Take notice of what your customers are saying and you can change the entire course of your business.
Emanuel Cinca, Founder of Stacked Marketer did just that…and now the company gets 1 in 5 leads free thanks to UpViral!💎 🎉
Stacked Marketer is a daily marketing newsletter that provides the latest digital marketing news on topics like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and SEO. It also explores emerging trends and new platforms like Snapchat and TikTok.
The newsletter monetizes with affiliate links – and affiliate marketing is a numbers game. The more eyeballs you can get on your offers, the more you increase your odds of making a sale.📈
Emanuel started noticing that readers were sharing the Stacked Marketing newsletter on their own. They started replying with comments like, “This is so good, I’m sharing it with my friends!”
Although he loved the fact that subscribers valued their content enough to share it, he also realized Stacked Marketer could do much more to encourage this sharing. (And in the process get more sign-ups for the newsletter!)
So Emanuel looked for the right contest software for Stacked Marketer. And UpViral ticked all the boxes. ☑️
Why Emanuel Chose UpViral for His Referral Contest
One of the biggest reasons Emmanuel chose UpViral was because it has a one-click opt-in feature that other contest software lacked.🖱️
This feature eliminates the need for prospects to fill in entry forms. A single click captures their information and stores it. This feature makes UpViral super user-friendly from a user’s perspective. It also prevents a serious problem businesses face.
People abandon registration forms when they find them too much of a hassle to fill out. It’s an enormous problem when people enter contests from mobile devices. UpViral’s one-click registration eliminates this problem, boosting registration rates.
Emanuel also appreciates that UpViral fully integrates with all the email software, making the campaign set up a breeze. 😄
An Evergreen Contest Was the Right Choice for Stacked Marketer
Instead of creating a limited-time referral contest, Emanuel decided that it would be better to create an evergreen, multi-tiered contest for Stacked Marketer.
Many people enter big contests just to win the prizes. They have no genuine interest in the brand behind them. That’s why evergreen contests for users already engaged with your brand can be much more powerful.
When those big contests end, the campaign momentum ends too. People stop opening emails from the contest sponsor. And if you’re generating leads with paid traffic, that’s bad news!
By offering a tiered prize structure based on the total number of referrals made, Stacked Marketer keeps their audience engaged, and motivated to send new newsletter referrals for months, (even years!) to come.💎
Stacked Marketers’ Strategic Prize Awards
Stacked Marketer offers rewards based on the total number of referrals generated. T-shirts, stickers, hoodies, backpacks, conference tickets, and even a trip to Vienna are just a few of the prizes they offer.💎 ✈️
But the first referral prize Stacked Marketer awards is the key to how fast their referral program has grown.
After five referrals, participants receive an invitation to join Stacked Marketers private Facebook marketing group. Being part of the group helps build the trust and confidence members need to buy Stacked Marketer’s offers.
The group has also helped Stacked Marketer build a tribe of super committed, loyal fans happy to refer friends to the newsletter. 🙌 🧑🤝🧑
Participants Share Stacked Marketer in Marketing Groups
Many subscribers share their newsletter referral links on Facebook, Slack marketing groups, and Twitter. If people share your campaign with their friends, you know it means that they’re buying into your mission, into what you do.
This is very helpful because these groups are an ideal audience for the newsletter – business owners who benefit from the marketing news and actionable strategies it provides.
It’s a big win-win for Stacked Marketer and contest participants alike when this happens.💡
Members end up with more referral points because multiple people sign up for the newsletter at once, and Stacked Marketer gets an enormous boost in sign-ups when this happens.
And speaking of boosting sign-ups, Stacked Marketer has a ‘sneaky good’ way to get more mileage from their Facebook leads.
Facebook Ads + UpViral = 1 in 5 leads for Free
So far, UpViral has generated 5262 subscribers for Stacked Marketer. That’s about 20% of their total subscriber base. That’s amazing!
But Stacked Marketer also uses UpViral to get more mileage out of their Facebook leads.
Here’s how. Stacked Marketer moves their Facebook leads into their UpViral referral campaign. When a Facebook lead makes a newsletter referral, it’s like getting a lead for free.💡
In effect, this is like Stacked Marketer gets 1 in 5 leads for free! Who doesn’t want a 20% reduction in Facebook ad costs? 😎
This strategy is ingenious. But the real engine behind Stacked Marketer’s newsletter growth is their email strategy.📧
Sophisticated Email Strategy Drives Referrals
Stacked Marketer adds a newsletter sign-up link in the footer of every newsletter they send. If you want referrals, you need to ask for them!
