*This article may contain some affiliate links which supports me to make quality content.
I recently launched a new ecommerce business, Oko Living, and I discovered the best strategy for how to build an email list for free and from scratch. In one month I literally watched 3,500 emails roll into mailchimp while I did nothing. Well, I wasn't doing nothing, I got to work on other areas of my business!
If you don't have a budget or you already pre-launched and you're looking to keep growing your email list fast because you are a smart marketer and you know that email marketing is the #1 way to make money then this strategy is great for you.
We all know email marketing is important but here are some stats from a 2020 Hubspot report that show how it's growing as a critical part of business.
If you do not know how to grow your email list constantly then your business is most likely not growing either.
So now that we know building and email list is crucial on to my #1 way how to build an email list for free.
While a pre-launch is still a highly recommended way this way is easy, fast simple and free. Pre-launches can take a lot of time and effort and money especially if you are working with influencers, building a prelaunch site and running ads. This secret I stumbled upon is a fast and free way to rapid email growth. Sound too good to be true? I know. I could barely believe my results either but it worked for me and can work for you too. You too can attain rapid email growth for free!
My secret weapon to build for how to build and email list for free is called
Dojomojo!
Dojomojo is a brand network and partnerships marketplace. They empower marketers of all sizes to connect and build sponsored content and giveaway campaigns to grow their audiences.
There are multiple things you can do on Dojomojo but I used it to find a multi-brand giveaway (only with brands related to health and wellness like mine) and I applied to join! Each brand sent out emails to their audience promoting the giveaway and as their audience entered I got access to all those emails! Easy. As. Pie.
Here are the exact steps I took
I achieved all this during their free 30 day trial. Afterward, if it works for you can choose a paid plan or stay on their free plan! I definitely plan to pay for the program after the free trial. Getting access to establish brand email lists is invaluable to grow my business and this method is way cheaper than Facebook ads for leads
So if this is so easy what is the catch?
1. You need to hustle - not all contests will accept you especially if you don't have a list already. But Dojomojo is always trying to help new brands succeed so make sure to reach out the them and just ask for a boost getting into a group sweepstakes.
2 . As everyone knows contest can generate lower quality leads than paid ads. This is because you may get some freeloaders who just want to win and are not interested in buying your product. While lower quality leads are not ideal they are not bad either! They are much cheaper to acquire and you can always clean your list of those who don't open your emails after. The average cost per lead (CPL) for retail according to this report is a whopping $34. I personally found it cost me about 50 cents per lead on Facebook to run my own lead generation giveaway. And this one was basically free!
I did this strategy along with my own prelaunch and got 5,000 leads on my email list for marketing. Not too shabby! Having multiple strategies to grow your list is invaluable to growing your business. Feel free to reach out if you have questions or need help building your email list. I also offer strategies calls if you need help growing your email list.
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A prelaunch (aka. soft launch) is a marketing technique used to gather leads from a targeted audience interested and ready to buy your product the day sales open.
Having lots of sales day one assures your business is successful and can grow exponentially faster. It is also a great way to get product/market fit validation and know if you are on the right track with your business and how to adjust if not.
I have helped dozens of companies set up a successful launch and below outlines the best prelaunch marketing strategy that helped them all go from 0 to over 3,000 signups with the smallest possible budget in 30 days or less. You can easily blow past these numbers with a little more elbow grease, ingenuity, or budget. This article is written with details pertaining to a subscription box prelaunch but the same principals can be used for any successful product launch.
Overall it will take a couple days to set everything up and it does require a minimum budget of $75 plus a free (or several) free products to use as a give away. If you use influencers or do some lead generation ads then it will cost a bit more but your numbers will increase drastically.
Lets go over all the steps to Prelaunch:
Goal setting is the most important yet overlooked steps in a prelaunch. This is where your entire prelaunch marketing strategy comes from. You'll need to run some numbers or take an educated guess as to how many sales you need your first month to stay in business and what other goals you have.
To determine the number of emails you need you have to know how many sales you want to make your first month. Let's say the first month you need at least 50 subscribers to cover presale orders and all monthly operational costs.
Use this email goal formula:
MarketingSherpa reports that the overall conversion rate for ecommerce is about 5%, with most in the 1—10% segment. I have personally seen 5% to be a typical conversion rate.
