All of us love e mail advertising. With a median ROI of $36 for each $1 spent, it’s probably the most dependable (and least costly) methods to generate income.
However it’s price remembering that your viewers sees lots of emails. By 2025, the common particular person is anticipated to obtain over 375 emails per day. So you may’t afford to depend on the identical outdated messaging to maintain delivering outcomes.
Which brings me to the topic of immediately’s lesson: giveaway emails.
What Are Giveaway Emails (And Why Ought to I Care)?
Giveaway emails are precisely what they sound like: emails to advertise a giveaway contest.
The commonest use case for giveaways is to develop your e mail checklist. It usually goes one thing like this:
- A possible buyer lands in your web site;
- You serve them with a web site popup selling your giveaway;
- They enter by handing over their e mail handle.
So why would you run an e mail giveaway? For those who’re emailing somebody in your advertising checklist, you’ve clearly already captured their title and e mail. What extra would you like from them?
Really, there are many advantages to sharing giveaway emails, reminiscent of:
- Selling a product launch. Introducing a brand new product line? An e mail giveaway may also help you construct curiosity forward of the launch date or encourage potential patrons to browse the gathering.
- Cross-promoting different channels. Wish to develop your social following or develop your SMS advertising checklist? Immediate e mail subscribers to join different channels to enter your giveaway.
- Leveraging word-of-mouth advertising. Phrase of mouth is the most trusted advertising channel. Use it to your benefit by encouraging folks in your e mail checklist to observe you on social and tag their associates in your newest submit.
- Gathering buyer suggestions. You would possibly ask subscribers to answer a suggestions survey to be in with an opportunity of successful your giveaway contest.
- Gathering buyer information. Certain, you have already got their title and e mail handle. However you may construct a extra well-rounded view by asking for further information — like their age, occupation, location, and favourite merchandise — in return for getting into your giveaway.
And the perfect factor about giveaway emails? They’re tremendous efficient.
In keeping with one research, contest-related emails see common click-through charges of eight p.c—over 3 times larger than customary e mail advertising campaigns.
However (there’s all the time a however)… It doesn’t matter how enticing your giveaway is that if nobody ever sees it.
Nearly half of e mail recipients select whether or not or to not open an e mail primarily based solely on the topic line. So if yours isn’t as much as scratch, you would possibly as nicely not have bothered organizing the giveaway within the first place.
With that in thoughts, I plunged into the azure waters of Drip’s e mail advertising swipe file to fish out (and analyze) 9 examples of high-converting giveaway e mail topic strains…
1. Recess: Tie Your Marketing campaign to a Vacation or Consciousness Day
Giveaway e mail campaigns are all about producing as a lot publicity as doable.
Since you’re not making a gift of a bunch of merchandise (or reward playing cards, or another prize) for the sake of it — you’re doing it to develop your model. And, in the end, to enhance gross sales.
For that cause, manufacturers usually choose to align their giveaway contest round a vacation or consciousness day, permitting them to piggyback on an present dialog.
Apparently, August eighth is Nationwide CBD Day — an event for recognizing and applauding the numerous advantages of everybody’s favourite pure hemp product.
That makes it an apparent match for a model like Recess, which sells CBD-infused glowing waters and mocktails.
Recess celebrated Nationwide CBD Day 2022 by internet hosting a giveaway of $1,000+ price of CBD merchandise. It promoted the competition with this straightforward however efficient giveaway e mail topic line:
2. Sand & Sky: Showcase the Money Worth of Your Giveaway
Working a giveaway isn’t a assured path to larger open charges. Shoppers wish to know the prize is price successful earlier than they click on.
A technique to do this is so as to add a money worth to your giveaway e mail topic line. As a result of, generally, numbers are extra impactful than phrases.
That is borne out by analysis from Yesware, which analyzed 115 million emails and located that these with numbers within the topic strains noticed above-average open charges.
It appears this message is getting by to entrepreneurs. Slightly below two-fifths of giveaway emails in our swipe file featured topic strains that mentioned the prize on provide, whereas one in 4 referenced a particular money worth — identical to this instance from skincare and sweetness model Sand & Sky:
3. Taylor Sew: Reward Prospects With a Reward Card
Certain, reward playing cards aren’t the world’s most thrilling giveaway prize. However it appears shoppers recognize their comfort and suppleness.
When Blackhawk Community surveyed loyalty program members to search out out which rewards they discover most beneficial, reward playing cards proved overwhelmingly in style, with 70 p.c desirous to obtain them from ecommerce manufacturers and 56 p.c wanting them from brick-and-mortar retailers.
So don’t be afraid to maintain issues easy by selling a present card in your giveaway e mail.
However as a result of reward playing cards don’t have any intrinsic worth, you should definitely spell out how a lot your prize is price, identical to males’s clothes model Taylor Sew does on this instance:
As a result of (most) folks aren’t going to observe you on Instagram or fill out your suggestions survey for an opportunity to win a $5 reward card.
4. Sunski: Spark Curiosity in Giveaway E-mail Topic Traces
Clearly, there’s one thing to be mentioned for spelling out precisely what clients can anticipate out of your giveaway.
