When WPBeginner turned 14 years outdated in 2023, we threw a giveaway to have fun, which is a long-standing custom we’ve been following for over a decade now.
One of many questions I typically get requested is why we run giveaways on WPBeginner.
With the giveaway, I wished to say because of everybody who helps WPBeginner and use the chance to supercharge our development.
The birthday giveaway was an enormous success. You could be questioning precisely what I did so you need to use the identical methodology to develop your personal electronic mail record and conversions.
On this article, I’ll share how I deliberate and ran a giveaway on WPBeginner that grew our electronic mail subscribers whereas boosting our social media followers and extra.
Word: This text is a part of our WPBeginner Insider sequence, the place we clarify issues we do at WPBeginner.
![run-a-successful-viral-giveaway-like-wpbeginner-in-post run giveaways on wpbeginner](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/run-a-successful-viral-giveaway-like-wpbeginner-in-post.png)
Why I Run Giveaways to Develop Our E-mail Record
Earlier than I get into the nitty-gritty particulars of a viral giveaway, you may be questioning why I made a decision to run a giveaway.
Working the birthday giveaway within the first week of July is a long-standing custom I’ve been following for over a decade at WPBeginner.
It’s, certainly, one of many methods I select to present again to the WPBeginner neighborhood.
Through the years, we’ve gifted a number of giveaway prizes like laptops, premium WordPress plugins, 1-hour mentoring calls with me, and even an all-expense paid journey to Florida, the place I reside, so I can supply a 1-1 mentorship.
![viral giveaway winner viral giveaway winner](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/viral-giveaway-winner.png)
![viral giveaway winner viral giveaway winner](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/viral-giveaway-winner.png)
It’s additionally the time of the 12 months once I look again on issues I did within the earlier years, talk with our viewers, and plan a 12 months forward.
To have fun the birthday to the fullest with our viewers, I wished to make sure most attain for our giveaway.
I exploit viral sharing (refer-a-friend) to unfold the phrase, which in flip helps us supercharge our consumer development by way of electronic mail subscribers, social media customers, web site engagement, and extra.
Listed below are the teachings I discovered by operating annual birthday giveaways at WPBeginner.
1. Choose the Proper Prize That Connects with the Viewers
The very first thing that you must do is select a beautiful prize that may generate pleasure and encourage your guests to take part within the giveaway.
At WPBeginner, I typically give away free licenses of WordPress plugins and themes to our winners. As you would possibly already know, I run giveaways on a number of of my different manufacturers. For instance, WPForms runs month-to-month giveaways of cool devices reminiscent of MacBooks.
As a result of our 14th birthday was an enormous celebration, we provided an enormous prize: premium plugins price $50,000.
I additionally determined to have a number of winners to encourage our readers and supply them a much bigger likelihood to win.
![Giveaway Preview Giveaway Preview](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-preview.png)
![Giveaway Preview Giveaway Preview](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-preview.png)
An enormous lesson I discovered is that giveaways don’t at all times should be costly, however they need to be thrilling sufficient. So, select a prize that connects with your small business and audience. For instance, many on-line shops award free merchandise, free transport, or reward playing cards.
2. Select the Proper Giveaway Instrument
To create our birthday giveaway, I used RafflePress, one in every of my portfolio merchandise, which is a WordPress giveaway plugin that permits you to create every kind of contests utilizing a easy drag-and-drop editor.
RafflePress is designed to entice customers to interact with giveaways whereas additionally rising our electronic mail record, web site visitors, and social media followers.
Irrespective of which giveaway plugin you utilize, be certain that it encourages your web site guests to make a number of entries to face an opportunity to win.
Whereas I used the premium model, there may be additionally a free version of RafflePress that you need to use to get began. You’ll be able to see our full RafflePress assessment for extra particulars.
I rapidly created a brand new giveaway utilizing the Traditional Giveaway template. As an alternative of itemizing the entire prizes on the entry type, I simply entered a easy and descriptive title. Then described the prizes in additional element in our birthday weblog publish.