They also published a list of conversion rates broken down by industry:
Choose the median conversion rate for your industry and place it into the formula above.
You may want to make a range from best to worst conversion rate scenario. Let's take the health and beauty industry as an example. We can use the 25th percentile to 75th as a likely range to hit with 2% to 12.5%. So for 50 sales you will want 400-2500 emails.
If you do not have product market fit, your prelaunch is not set up well or you get very low quality leads the conversions you may get lower conversion rates.
But do not fear! This whole process will reveal what is working and what is not so you can adjust and be successful. It's very rare to magically get perfect product/market fit day one without engaging and reiterating with your audience. It's just a part of business and I will explain how to course correct if you don't hit your goals.
Beyond sales what would you like to get during prelaunch?
Here are some things to consider that you can also gain to boost your marketing reach.
Assessing what budget you have and the return on your investment,
you can then carefully allot money to each part of your launch.
The best subscription box prelaunch marketing plans includes:
Depending on your budget you can use the following options below to mix and match, creating your perfect marketing plan. These examples are from the lowest possible budget to highest (well, highest I'd recommend for a first time self-funded entrepreneur).
Example Budget $200 ( 4-10 days of work)
Typical results:
Budget $1,000 (2-3 days of work)
Typical results:
What is your prelaunch really worth?
Let's say for instance you capture 3,000 leads with sales conversion rate of 5%, that's 150 sales. Let's also say your product sells for $30/box, that's $4,500 net revenue. But there's more...with a subscription box you should count your LTV (Lifetime value). Let's say the LTV is actually $90 that means your prelaunch can be worth $13,500 net revenue. Not to mention all the social proof and testimonials you can use for ads.
You can easily see how investing in your prelaunch can really add up to major revenue and momentum! Set up a business launch calendar with your chosen plan.
Now that you have made a solid plan for executing your prelaunch within your budget and desired results you can start!
The best tool to set up your landing page is KickOff Labs
I have learned through many launches the simpler the better. Really though, don't over think it, don't write a ton of content or make a whole site.
The Thank You Page is where you can ask people to share your launch and Kickoff Labs makes this so easy by giving your leads more entries for certain actions. When people are incentivized to share your launch campaign it's reach goes viral and your leads do the work for you.
Here is another landing page example for a client of mine.
Here is one of the most famous prelaunch campaigns ever.
Harry’s pre-launch gathered over 100,000 pre-launch signups within 7 days, using this simple landing page:
Thank you page:
Harry's made this contest viral by offering tiers of free products in exchange for referrals.
Simplifying Harry's tiered giveaway to a one product sweepstakes is better for subscription boxes and you don't have to worry about giving away hundreds of products. Choosing one grand prize like a free year of boxes is enough to get plenty of emails.
Luckily Kickoff Labs makes all of these options super easy.
This technique will work for most subscription box prelaunches but if your box is particularly unique or you have a larger budget to play with then I recommend consulting with and expert to get the best plan.
With your prelaunch page you have a fine-tuned machine to capture viral leads. Now once you get those leads you need to nurture them with an email campaign to get them excited for your box and hungry to purchase at launch.
Remember that this is the very first time most people have every heard of your brand and it can take time to build trust.
Here are the essential emails you should send out.
Now you have your landing page to capture leads and your emails to get them ready to buy you need to drive traffic to your landing page.
Ideally you should make this list 2 weeks before you start the prelaunch so you have ample time to reach out and get people lined up to post during it.
By choosing the right Influencers in your niche you can tap into their audience whwho matches your target demographic. Try and create a list of 100-300 Micro Influencers (those who have 1k to 100k followers). Influencers with 5k or less followers will often do a posting in exchange for a box. If they have 10k or more you may need to pay them. It can be beneficial to pay just a couple large influencers then to send many boxes out to smaller ones. But it's best if you can try both.
Promise the influencers a box when the first shipment goes out in exchange for one or two posts about your prelaunch and again on launch day. Make sure to send them any images you have to share as well.
