How Elevated Faith Built a Mission-Aligned Audience With 53 Giveaways
53 campaigns over 8 years. Here's how this faith-based Shopify brand treats giveaways as a repeatable top-of-funnel system - not a one-off promotion - to keep bringing values-aligned people into its community and its store.
Author
Charlotte Czarnota
United Kingdom
Content Marketer
Products Used
Integrations Used
Date of Publication
53 Campaigns. 8 Years. One Growth Engine.
The $1,000 Gift Card Giveaway is one data point from a cadence Elevated Faith has run for eight years - turning community energy into a repeatable, mission-aligned audience that feeds back into their Shopify store.
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Giveaways are the most reliable way we've found to bring a large batch of values-aligned people into our world in a short window. Gleam makes them simple enough to run on a consistent cadence, and the multi-action entries let us point people to the places that matter most to us. The giveaway is the intro; our email and SMS flows do the converting
Josh Gander
Founder, Elevated Faith
Elevated Faith has run 53 campaigns in 8 years, about one every seven to eight weeks.
Josh's answer points to why it has stayed in rotation this long.
"The giveaway is the intro; our email and SMS flows do the converting," he says, and that's exactly why it works: it reliably refreshes the top of the funnel with new, values-aligned people at a low cost per subscriber relative to paid acquisition.
A giveaway brings in a large batch of mission-aligned subscribers in a short window, then lets email and content build the relationship from there.
Elevated Faith has one lever that does that, and it runs it on a schedule.
The Store Was the Front Door
The $1,000 Gift Card Giveaway is the most recent data point in that eight-year run, and the numbers hold up:
Impressions: 26,122
Actions: 21,405
Users: 3,961
Conversion rate: 15.16%
The large majority of that traffic came through the campaign embedded directly on Elevated Faith's Shopify storefront:
Shopify storefront: roughly 20,600 impressions
Gleam's own giveaway directory: about 2,500 impressions
The store was the front door, not a separate contest site.
That audience also skewed heavily domestic, 91.6% of entrants were in the US, a reminder that this campaign was about growing a home audience for a US-based brand, not chasing global reach.
One Sitting, Thirteen Actions
5.4. That's the average number of actions per entrant, and the most engaged entrants didn't stop there: they completed all 13 available actions, in one sitting.
Here's what that actually looked like:
Following four separate Elevated Faith Instagram accounts
Visiting their YouTube
Following on TikTok
Not a single email drop and done. That only happens when both the entry mechanic and the destination behind it are worth the extra few seconds.
Why the Gift Card Isn't the Real Draw
The gift card isn't really the point. It gets someone to stop scrolling and enter, that's its whole job.
The real goal is introducing them to Elevated Faith: faith-based products made to start conversations, and the Charity Day giving behind every sale.
The giveaway is there to get people onto the list, not to hit a sales number during the entry window.
That's also why what works for Elevated Faith on Gleam is consistency, not a one-off stunt:
A simple entry
A prize tied to the brand instead of something generic
A cadence the audience comes to expect
The multi-action setup does the rest. Entrants could:
Watch on YouTube
Follow four separate Elevated Faith Instagram accounts
All low-effort ways to learn more about the brand while the prize is still front of mind.
Why Community and Giving Matter More Than a Coupon
Elevated Faith's campaigns point people toward the mission behind the products, not just a coupon code: the brand's Charity Day giving to faith-based organisations, and the community and ambassador side of the business, the people already wearing the brand and inviting others in.
605 entrants opted into Elevated Faith's Brand Ambassador program as one of their giveaway actions.
A new subscriber's first real touchpoint with Elevated Faith, through the welcome flow, is the story and the cause the brand exists for, not a discount they were chasing.
That fits a brand built on 80,000+ five-star reviews and a mission to spark faith conversations. It's the reason the audience sticks around after the prize is long gone.
What Other Mission-Driven Shopify Brands Can Take From This
53 campaigns over 8 years is what happens when a giveaway is treated as an ongoing system, built around mission and community rather than a one-off prize.
Pick the Next Date Before This One Launches
Elevated Faith doesn't decide whether to run another giveaway. The next one is already on the calendar, seven to eight weeks out, before the current one even closes.
That's the actual habit worth copying, not "be consistent" in the abstract, but removing the decision entirely.
Make the Prize the On-Ramp, Not the Destination
Cap the required entry to one or two actions, following and joining the list.
Offer bonus entries for sharing. And make the prize a gift card to your own store, not cash or a generic gadget, so entering already feels like choosing your brand.
Don't Expect the Giveaway to Sell Anything
Elevated Faith doesn't track sales during the entry window at all. The giveaway's only job is list growth; the welcome flow and the ongoing email and SMS calendar are what's expected to convert, weeks later.
Judging a giveaway by its 13-day window is judging it on the one metric it was never built to move.
Send It to People Who Already Said Yes
An eight-year-old list isn't just an acquisition channel.
Sending the giveaway to existing, gone-quiet subscribers works it as a re-engagement lever too, not only a door for new people.
Get started with your own Shopify giveaway using the template below, then build it into a system: pick the next date before this one closes, and connect it straight to your email and SMS platform so every entrant sticks around.
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