Growth methods
Paid
Free

Giveaways, Sweepstakes and Competitions

What is it?

A giveaway for growing your newsletter is where you offer an awesome prize to incentivize people to subscribe or share.

Contests and giveaways incentivize immediate action, with the chance to grab that awesome prize often enough for new subscribers to take a chance on you.

The hope is they stick around and become a loyal subscriber once they see your amazing content!

The Hustle gave away a Tesla as part of a viral giveaway campaign that attracted loads of attention (and new subscribers).

For this to work, make sure you choose a prize that specifically appeals to your intended audience. What would your readers love to get for free?

Then, you need to think about how you want to promote your contest!

You could launch your giveaway for new subscribers on social media, asking people to share to enter. This creates a lot of buzz around your brand and will expand your reach to put you in front of people who might not have heard of you.

Morning Brew shared this giveaway far and wide on social media to entice new subscribers.

On the surface, "subscribe-to-win" giveaways can be a very affordable source of new subscribers... but the quality and engagement varies dramatically. Unless you're giving away a prize that is targeted specifically to your ideal reader, it's probably not worth the effort.

Alternatively, you can make it a referral giveaway where existing subscribers can enter by referring others. The more referrals they make, the more entries they accrue, and the greater the chance they have of winning.

How the Morning Brew Referral Program Created Wild Growth
Morning Brew readers got the chance to win these expensive headphones in return for a single referral subscription.

Referral giveaways drive fewer total subscribers than "enter to win" giveaways. But the quality is often much higher.

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One-time
An icon visualising expected payoff
Scales to 1000's of subscribers a day
Ideal for
Early Stage (< 5k subs or < $50k revenue)
Beginner (< 500 subs or < $5k revenue)
Growing (< 50k subs or < $500k revenue)
Scaling (50k+ subs or $500k+ revenue)
newsletters
... in the
consumer
niche
news/entertainment
personal/creator
technology
B2B
finance
local
space

The Good and the Bad

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  • easy
  • low CPA
  • fun
Red cross icon
  • can be very low quality and engagement

Examples of how to crush it

ByteByteGo

Here ByteByteGo are offering educational books and free premium courses. Their audience are developers looking to improve their skills, so this makes a lot of sense.

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Stacked Marketer

Here's Stacked Marketer giving away a Macbook Air - the ideal workhorse of every marketer, which is their target market.

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Morning Brew

Not the be outdone, here's another Macbook giveaway from Morning Brew (it's a very popular option as a high value item basically everyone would be happy to receive).

Speaking of no-brainer wide appeal, here they are giving away literal money.

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Hustle

The Hustle has an audience tech-savvy, entrepreneurially-minded professionals, so these sort of bundles will always do well.

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