02/09: Internet Marketing Giveaways - Do They Produce Quality Leads?

I recently received a Tweet in Twitter from my good online friend and top marketer Josh Spaulding regarding the effectiveness of giveaway events and it prompted me to do some thinking. Josh's concern was that from a listbuilding perspective, are the leads generated through giveaways really worth much in view of the fact that lots of other marketers will be getting the lead too?

I think this is a very valid point and felt that I should give it some thought and address it as best I can. 

If you are not familiar with the concept you can read my post on Internet Marketing Giveaway Events here. 

The question Josh poses relates to the likely responsiveness of leads collected through these giveaways. Because those who sign up to giveaway events are likely to download a multitude of free gifts and opt-in to a high number of lists, just how likely are they to be interested in your email messages? Here are my thoughts and experiences on this aspect:

1) It is true that many people will sign up to get the free gift and immediately unsubscribe.

2) It is also true that many people will use a "dump" address to subscribe and will never read any of your subsequent communications.

3) Many opt-in leads will unsubscribe due to being bombarded by aggressive marketing from other giveaway contributors immediately after signing up!

4) On the plus side not all members will download everything just because it's free - some are far more discerning and may only want one or two of the freebies on offer. They are perhaps a ittle wiser and more wary of ending up on a myriad of lists.

5) People who want free things are very often not looking to buy anything online at all, ever. They are therefore not the greatest of prospects for a marketer it's true.

So, some of that that doesn't sound so great, and would definitely support the contention that many of the leads you might generate will be of very poor quality. As to whether this makes them a waste of your time depends on a variety of things......

Let's assume that you are only just starting out with your list building ventures....you need leads, you need people to opt-in whether you are planning to use those leads as newsletter subscribers, blog readers or just as an avenue for future sales pitches. You need to think carefully about how you use your list in any case, but let's assume you are just hoping to make some product sales and are only really interested in the money! However you gather leads, this approach is invariably a mistake and will see people leaving your list in droves - there are just too many marketers sending sales letters out on a daily basis. Nobody likes that kind of thing. I know I don't. Unfortunately, these types of marketers are predominant in giveaway events.

So, using your list wisely is as important, if not more important, than gathering your opt-in subscribers in the first place.

So, considering all the above, are Josh's concerns valid? Sure they are. If you are going to use giveaway events to help build your list, you are going to have to accept all of the aforementioned downsides. If you already have a large list (meaning in the thousands) the benefits of participating in giveaway events may not be worth your time...then again, you do still stand to grow your list even further and spread your name and reputation to a wider audience.

Giveaways do have other benefits of course. If you are giving away a viral ebook for example, the more hands you put it into has to be a good thing. Even if the subscribers turn out to be a bust, you have at least given away a viral product to one more person - if that product has giveaway rights included, you have also enabled others to spread your handiwork to an even wider audience.

Because people have to opt-in to your list to get their free product, you can also take the opportunity to make them one time offers at the point of sign up. This may not be as effective as some people claim, but it is another opportunity to make sales or to send people to your blogs and websites that they may otherwise never have seen. It's all traffic and reasonably targeted if you do it right - don't offer people a free marketing ebook and then send them to your Amazon affiliate link trying to sell them a lawnmower.

Another point is that just because someone signs up to a giveaway does not neccessarily mean that they will download every single product on the site. You may not always therefore be competing with tens or hundreds of other marketers for their attention. The relevance of your gift is important. Giving away an Adwords manual and then trying to market and sell completely unrelated things as soon as you have snared an email address is another recipe for disaster. Remember what your subscribers signed up for and try to tailor your future messages to your audience's interests as much as possible.  

The idea of giveways, like so much online, is a numbers game. The opt-in leads you generate will certainly not all be of the highest quality, but there will be others who will allow you the chance to communicate with them. If you refrain from sending stupid numbers of sales emails as soon as those folks have signed up, otherwise you will soon put them off. However, if you prove yourself competent and different to the herd, you will win some more loyal subscribers and have the chance to win their trust and interest in what you have to say. This is something that Josh himself is very good at, using his list wisely and invariably sending out information and updates as opposed to making every message an offer to buy something. He will for example notify his list members of his latest blog post - the effectiveness of this can be seen by the high comment activity his blog generates. People like being on his list because he provides quality information.

Considering all the above points, your decision to allocate your own time or efforts might hopefully be made a little easier. I have generated a good number of leads using these methods and will freely admit that the "quality" of those leads can be very patchy. However, they have helped me to grow my list more quickly than might otherwise have been possible and I plan to continue with them for the time being.

Some Giveaway events are far more productive than others and new ideas are being tried all the time - a good example being sites like Profit Work From Home and AutoPilot Cash Streams who have tried to add additional income generating facets to the traditional giveaway event idea and provide a little more value to their membership base. 

Most giveaways are run by marketers and populated by marketers or those wishing to learn how to become effective internet marketers, so like so much internet marketing it's a very incestuous nest to be in :-) However, if you are looking for subscribers outside of the IM arena, you might still have some luck, if you offer the right free product to the right people, or can find more specialist giveaway events. As more and more people open up giveaways, the quality inevitably suffers and some events have been a dead loss in terms of traffic and new subscribers. However, if you can find a good one or two you can maybe add a good number of new opt-ins in a matter of weeks. I think that even if only 10% of them turn out to be keepers it's been worth it. Just don't believe the hyped up claims of thousands of new people joining your list overnight because that is extremely unlikely to happen nowadays.

I hope this post will be useful to some of you and that Josh won't mind being quoted as the catalyst of my reasoning for writing it, as it was a very fair point that I thought I should try to answer. I'll also recommend that you drop by his blog, grab up the free products he is offering there and give his list a try for a while. Failing that you can also follow Josh Spaulding on Twitter.