Target influencers on the platform that your audience uses the most. For instance a beauty brand aimed at older women might be mostly on blogs and Facebook while a younger brand might be on Instagram. If its a craft box then be sure to use Pinterest. Make sure to send to some bloggers who can provide back links to improve your SEO. Blog links also get more traffic over time than social media posts.
Remember to connect your main URL like www.boxcompanyexample.com to link to and not the Kickoff Labs generated url. You can switch the URL to Cratejoy or Shopify the day of launch.
Be sure to take screenshots of their posts and use them in ads, emails and social media as social proof.
Another way to drive traffic to your landing page is using Facebook or Instagram story ads. Ads are a whole other topic so I will not go too deep into them here but below is the best preforming ad for the Essentially Simple Box launch shown earlier.
Although boosting posts is generally not recommended by experts a client of mine just boosted the Facebook post made in Kickoff Labs at $5/day and got 500 emails a week from it. She did a lot of target market research to set up the ad well.
Also remember that these email you are collecting are gold for creating look-a-like facebook audiences for current and future ads.
Now it is prelaunch day!
All you really have to do is sit back and execute your plan.
Get your site live, send out emails and social media blasts, make sure your influencers are posting and run your ads. When you preplan everything should go smoothly and you can watch the emails roll in. Make sure to email all your family and friends as well or post in related Facebook groups that allow self promotion.
I recommend you run the contest for 30 days. Any less and you miss out on emails and any more you lose the interest of your leads. You can lengthen the duration of your launch as needed if you are not hitting your goals.
The best part is you can use this same technique for any new products you add to your store or for any contest you want to hold to gather emails.
Also, be sure to be crafting your website during this time so it's ready for Launch.
If you follow these steps correctly you should see good results. If not here are some pointers to help.
If emails are trickling in and you are not on coarse to hit your goals try these tips.
1. First check your conversion rate on KickOff Labs analytics. If your conversion rates are above 10% congrats you are above average. I often even see conversion rates of 30-50% on my clients campaigns.
2. If you are at 10% or above then you need to send more traffic to your site via influencers and ads or other means. You may need to improve your ads or try marketing your prelaunch in related Facebook, slack groups or message boards.
3. If you are getting good traffic but your conversion rate is at 10% or below you need to improve your landing page. Your copy or images may not be right for your audience. Try creating an A/B test in KickOff Labs. Use radically different copy and images or use the copy from your best preforming FB ad. The A/B test will select a winner and you should see an improvement in conversion rates.
So you got a large email list but your conversion rates to sales was less then expected. Factors that can effect sales are:
1. Low quality of email leads:
If you get low sales your email audience may be freeloaders and not your true target demographic. When running a contest there will always be some people who only want things for free. If you emphasize the contest too much or advertise your link on forums or sites purely for contests you will get freeloaders who don't like to purchase products.
There is little you can do after a launch to correct this so try and be aware before launch. Try making the landing page CTA button read "Be the First to know" like Harry's page and post. After launch you can make sure to target sales ads to a different demographic and run contest more carefully.
2. Not having Product/ Market Fit
It's possible but very unlikely that you stumbled upon and idea that doesn't have an audience. What is more likely is that you just need to tweak the idea and audience a bit.
The best way to do this is to send out a survey to your email list.
Ask them what they thought of the product, the price, who'd they buy it for and about themselves (age, gender, what social media platforms they use etc.) Maybe you entered a really competitive market like beauty and your prices are not competitive. Or perhaps you thought your audience was on facebook when they are really on Pinterest. Go back and do some more research based on your survey results and tweak your product, offer or target audience.
3. Sometimes it just takes time and lots of testing!
I have seen some business start slow but figure out the best ad copy hacks and SEO to increase sales to even 100/day!
It can take some time and grit but you can make your company work, I believe in you.
If you need any help or someone to look over your prelaunch landing page you can book a call with me here. Or just email me to see what I can help you with.
I am also thinking of creating an affordable course that walks you step by step through all of this to launch in 10 days, with premade email and ad copy templates, influencer outreach scripts, bonus logo, templates and more. If you are interested leave a comment below!
Here is a breakdown of the different types of influencers, how to choose the best ones, what strategy to use for your business goals and budget, and finally how to put together your own list.