![RafflePress Setup Details RafflePress Setup Details](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-details.png)
![RafflePress Setup Details RafflePress Setup Details](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-details.png)
On the plugin’s Setup web page, I entered the beginning date as July 4th, WPBeginner’s birthday, and an finish date 9 days later. That gave our readers loads of time to enter the competition whereas nonetheless being quick sufficient to create a way of urgency.
On the prime of the entry type, I displayed the consumer’s variety of entries, the full variety of entries throughout all customers, and the time remaining earlier than the competitors closed.
3. Select a Objective for Your Giveaway
It’s essential to maintain your giveaway marketing campaign centered by setting a aim. If you happen to purpose at nothing, you then’ll most likely hit it.
On-line manufacturers typically use giveaways to encourage their prospects to publish critiques on assessment web sites like Answer Heart, TrustPilot, and G2.com. This helps manufacturers foster belief amongst potential prospects after they examine merchandise on-line.
One other widespread aim web site homeowners typically set is rising electronic mail subscribers. Your electronic mail record is essential as a result of it provides you direct entry to our customers’ inboxes and permits you to ship them customized content material, provides, information, and extra.
Truth: In accordance with the Direct Advertising Affiliation, electronic mail advertising and marketing, on common, sees a 4300% return on funding (ROI) for companies within the USA.
Equally, you may incentivize customers to affix you on social media, go away a weblog remark, and extra.
Here’s a screenshot from final 12 months’s giveaway:
![Ways to Enter the Giveaway Ways to Enter the Giveaway](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-ways-to-enter.png)
![Ways to Enter the Giveaway Ways to Enter the Giveaway](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-ways-to-enter.png)
4. Use Viral Sharing to Supercharge Your Progress
Each time I run a birthday giveaway at WPBeginner, I guarantee it’s simple for our readers to unfold the phrase in regards to the giveaway with viral sharing. This can be a methodology of incentivizing customers to supercharge your development.
It doesn’t matter what your targets are together with your giveaway, you may add them as an motion and encourage customers to take that motion. On prime of that, by including social sharing motion, you may deliver in additional customers to your giveaway as properly.
RafflePress actions are the issues that folks must do to enter your giveaway. They’re the important thing to maximizing your giveaway’s conversions.
RafflePress comes with a lot of completely different actions, so that you simply want to decide on those that make it easier to obtain your targets.
![RafflePress Actions to Get More Subscribers RafflePress Actions to Get More Subscribers](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-actions-moresubscribers.png)
![RafflePress Actions to Get More Subscribers RafflePress Actions to Get More Subscribers](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-actions-moresubscribers.png)
Actions are grouped into ones that allow you to get extra subscribers, get extra social engagement, and get extra visitors.
For instance, a number of the actions that may make it easier to get extra subscribers embody becoming a member of an electronic mail publication, visiting a YouTube channel, and visiting us on Fb. These all align with the targets we set for our giveaway.
You’ll be able to add as many actions as you want. Providing a number of entry strategies encourages extra contributors to enter and might develop your following throughout a number of social media platforms.
RafflePress will observe how many individuals use these actions individually so you may see what number of new subscribers have been added to your electronic mail record and social channels from the giveaway.
I added 11 entry strategies in whole and dragged crucial ones to the highest of the record, beginning with ‘Be part of the WPBeginner E-mail E-newsletter’.
![Prioritizing Facebook giveaway actions Ways to enter WPBeginner giveaway](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ways-to-enter-wpbeginner-giveaway.png)
![Prioritizing Facebook giveaway actions Ways to enter WPBeginner giveaway](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ways-to-enter-wpbeginner-giveaway.png)
After that, I custom-made every of those actions.
I gave the e-mail publication motion a price of ‘+3’. This provides the consumer 3 entries into the competitors as an alternative of 1. The additional worth will encourage customers to finish this motion as a result of it provides them a much bigger likelihood to win.
![Increasing the Value of a RafflePress Action Increasing the Value of a RafflePress Action](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-actions-value.png)
![Increasing the Value of a RafflePress Action Increasing the Value of a RafflePress Action](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-actions-value.png)
I additionally gave greater values to becoming a member of our Fb group (+5) and visiting our YouTube channel (+4) as a result of they align with our targets. I gave ‘Refer a Good friend’ the worth of +4 per referral to encourage customers to share the giveaway with their buddies.
