She Shopped Ran Partner Giveaways With Gleam

Overview

Many of the case studies that we’ve published here are very focused on a brand or single businesses that runs their own campaigns. We also have a lot of clients that let other businesses use their audience and run campaigns for them.

I like to call this Distribution Hacking, or the simple art of using your own products to attract a larger audience (other than your own).

Businesses often overlook how important it is to distribute their product via partners.

Visit She Shopped

Introduction to She Shopped

She Shopped is an Australian lifestyle blog run by Lucy Cornes. The site started from humble beginnings in 2012 and has quickly become the destination of choice for females aged between 22 to 44.

Lucy’s mission is simple. To connect brands with her audience of engaged females, who love nothing more than to shop online, find the latest bargain or get access to a new product before everyone else.

Why Competitions?

One of the key strategies that Lucy uses to drive results is running giveaways for her sponsors. Giving them exclusive access to her 75k strong community of engaged shoppers, who love nothing more than to win prizes.

Why Competitions Work for She Shopped

Gleam competitions are exceptionally powerful. We can ask the entrant to engage with our social media, visit a specific page on our website, subscribe to our database, become a fan of our YouTube Channel and tell their friends about it all in one hit! I feel that people just asking entrants to “opt-in” to their newsletter or “like” their Instagram account are not fully leveraging the possibilities a competition offers.

Lucy Cornes, She Shopped

• They give brands an opportunity to test which products resonate best with certain audiences

• The brand and Lucy both benefit from the social followers and growth of their email lists

• Brands can follow-up with Entrants to send out special offers, consolation emails or coupon codes

• You get more of a distribution effect (K-factor) as users are more likely to share with friends

• Lucy’s demographics are by far the most prolific at participating in competitions

Lucy needed to find a platform that could enable her to build engaging promotions for her brands, whilst making it easy to set up and maintain campaigns.

Key Growth Takeaways

There’s no doubt that Competitions have been an integral part of how Lucy has managed to grow her business. But what are some of the things you can takeaway from this particular strategy?

Learn to Embrace Partnerships

As a business, you often feel like you’re on your own, fighting the good fight. We can easily get tunnel vision to think that partnering with someone else won’t produce results.

Consider the upsides of partnerships, especially when it comes to running competitions together. A partnership can come in the form of a publisher that reaches the type of audience you want (just like She Shopped), or another brand that complements your products (think baby clothes if you sell baby strollers).

• You get exposure to more than 1 audience, meaning you’re not reliant on doing all the promotion.

• All parties benefit from the social buzz and growth of email lists.

• Your prize value increases, due to more sponsorships.

• Your reach increases, and you reach audiences that have never seen your brand before.

Competitions Aren’t a Once Off Activity

We see so often businesses run a competition once, then there’s no activity for the rest of the year. Whilst there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this you need to consider the upside of running regular campaigns:

• It can help you launch new products, announce sales or promotions, or even celebrate milestones.

• Users become more engaged over time, instead of just engaging them once.

• You engage users across multiple social networks. We’ve seen too many businesses put all their eggs in the Facebook basket only to be burned.

• It helps you test new ideas with your customers, and get feedback from them. Use them to build your community.

Platform Is Important, but So Is Promotion

You can use hundreds of methods to run your competitions (and we’d love you to use Gleam), but beyond the setup and the administration businesses often overlook how much work is involved with promotion.

Competitions are just like content marketing, 10% creation and 90% promotion. Don’t launch to crickets.

Have a Solid Follow-Up Strategy

Once you have lots of activity it is important to properly use it to drive sales. Here’s some tips to try:

• Send a coupon code inside the competition entry notification email

• Send a consolation offer to buy the product you were giving away to all the Entrants that didn’t win

• Use your Entrant list to notify them when new competitions are live

• Consider having a large number of runner-up prizes daily so you can continually keep users engaged

Run Your Own Viral Share Giveaway

Viral Share lets Entrants invite friends and family for extra entries. Start from our Refer-a-Friend Giveaway template.