To start let's define what an influencer is: Influencers are people who speak about a particular subject niche and have a following of 500 - millions on channels like Blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest or Twitter and can help influence many people to purchase your product or service.
For small companies and start-ups I definitely recommend targeting micro-influencers for many reasons:
1. Know your Strategy
2. Know your Budget
2. Know your Audience
3. Know Your Influencer
GET YOUR TOP 300 INFLUENCER LIST HERE
With The average return on investment for every $1 spent on influencer marketing is $6.85 and rises as high as $11.33 for some sectors it just makes sense to try this for your business today.
When you purchase our 300 Influencer List you also get FREE bonus templates you can use to reach out and speak to influencers effectively so that you can promote your prelaunch or sales instantly.
Ok so you got your niche influencer list now what?
Be friendly and create a great proposal including:
* Items with asterisks are affiliate links where I receive a commission for sales.
Posts that are related to Instagram contest posts tend to earn roughly 64x more comments and 3.5x more likes when compared to ‘normal’ content.
I can not stress enough how important it is to regularly run contests for growth, engagement, and to convert new customers. Plus, they are just fun!
I gathered the 3 types of contests that are easiest, most effective and the best for subscription boxes to run on Instagram. Let's jump right into the good stuff but make sure to read to the end for all the deets.
Simple Giveaways are one of the quickest and easiest to get new followers. You can easily give away a free monthly box, special one-time box, a discount to your store or extra product you have lying around!
Include one or all of the following directions:
A great example of following all 3 directions is Curology's Giveaway
You Can see in 6 hours it got over 3,500 likes and 1,000 comments. As opposed to the previous post with only 1,400 likes and 14 comments. Contests clearly skyrocket your engagement and following.
Asking your followers to submit a photo of your box is one of the best ways to gather amazing user-generated content and social proof. Images and testimonials from many people are huge for building trust and appealing to new customers. Plus, you have tons of free content and photography to showcase on your media channels. I think this is the best contest to run as an evergreen contest you host consistently every month.
Directions to include:
As a prize you could give away a free month of your box, a gift bag or you could really spice things up with a mega prize like Yogi Surprise's yoga retreat.
This amazing contest aligns perfectly with their brand mission and tagline "Yoga Retreat in a Box" It also attracted hundreds of amazing images that they use to fill their Instagram. If they were to try and take this variety of photos it would cost thousands so it is well worth the cost of the prize to run a contest like this! You don't have to do a giveaway this big to get great results though, if you are starting out keep it simple!
Check out some of the amazing images submitted:
Pro tip - some of these images are submitted by influencers, Yogi surprise places a focus on influencer engagement by sending a box to lots of them. You can get your own niche influencer list here.
Having a partner increases engagement by 79%. Also when you pool together to create a prize you can give away a much larger prize. You can group money and buy one large prize or you can each enter a product into a gift bag. Partner with complimentary brands or ones you have in your box. This is also a great way to get followers from a partner's IG account who already has a large social following.
Directions to include:
To Enter:
Optional instructions you could add.
Now that you know the best 3 ways to run a contest for your brand here are all the nitty-gritty details to make sure you get the most out of it and do it right.
Here are some great hashtags to use to get new people entering your contest.
#contest #[yourbrand]contest #contests #contestalert #contestentry #sweepstakes #[yourbrand]sweepstakes #giveaway #[yourbrandgiveaway] #giveaways #winitwednesday #competition #win #[yourbrand]win #win
Here’s how to find great hashtags with quick Instagram hashtag research
If your contest runs more than one day be sure to post one to two times more. You can use the same image or better yet a fresh one. Repeat the directions in each post and make sure to check all posts when choosing a winner.
If you focus on giving away prizes that are relevant to your target audience, your contest will generate better results.
Also, as you might have guessed, giving away items of high value tends to produce higher levels of engagement.
The chart below shows that prizes worth $1,000 or more generally achieve 5.8 engagements per 100 followers.When writing the description for your contest, be sure to cover:
Make sure to also check Instagram's Promotion Guidelines
That is all you need to know to get started making impactful contests to skyrocket your growth. So to summarize, decide on a contest theme, create the rules, and establish a dedicated hashtag. You could also increase user engagement by cross-posting the contest on Facebook. Have fun with it and post consistently!
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