Social Media Marketing for Business

Struggling to come up with a great prize? The typical cash prize or iPad giveaway doesn’t cut it when you are trying to get quality email leads from your ideal audience. Sometimes it’s hard to find something creative and valuable that will entice people to enter your contest. If you’re struggling in this area, read on to learn how InkWELL Press converted at 48% due to their prize.

InkWELL Press is a small business of only 3 employees. They specialize in creating organizational products for women. Tonya Dalton is President, Owner and Creator of InkWELL Press. Her husband, John, is the Head of Marketing & Strategy, and they currently have one, part-time employee who handles customer service. According to John, Tonya was inspired to found InkWELL Press “partly because of her love of organization and graphic design, but also because of her desire to help women.” Their mission is to “help women feel empowered to organize their lives around the things that truly matter to them: the people they love and the things they love to spend time doing.”

Setting Up the Contest

Towards the end of October, InkWELL Press was getting ready for their huge pre-launch of their first ever line of planners. They chose to go with Heyo to help them with promoting their new, exciting endeavor. John said that they chose Heyo because of the “ease of the platform and graphic appeal of the contest templates.”  He was also appreciative of the fact that Heyo makes sure the contests are good to go with Facebook, so they felt comfortable that they were doing things the right way.

Before they actually ran a contest, they used a drag and drop template with a video widget that showed a preview of the planner. They used this to get some hype going with their current fans, as they showed all of the things the planners would include, like a goal tracker, two different styles (classic and flex), organizational sections, and great personalization options such as choosing cover, style, and gold foil your name on the front!

Now came the fun part: running the contest. They ran a week-long contest using Heyo’s popular Sweepstakes Template with their incredible prize: a planner for life for 3 lucky winners! They set it up with MailChimp, so that an automatic thank you email would go out to anyone who entered. This email also encouraged them to enter via Instagram, where they had a photo set up with the rules to comment your favorite aspect of the planner to be entered.

This caused engagement on Facebook, and Instagram to skyrocket! Due to their great promotion strategy, and incredible prize incentive, they got over 1,800 emails captured, and 400 Instagram entries. Both of these social media platforms got a boost in fans as well, Facebook at 1,000 new likes, and Instagram at 500 new followers.

Picking the Perfect Prize

There were two main reasons that they chose the prize that they did. First, John and Tonya had a clear goal of what they wanted to get out of their contest. John said that, since InkWELL Press is such a new company, their top priority was to get their product in their customer’s hands. They were aware that giving away a planner wasn’t very compelling, or unique, and they wanted to make a real impact on their customer, thus the planner for life was born. After thinking about it even more, they decided to “really make it look crazy and give away 3.” Second, they thought one planner for life just wasn’t enough to make the kind of impact they wanted.

“The other reason we decided on this is that it helps to illustrate our commitment to helping women change their lives. We don’t want to just sell them a book, then email them a year later asking them to buy another one. We are here to stay, here to help make positive changes in women’s lives by building a true relationship with them for life.”

So, why was this prize so successful?

First, InkWELL Press knows it’s audience. They had a decent sized audience who was interested in their blog, as well as their downloadable content. They showed the planners in a preview to test the waters, and when they got such incredible reaction from their fans, they knew that the planners would be great to give away.

Second, they stuck to their mission and what they were known for: delivering valuable, beautiful organizational materials to women. They showed through a preview video, information on their blog, and a Q and A video, that these planners followed exactly what their fans and customers already expected of them. They knew, from the popularity of their blog and the downloadable content, what their customers liked. They stuck to the same sort of design, and same goals with their customers in mind.

At the end of it all, they captured 1,814 emails at a conversion rate of 48%!

Try it for yourself!

Do you have a great idea for a prize for your business? Click here to start your free trial with Heyo! No credit card required, just enter your name, email, and password to get started creating awesome contests.

Meet Lauren Wilson

Lauren Wilson is a Technical Writer and Customer Engagement Specialist at Heyo. She graduated from Virginia Tech in May 2014 with a degree in English/Professional Writing and Creative Writing.