The footer also tells people that it takes less than 60 seconds to share the newsletter.
That’s important because no one wants a complicated hassle to deal with. Reassuring subscribers how easy it is to share the newsletter makes it more likely they will refer their friends.
Here is an example of the footer.
Ryan Deiss the CEO and Founder of Digital Marketer uses this same footer tactic in his newsletters, so you know it’s a winner! 💎
Contest participants also receive a strategic email whenever they make enough referrals to unlock a new prize. 🏆
The email congratulates the subscriber and tells them about the prize they unlocked. But it also keeps them motivated to keep making referrals by showing them what they could win at the next level.
To keep things simple, Emanuel has these notification emails triggered and sent from UpViral.
Now, Emanuel would like to share what he’s learned from his UpViral campaigns, to help you make your own campaigns more effective.💡
Emanuel’s Campaign Advice for New UpViral Users
Use UpViral’s One-Click Opt-In Feature
Reduce sign up friction by using UpViral’s one-click registration option. It’s essential to make it easy for mobile users to sign up for your contests. (It’s hard to fill in forms from a phone.) 📱
And you can’t get much easier than only having to click a link to sign up!
UpViral also has an automatic process to import your leads into your autoresponder. No more going through the time-consuming pain of exporting and importing leads manually.
Campaign Page Copy: Keep it Simple & Smart
When you’re asking people to sign up for a newsletter, it’s important to let them know what benefits they receive after they register. Stacked Marketer makes this very clear by including this line on their registration page:
“Free, carefully curated digital marketing news, tech, and actionable advice. Delivered fresh every weekday at 1pm CET. Consumed in 5 minutes or less.”
If you’re a marketer, there is no mistaking those benefits. The newsletter is free; it has the tech news you need to know, plus it’s filled with actionable advice to help your business. For most marketers, signing up for the newsletter would be a straightforward decision.
Plus, Stacked Marketer lets people know they accept advertising on their opt-in page. This provides two sources of income from the newsletter – 1) from selling advertising space, and 2) from affiliate links.
Two Landing Pages Double Down on Registration
Instead of only having one registration page, Emanuel has created two versions of Stacked Marketer’s registration page – one for general traffic, and another for traffic coming in via a referral link.
This lets Emanuel tailor the pages specifically for the traffic source and add personalization that boosts sign-ups.
People sent from a referral link see these words on the opt-in page:
“Your friend wants you to become a smarter marketer.”
We don’t like to disappoint our friends, and nearly everyone wants to be smarter, right?
This one added line boosted Stacked Marketers sign-ups, so model it for your own campaigns!
Contest Image Design
Emanuel says that Stacked Marketer hasn’t done a lot of optimization on their contest image yet.
But Emanuel made a point of making sure the word “free” appears on the contest image. It lets people know that it won’t cost them anything to sign up. So the only thing the risk by signing up is a minute of their time and giving away their email address.
So, if your product is free, be sure to mention that on your sign up page! 💡
Brand Your Campaign with Your Own Domain
When Emanuel set up Stacked Marketer’s UpViral campaign, he used their own domain instead of using a generic URL generated by UpViral.
This helps with your branding and makes your company more memorable to anyone who visits your sign up page. 📃
Don’t Discourage Participants by Making It Too Difficult to Win
A last piece of advice from Emanuel is don’t make it too difficult for your audience to win prizes. 💡
When Stacked Market launched their referral program, the steps from the first next reward level in the contest to the next were so large that people became discouraged. Many stopped making referrals.
So Emanuel created smaller steps to encourage subscribers to keep sharing the newsletter. Now, for the first one hundred referrals, Stacked Marketer awards prizes in steps of 5 to 20 points.
Knowing that it won’t take too many referrals to reach the next prize level keeps people motivated to share the newsletter. 😉
Get More Leads – Spend Less on Traffic
Ready to make Stacked Marketer’s strategy of getting free referral traffic from your Facebook ad leads your own? Maybe you’ll end up with 1 in 5 leads for free too!
It couldn’t be easier to create your own UpViral referral campaign today! Get started for only $1.
