Growing Your Email Subscriber List With Contests

Cultivating a solid, permission-based email list can take a lot of time. So some businesses understandably get impatient waiting around for their lists to grow.

For these businesses, online contests may be an attractive quick fix. For example, let’s say a newly launched shoe e-retailer, Shoe-Fanatics.com, wants to grow its email list fast. So it partners with a well-established fashion news website, Fashion-Freaks.com, to run a contest or giveaway.

Fashion-Freaks.com has been around for years, and it has built a subscriber list with the same demographics Shoe-Fanatics.com is looking for. Fashion-Freaks.com will email its readers, recommending they visit Shoe-Fanatics.com to enter a contest or redeem a coupon. When Fashion-Freaks readers enter the contest, they can opt in to Shoe-Fanatics’ email marketing list.

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David Heinemeier Hansson, Ruby on Rails Creator

August 25, 2008

Consider these tips

While I can’t offer any legal advice about running contests, I do run the abuse desk at MailChimp, and can tell you all the ways this can go wrong from an email marketing perspective. Over the years, I’ve had to shut down quite a few user accounts that grew their lists from contests.

So here are some tips if you’re thinking about using contests to boost your list. We’ll use the example above and pretend you’re the shoe e-retailer:

• Perform some due diligence. Opt in to Fashion-Freak’s website, and research its list management practices. If it uses single opt-in, its list may be larger, but prone to prank email submissions and typos. If it uses confirmed opt-in, the list will be smaller but higher quality and more responsive.

Try unsubscribing from their list. Do they make it difficult, or impossible? That’s a bad sign, because it means they could have lots of angry recipients on their list, who will undoubtedly end up hating you too.

• Don’t send out contest email yourself. Let’s say everything checks out, and you decide to work with them. You want to send a promotional email to the subscriber list. They should already have a “Fashion-Freaks.com recommends…” email template for this sort of thing. They’ll probably ask you to follow their guidelines and create an email they’ll send on your behalf. Sometimes they’ll design the email for you, because they know what makes their readers click better than anyone.

The point is, the email list stays with them, and they send it for you. Remember, these aren’t your subscribers yet. If Fashion-Freaks.com offers to give you a copy of their email list, don’t take it. Those subscribers don’t know you and will report you for spam. And chances are, the list has already been sold many times before you and is very dirty.

• Communicate clearly, disclose everything. You’ll send your email creative, and it’ll take readers to a landing page signup form. When they sign up, make it abundantly clear that they’ll receive email marketing from your company. Don’t bury this fact somewhere in the contest rules. Use the opt-in method, not the opt-out method. Better yet, use confirmed opt-in.

Down the road, if a forgetful entrant reports you for spamming, her ISP will trace the email back to your signup form. If they see anything less than a pure, permission-based opt-in form, they are more likely to block future emails from you. On that note, make sure your opt-in form collects IP address, date, and time-stamp information for all new subscribers (this is your “proof of opt-in” if ISPs or anti-spam groups question you).

• Respond quickly. When people enter your contest, send an immediate confirmation email. Include a copy of your email-marketing newsletter (or send it separately), so they get a feel for who you are and what to expect. The point is, you don’t want to wait too long to hear from them. Contest entrants tend to be forgetful.

• Segregate lists. Don’t add all new contest subscribers to your master customer list. I’ve seen too many companies want to “remove all those contest freeloaders” from their list because their response rates brought down their averages, or their complaint rates jeopardized their deliverability. Save entrants into their own database, or flag them so you can filter them out if needed.

• Remind subscribers of contest. Remember, contest entrants are forgetful. And they’re really just looking for a prize. When they get their first non-prize-related email newsletter from you, include a prominent reminder of how they got on your list. Mention the fashion website partner in your introductory paragraph, or at the very least, add a permission reminder in your footer (“You’re receiving this email because you entered a contest and opted in at…”).

Contests can be a fast, cheap way to grow your list. But if you don’t cover all your bases, you’ll end up with a lower-quality email list with bad apples that can spoil the whole bunch.