Groove Watersports Got Subscribers Using a Viral Giveaway

As someone who’s about to launch a startup business, you feel like you’re training for a marathon. You’ve set your eyes on some goals, but at the same time, you hit some walls.

You find that some techniques don’t pay dividends, so you find faster means of scaling.

Meet Groove Watersports, a startup with a goal of growing their email list before their launch. Although they were already working to grow that list, their strategy was less efficient.

Groove Watersports recently learned about UpViral, a platform that runs viral contests and giveaways. They decided to give it a try to see if it could take their list building campaign to the next level.

We interviewed Drew Bartek, one of Groove Watersports’s co-founders to talk about their results using UpViral. After running two viral giveaway campaigns, Groove Watersports was able to:

Increase their brand awareness
Collect over 2,800 email subscribers
Generate 1,856 social interactions

This is a recent screenshot of their UpViral stats. It shows that their total leads (3,583) have grown since we last spoke with Drew.

In today’s case study, we’re going to reverse engineer their giveaway. How did Groove Watersports do it? What made their giveaway campaign work so well? What would they do differently next time?

Introducing Groove Watersports

Groove Watersports created the Groove Vest — a high impact vest with integrated speakers. Their goal is to give athletes a better way to enjoy music while doing watersports, eliminating the risk of losing their earbuds.

Groove Watersports used their very own high-impact vest with speakers as their giveaway prize.

Groove Watersports had a goal in mind. That goal was to grow a list of 10,000 email subscribers before their launch day. If there’s anything that a business wants before a pre-launch, that is to start a mailing list.

Their first list building strategy was time-consuming. Drew realized that they needed to speed it up…

“At first, it was just me having ten to fifteen-minute conversations with people. We made it a little bit more efficient by having a survey on our website where I could send people to. We did that to get 700 people. After that, we just wanted to automate it because our end goal was to get 10,000 subscribers.”

That’s when they gave UpViral a go.

Let’s Have a Look At Groove Watersports’s Giveaway

Groove Watersports ran two giveaways with UpViral. As we speak, Drew told us that they were on their second giveaway. We just learned today that they’re on their third giveaway (which explains why their UpViral dashboard stats shows 3,583 total leads).

For all giveaway campaigns, Groove Watersports used the same opt-in page + share page. Here’s what their opt-in page looks like:

Please take note that UpViral has pre-designed templates for you to run everything on the platform.

However, in Groove Watersports’s case, they decided to create their own design and embed UpViral into their website.

Their opt-in page has these winning elements:

Clear headline – In a few words, the headline “Enter to win a Groove Vest” immediately lets people know that they are invited to a giveaway and what the prize is. This is an example of an effective headline — straightforward and written in plain language.

Below-the-headline text – Groove Watersports further explains the headline in one paragraph. They describe the prize, its main benefit, its $ value, and when the contest ends. They also stated the first names of their previous contest winners.

Prize features and benefits – Lightweight Vest, Heavyweight Sound, and Cloud-Like Comfort. These bullet-points explain the features and benefits of the prize in detail which will help giveaway entrants know “what’s in it for them.”

Hero shot – Groove Watersports didn’t just show a picture of their prize, they also featured a catchy 17-second video of it (see screenshot below). Video marketing stats show that 55% of people pay close attention when consuming video vs another type of content.

Social proof – Below the short video, they include logos of newspaper companies where they received coverage. These logos are a form of endorsement that tells contest participants that Groove Watersports is worth their attention.

Signup form with survey – If you clicked on the sign-up button at the top of the page, you would be taken to a signup form. Groove Watersports doesn’t just ask for people’s names and email addresses, but they also did a short survey related to their niche. Like them, you can take your giveaway campaign to the next level by gathering more insights into your customers.

UpViral makes it easy for you to add custom fields. This survey form is a perfect example of how you can leverage custom fields to your advantage.

Getting Participants to Share the Giveaway ?