However that’s to not say it’s the perfect strategy for each model.
Perhaps your tone of voice is a bit more whimsical; possibly your viewers enjoys a bit distraction within the midst of a busy day.
Both manner, you may capitalize with a artistic e mail topic line that sparks curiosity and prompts recipients to be taught extra. Right here’s an intriguing instance from the oldsters at sun shades model Sunski:
(For context, it seems the shock in query was — you guessed it — a product giveaway.)
Additionally, hat tip to Sunski for its emoji utilization. Whereas they’re not for everybody, analysis exhibits that manufacturers can take pleasure in a 56 p.c enhance in distinctive open charges by including emojis to e mail topic strains.
5. Prose: Use Shortage Advertising and marketing to Drive Motion
The concern of lacking out is a robust motivator. If we’re informed a product is in brief provide or solely obtainable for a restricted interval, it immediately turns into extra enticing to us — which compels us to take motion.
It appears that is significantly true of Millennial-aged shoppers, three-fifths of whom say they’ve made a FOMO-induced buy earlier than, usually inside 24 hours.
So it pays to present your viewers a delicate nudge in the correct route through the use of shortage messaging in your giveaway e mail topic strains.
Shortage advertising is all about leveraging our innate FOMO to extend the perceived worth of a product or promotion, thereby encouraging us to strike whereas the iron’s scorching. It includes utilizing phrases like:
- Don’t miss out
- Final likelihood
- Going quickly
- Restricted version
- For a short while solely
This technique is a pure match for giveaways, that are usually limited-time campaigns reasonably than always-on promotions. So strive including a bit scarcity-inducing messaging to your subsequent giveaway e mail topic line, like this instance from haircare model Prose:
6. 4ocean: Gamify Your Giveaway E-mail Topic Line
Giveaways are supposed to be enjoyable.
In spite of everything, who doesn’t take pleasure in receiving one thing free?
Lean into this lighthearted nature by including a component of gamification to your topic line.
For the uninitiated, gamification is about stealing mechanics from the world of gaming and utilizing them in non-game-related settings (like e mail advertising).
It would contain including a “wheel of fortune” spinner or a quiz to your e mail physique. Or it could possibly be so simple as setting your clients a problem within the topic line, like 4ocean does on this instance:
The purpose right here is obvious: 4ocean entices clients with gamified messaging within the hope of boosting engagement with its giveaway.
This strategy works particularly nicely as a result of the “sport” — guessing how a lot trash 4ocean collected on a dive mission — aligns with the model’s mission to take away plastic from our seas.
7. Vinomofo: Increase Open Charges With Personalization
It’s arduous to overstate the effectiveness of personalised e mail topic strains.
In keeping with Sure Lifecycle Advertising and marketing, shoppers are 50 p.c extra prone to open emails with personalised topic strains.
Regardless of this, solely a tiny proportion of promoting emails — one in 50, to be exact — characteristic topic strains containing some kind of personalization.
It is a large alternative for ecommerce entrepreneurs. You understand personalised topic strains work, but they’re additionally astonishingly unusual. Seems like a slam dunk, proper?
On-line wine retailer Vinomofo is evidently nicely conscious of this. It usually employs personalization in its topic strains, together with this instance used to advertise a giveaway for its tenth birthday:
8. Sock Fancy: Use Giveaway Topic Traces to Generate UGC
Person-generated content material (UGC) is a dream come true for ecommerce entrepreneurs.
Not solely is it free content material — it’s additionally more practical than something you would create your self.
Analysis from Stackla found that 4 in 5 shoppers say their buy selections are extremely influenced by UGC, whereas just one in eight say the identical about branded content material.
What’s extra, a Tint survey discovered that 72 p.c of shoppers really feel customer-submitted opinions and testimonials are extra credible than manufacturers speaking about their merchandise. Which is hardly shocking when you concentrate on it.
There’s just one drawback: most shoppers aren’t going to ship you a bunch of high-quality content material for no cause. They want an incentive. Which makes giveaways an excellent technique for gathering UGC.
On this instance, Sock Fancy units its stall out early through the use of its giveaway e mail topic line to ask user-generated content material submissions:
9. Demise Want Espresso: Ask a Query
E-mail advertising is, for essentially the most half, a one-way road: you share some content material and your viewers consumes it.
However you may no less than create the phantasm of a two-way conversion by posing a query in your e mail topic line, like Demise Want Espresso does on this instance:
This may be a easy tactic, however it might yield highly effective outcomes. Certainly, Yesware’s analysis discovered that topic strains framed as questions see roughly 22 p.c larger open charges than the common e mail.
Craft Stronger Topic Traces With Drip
In fact, you may’t anticipate to know what works finest for your model by merely studying a bunch of e mail topic line examples.
It’s good to base your selections on arduous information.
Drip may also help you do this. Our e mail advertising platform enables you to check as much as 4 topic strains or content material variants at a time, so you may shortly perceive what engages your viewers (and what turns them off).
Wish to take us for a spin? Join your 14-day free trial immediately.
