Recently I got paid $171.85 to add 536 people to my mailing list.
It happened in the span of 5 days and is something that could be replicated over and over again.
In this post I’m going to go over exactly how that happened. Before I do, I’d like to first give credit to Boris Savransky, Don Wilson, and Brian Koz for all contributing ideas that ended up helping me hone in this specific method.
I’d also like to mention that while I ran this strategy with my Shopify store, the concept works the same in any kind of business model, though obviously results can vary.
In my case, I decided to drum up some promotion for a new necklace I was selling on UseGearBubble.com.
Here’s what happened:
1. I created an ugly giveaway page in under 10 minutes using Instapage:
The text said Win a “Title Of Necklace” necklace, then had a simple email opt-in form.
It also had my company name at the bottom of the page next to the © 2015.
2. After creating the page, I created a simple post and put it on a fan page:
The text said:
*** Win A ‘Title of Necklace’ Necklace ***
Enter to win here:
http://www.WinRightHereDummyText.com
That was it.
I also had an image of the necklace laid on a red background, but I’ve since learned that Facebook doesn’t love those backgrounds so I wouldn’t recommend your doing that.
This post was on an existing fan page though I’ve also implemented this same strategy on new fan pages.
3. I hit “Boost Post” on the post and added in a $10 ad budget.
While I could have done fancy targeting, I was really just trying to quickly test proof of concept. I targeted to females (since it was a necklace) who liked fan pages that had to do with my niche.
After the $10 did well I added extra budget and ended up with an ad spend of $50 for 4,317 “likes”, 636 shares, and 71 comments.
Although the post was simply meant to GIVE AWAY a necklace, tons of people wanted to buy it:
Every time someone asked where they could buy, I’d quickly give them a purchase link.
If someone said something like “I want a necklace like this!”, I’d say “Good luck! And if you don’t win, you can buy one right here: LINK”)
This post added 536 subscribers to my Mailchimp list. (Though I adore GetResponse, I use Mailchimp with Shopify because it’s a very easy integration.)
The image says 506 subscribers but there were 14 people who unsubscribed and 16 people who were “cleaned”, so it was 536 total.
4. Besides the initial Facebook post sales, I had 3 other ways to sell necklaces.
The first way was that when people entered in their email address, they’d instantly go to an (extremely ugly) “thank you for signing up” page that offered them a way to buy the product:
The necklace was normally $19.95 but I offered a discounted price of $14.95 to people who signed up for the contest.
I added the timer in on the last day of the campaign at Brian Koz‘ suggestion and used his Timer Magic tool to do it. I am not sure how it impacted sales.
The first email people got also gave them an opening to buy the necklace. It said something like:
“Hey NICHE lover!
We received your request to join the giveaway for ITEM HERE. Not only are you eligible for that prize, but you have a chance to win a new NICHE prize we’ll be giving away every day this week! Woohoo!
Here’s how this is going to work:
In 2 days from today, you’ll get an email with the subject line TODAY’S NICHE WINNER. Inside the email you’ll see if you won, so make sure to open it.
Every day for a week afterwards, there will be new winners for new items, so simply open each email and see if you won.
If you win, hit “reply” to this email and send us your shipping information. Very easy!
Good luck!
We’ll meet you back here in your inbox soon. :)
NAME
WEBSITEP.S. If you don’t want to wait, you can buy an ITEM NAME now. It’s normally $19.95 but we’re offering a discount to all our subscribers.
Go here and buy one today –> LINK.”
I didn’t track sales from that email, so I don’t know how well it did but I imagine it made a few sales. Two days later people got an email that said:
“Hello,
Hope you are having a great day!
This will be short – we are announcing a winner for the first “ITEM NAME” necklace!
The first necklace winner is:
NAMECongratulations! Please reply to this email with your address so we can send you your necklace ASAP. And if you didn’t win, there will be more drawings for more prizes! Don’t miss the e-mail from us tomorrow for another winner.
If you didn’t win and want the necklace at our discounted rate, grab yours here:
LINKNAME
WEBSITE”
I chose the winner by going on MailChimp, picking a random number, then finding that subscriber – i.e. if I picked “117”, I’d find the 117th person who signed up for the list. I’m sure there are better/easier ways to do it, but that’s what I did.
Those were 3 different ways to sell the necklace, but I also added extra income by giving away different products every day in the email sequence (thanks again to Boris Savransky of One Hour eCom for that tip).
Every day for a week people would get emails that said something like this:
“Hey, hey, hey…
The winner for today’s drawing was selected.
Today’s ITEM NAME Winner Is…
NAME HERE!Please reply to this email with your shipping info, favorite color t-shirt, and size. You can get all the details right here: LINK TO ITEM
Keep an eye on your email tomorrow to see if you are a winner. We’ve got more coming up!
NAME
WEBSITEP.S. If you didn’t win and want to get an ITEM NAME – you can! Grab it right here: LINK”
This was a great way to highlight other products. I did make sales on all those items, but I am NOT including it in the profit that I listed here since they can’t be directly attributed to this and I do get random sales every day.
Here’s the Excel sheet I used to track everything:
Here’s how I computed this:
Each necklace people ordered was $14.95 at their discounted retail price. The actual price I paid was $7.95, so the difference was $7 profit x 31 orders = $217.
(I did not count shipping which people paid an extra $4.95 for since I paid that to UseGearBubble and it all washed out.)
Sometimes people ordered other items along with the necklace, like mugs or stickers. In those cases I counted item sales since they were add-ons to the necklace.
If you’re wondering about the “Free sticker” that I show profit on, it’s because I charged $2.95 S&H on an item that cost me $2 to create and mail, so I ended up with a $.95 profit on each item.
I used Don’s designer so didn’t personally pay for a design, though I’ve purchased excellent designs on Fiverr in the past and know it can be done.
From direct necklace orders, I ended up with a GROSS profit of $234.75.
$234.75 gross sales – $50 for Facebook ads – $12.9 (including shipping) to send the winner’s necklace = $171.85 in NET profit + 536 new opt-ins on my list.
Again, this does NOT include sales for other items that were in the autoresponder sequence, nor does it count the things I could market to the list in the future. It also doesn’t count people who pinned the item on Pinterest and came back later to buy.
This was an extremely fast process. I could have done a litany of things better – added some retargeting, mailed to the list more, made the giveaway pages look a lot better, and so on. But it worked.
Like I said, this type of thing can be done for ANY business model. You could give away free e-courses, coaching sessions, website designs, and so on. If you charge more than the $14.95 I charged you stand to make a lot more profit, too.
I hope this helps explain how I was able to generate the 500+ opt-ins and the $171.85 in net profit. If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I’ll answer as soon as I can.
And as a side note, if you’re still itching for inexpensive Shopify training, I’ve been hearing rave reviews (and *results* people are getting) about this this course. I haven’t been through it myself yet but plan to soon. If you bought eCom Premier, you do NOT need this – it’s an alternative for people who didn’t purchase it and still want to get started.