After giveaway participants filled out the short survey, Groove Watersports would send them to a share page:

Above is a screenshot of their share page which does the following:

Thanks participants for joining
Tells participants that they have one entry
Encourages them to increase their chances of winning

Of course, people would instinctively click through the CTA button “Increase Your Chances Of Winning.” They would be taken to the bottom of the page which shows 3 simple steps to win:

This 3-step instruction process effectively does the following:

Reminds contest participants of the prize and its value
Shows the number of entries to be gained with each step
Uses “Grab My Code” buttons that let participants copy their unique share link

Groove Watersports also displays a leaderboard to increase competition and motivation to share the contest:

Promoting the Giveaway

To get the word out about their giveaway, Groove Watersports leveraged the following strategies:

Placing giveaway call-to-actions all over their website

If you try to visit Groove Watersports’s website, you’ll immediately notice that they promoted their giveaway in several places using call-to-action buttons that simply said, “Join the Giveaway”:

Header
Slider

Product features

Below their demo video

Team page

Website footer

The Takeaway: Adding simple CTA buttons on your website is a simple yet effective approach to encourage visitors to join your giveaway.

Posting to Instagram

Groove Watersports heavily relied on Instagram to get people to their giveaway landing page. Below is a screenshot of one of their IG posts where they build anticipation by announcing the remaining days left.

Posting to Facebook

Groove Watersports also has an active Facebook page where they post updates about the company.

During their two giveaways, they encouraged audiences on Facebook to participate. Here’s one of their posts. If you click it, you would be taken to a blog post explaining the giveaway.

Like Groove Watersports, maximize your free Facebook presence to boost your giveaway. Share posts with catchy photos and simple calls to action that get your message across.

Emailing giveaway participants

Email is another important channel for keeping up people’s enthusiasm in your giveaway.

Groove Watersports does a good job of engaging the leads they gather. First, they send a welcome email where they thank the leads.

In the email, they remind a participant how he can get more chances to win. Call-to-action buttons at the end of the email take people to the leaderboard and share page.

If you run a giveaway, make it a point to send your leads an email every few days. Remind them to keep sharing the giveaway. Tell them how many days they have left until the winner announcement date.

Announcing the Winners

Groove Watersports was careful about protecting the privacy of their giveaway winners. In a short video, they simply mentioned the first names of their winners and added that they emailed them. They shared the announcement video on Facebook and Instagram.

Here’s the screenshot of their Facebook post giveaway announcement:

The Giveaway Results

With their two giveaway campaigns using UpViral, they were satisfied to get over 2,800 leads. To reach their main goal of getting 10,000 subscribers, they may run a third giveaway campaign. Update: They’re currently on their third giveaway. Below is a screenshot of their stats. You can see that so far, their leads have grown to 3,583…

We asked Drew of Groove Watersports what they thought of the results of their giveaway. Here’s what Drew said:

“I would say, for the most part, we’re definitely satisfied. It’s helped us grow our leads a good amount… From a cost perspective, we weren’t spending near as much because we were leveraging people’s social media and just getting the word out that way.”

We identified a couple of things that made Groove Watersports’s giveaway successful:

Their product (high-impact vest with speakers) aligned with their target audience — people who love watersports.
They used their product as a giveaway prize.
Their lead capture page was very clear about the entire campaign. It stated the prize and its dollar value, the mechanics of the giveaway, and encouraged sharing.

Here’s what Drew says about UpViral as a platform for giveaways…

“It’s a great platform to use for referral marketing. If you’re trying to grow your lead list, it’s a cost-effective way. There’s a lot of different steps within it. It can be intimidating at first but if you structure your campaign correctly, it can be really successful. If it’s not structured correctly, you might not get the results you want.”

What Would They Do Differently Next Time?

Drew says that if he would re-do the giveaway, he would add a more personal touch to it. He did jump in from time to time in email to send a personal note to top performers (people who shared the campaign more often).

However, he thinks that adding more structure into reaching out and being more involved would make a difference.

Key Takeaways for a Successful Giveaway

Identify a clear goal to achieve at the end of your giveaway.
Choose a prize that resonates with the audience in your niche.
Create a giveaway lead capture and share page that has a clear copy, good visuals, and tells the audience what’s in it for them.
Leverage different ways to promote your giveaway. Write a blog post about it, share social media posts, and email your leads.
Preserve the privacy of your winners during the announcement date.

Wrapping Up

Are you thinking of increasing your email subscribers?

A giveaway is a faster and more cost-effective means of achieving that goal. You don’t have to be a startup to use giveaways. You can be an entrepreneur or solopreneur who’s been running a business for months or years and need BETTER RESULTS. Any time is the perfect time for giveaways. ?

Starting a giveaway has never been easier with UpViral. UpViral allows you to set-up viral campaign pages, split test these pages, write follow-up emails to be sent automatically, and many more. Check out our complete features and capabilities.

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