View real-time analytics.
A basic free plan is available. Premium plans start at $29/month, yearly subscriptions offer a discount.
Want to learn more? Check out our SweepWidget review.
Step 3: Choose a prize
Sign into SweepWidget after you create an account, and click New Giveaway.
The first step is to come up with a prize, then use the tool’s form to create promotional content for it.
Use the research you collected in Step 1 to come up with a suitable prize for your contest. Consider offering a free product or service of your own if these are part of your business model.
If you primarily generate revenue through your blog, ask brands you’re affiliated with if they’d be willing to partner with you in a giveaway. Your research should have also uncovered products and services your audience uses. Include them in your outreach emails as well.
Fill out the prize information in SweepWidget along with the rest of the Basic Information section when you’re ready.
Step 4: Define your rules for entry
This step’s easy as you already know the primary method participants will need to enter – subscribing to your email list.
SweepWidget makes this easy to set up. Configure the settings above the list of entry methods. They start with the “Limit the number of attempts” setting.
Click the Subscribe to a Newsletter button, and fill out the information in the box that appears.
The two most important settings here are the Integrate Your Email List and Mandatory Entry settings. Use the former to integrate your email marketing service with SweepWidget. SweepWidget will display the appropriate fields for each integration. A link will also be included to help you find your email marketing provider’s API key if needed.
Unfortunately, all integrations don’t pull up your entire email list. It’s dependent on how your email marketing service’s API is set up. For instance, when you connect MailerLite, you’ll only be able to select a subscriber group rather than your entire email list. This means you’ll need to create a separate subscriber group that includes your entire list.
Make sure the Mandatory Entry option is enabled. It ensures participants subscribe to your email list before they enter the contest.
You can also include other forms of entry by clicking any of the other buttons here, such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. These options will help you grow your following and overall influence on these platforms.
If you truly want to create a contest where participants submit work of their own, such as an image, song, video, etc., use the Upload a File entry method. You can accept up to 24 file methods with SweepWidget.
If you don’t want to require users to login with their social media accounts, open the User Login Steps section, and disable Facebook and Twitter.
Step 5: Launch and promote your contest
Open the Style and Design section of your SweepWidget giveaway to customize the way it’ll appear on your WordPress site.
You can also add images and videos for prizes, featured content, and a background for your hosted landing page.
Configure settings for the Leaderboard, Milestones and Instant Coupon features if you want to use them. Otherwise, open the Pre & Post Entry section. Use it to set up a Thank You page for participants as well as a confirmation email to confirm entries. You can even require participants to verify their email addresses to cut back on the amount of spammers who participate.
Click Save & Preview once you’re done filling out all sections to create your widget.
Head to WordPress, and install SweepWidget’s free plugin.
Now, go back to your SweepWidget dashboard, and click the Embed into Your WordPress Site link to uncover your widget’s shortcode.
Create a landing page for your contest on your WordPress site, and use this shortcode to insert your giveaway widget on it. You can insert it in a Text widget in your sidebar as well.
Promote the contest on your homepage and throughout your site with sidebar, pop-up and hello bar ads. You can also announce it on social media. Announce the contest to your current subscribers if you’re also using it to increase the number of followers you have on social media.
Use your social media profiles and email list to keep participants up to date on the contest as well as to remind them when it’s about to end.
Step 6: Pick a winner
When you’re ready to pick a winner, head back to the SweepWidget dashboard, but click the Entries button for your giveaway this time.
Pick a winner at random by clicking the Randomize Winner button. If you ran a proper contest where you chose the best entry out of all of the user-submitted content you viewed, select the winner from the Entries list, then click the Pick Winner button instead.
You can choose to display the winner on the giveaway widget. You can also click the Contact button to have SweepWidget open an email template in Gmail. Alternatively, click the copy button next to the winner’s email address if you’d like to set up an email of your own.
It’s just a matter of contacting the winner and announcing the official end of the contest after that.
Monitoring results and improving your contests
If you go back to the SweepWidget dashboard, you’ll notice a Stats button for every giveaway you’ve created. This allows you to view all of the data the tool has collected for you. It mainly records the number of views, sessions and participants your widget has.
You can also integrate your account with Google Analytics to track every action users take during the contest. All of this data combined can help you optimize any future giveaways you want to host.
Once your current contest is wrapped up, it’s time to segment all of the new subscribers you collected. Make sure your welcome email series has an email that has new subscribers segment themselves.
These segments will make it much easier for you to nurture these subscribers in the future.
Final thoughts
Email marketing has a higher ROI than any other marketing channel. And social media contests provide one of the most effective ways to encourage email signups.
Contests have a built-in sharing mechanism that make them one of the most effective content types available.
If you want a more top-level overview of how to use content to drive email subscriptions, check out this post; How To Grow Your Email List 3x Faster With Strategic Content.
Disclosure: If you buy through links on our site, we may make a commission. This helps to support the running of Startup Bonsai.