Apart from that, I enabled the ‘Set off on Signal Up’ possibility. This can mechanically add customers to our electronic mail record after they join the giveaway.
One of the best factor is that RafflePress comes with integrations for one of the best electronic mail advertising and marketing companies, reminiscent of Drip. This saved us a ton of effort and time.
I arrange the ‘Be part of an E-mail E-newsletter’ motion to mechanically add customers to our electronic mail record.
![RafflePress Integrations RafflePress Integrations](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-actions-integrations.png)
![RafflePress Integrations RafflePress Integrations](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-setup-actions-integrations.png)
Word: Throughout this giveaway, we have been utilizing Mailchimp for our electronic mail record, however we’ve since moved to Drip. You’ll be able to take a look at our WPBeginner Insider publish to see why we switched from MailChimp to Drip.
5. Unfold the Phrase
I created a brand new publish on WPBeginner speaking about what we achieved in our 14th 12 months and introducing the competitors.
RafflePress permits you to simply add your giveaway to your WordPress web site utilizing a WordPress block, shortcode, or devoted touchdown web page.
All we needed to do was drag the RafflePress block into our publish and choose the right giveaway from the dropdown menu.
This allowed our guests to enter the competitors through the dates that it was energetic. As soon as the competitors was closed, it mechanically displayed a notification that ‘This giveaway has ended’ and didn’t permit additional entries.
Subsequent, we promoted the competitors on our social channels, together with Fb, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. We defined the giveaway and linked again to our 14th birthday weblog publish.
![Promoting Our Giveaway on Facebook Promoting Our Giveaway on Facebook](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-facebook-promotion.png)
![Promoting Our Giveaway on Facebook Promoting Our Giveaway on Facebook](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/giveaway-facebook-promotion.png)
It’s at all times a good suggestion to make it clear who’s eligible to take part. RafflePress permits you to generate guidelines and phrases and hyperlinks to them on the backside of the entry type.
6. Choose Giveaway Winners
If lots of people enter your giveaway or competitors, then selecting a winner could be troublesome and time-consuming. Fortunately, RafflePress makes it simple.
As soon as the competitors is closed, a ‘Choose Winner’ button will seem on the prime of the marketing campaign.
![Select how many winners Choosing a winner for an online giveaway](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/selecting-winners-contest.png)
![Select how many winners Choosing a winner for an online giveaway](https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/selecting-winners-contest.png)
Whenever you click on this button, you can be requested what number of winners you wish to choose and whether or not to solely contemplate customers who verified their electronic mail.
Upon clicking the ‘Select Winners Now’ button, RafflePress rapidly selected the winners for us, bearing in mind what number of entries every consumer had.
As soon as the winners have been chosen, we contacted each by electronic mail. If you happen to solely have just a few winners, you then merely click on the ‘E-mail Winner’ hyperlink underneath every profitable consumer.
Nonetheless, when you’ve got a whole bunch of winners like we did, then it can save you time by exporting the customers and importing them into your favourite electronic mail advertising and marketing service.
Lastly, we up to date our weblog publish to state that the competitors was closed and all winners had been contacted.
Ultimate Ideas
RafflePress works properly for giveaways of all sizes, even these with tens of 1000’s of entries. I used it for our 14th birthday giveaway celebration, and RafflePress’ superior options and usable interface made the entire course of easy regardless of the 20,000+ contributors.
The free RafflePress plugin comes with a customizable Traditional Giveaway template and is ideal for blogs, non-profits, and new companies trying to develop their social media engagement.
The RafflePress Pro plan additionally connects to one of the best electronic mail service suppliers, making it the only option if you wish to develop your electronic mail record.
Total, we suggest RafflePress for on-line companies and eCommerce shops that want to use giveaways and competitions to get extra subscribers, enhance their social engagement, and enhance their web site visitors.
Skilled Guides on Utilizing Giveaways in WordPress
Now that you understand how highly effective giveaways could be, you may observe these guides to do the identical by yourself WordPress web site:
We hope you discovered this text useful find out the way to run a profitable viral giveaway. You might also wish to see our information on confirmed methods to generate profits on-line running a blog with WordPress or our professional choose of one of the best social media plugins for WordPress.
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