[epub] Re: contests/giveaways

[Adam Thyer <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Adam Thyer <adam@webscoutlists.com>

On Fri, 10 Dec 1999 12:35:15 -0600 Brian Alt wrote:

>I'm hunting for ezine publishers who have successfully
>run contests or giveaways as a promotional vehicle for
>their publication.

Hi Brian and the rest of the epub gang!

We publish an e-mail newsletter with 12,500+ subscribers called Your 
WebScout which reviews the Net's best Web sites. For about 18 months, we've 
been offering a free vacation as an incentive to pay a one-time *voluntary* 
subscription fee for our newsletter. You can read the full blurb at:

https://secure.otginc.com/90202/90202a.htm

While this strategy hasn't made us rich. With minimal effort, it has 
brought in about US$1,500 which we wouldn't have otherwise had. And we 
still continue to receive at least 1-2 subscription payments per month.

With the recent launch of WebScout List, we've also begun giving-away one 
vacation per week as incentive to join our opt-in e-mail advertising lists. 
If you subscribe to any of the lists at:

http://www.webscoutlists.com/

you'll see what I mean. Sorry, but I can't provide an URL directly to the 
relevant form because it's generated by a CGI script.

Presently, I have no bench-mark against which to compare sign-ups for our 
opt-in advertising lists. So I can't say whether it's a successful strategy 
or not.

But what I can say is that it's a very inexpensive one. The vacation 
certificates cost only US$3 each. And if I recruit other businesses to use 
them as marketing incentives, I get them for free :) So if any of you 
epubbers would like to obtain some free vacation certificates, please send 
me your name, address and daytime telephone number and I'll put you in 
touch with the company which supplies them.

In case you're wondering, no I haven't been on one of these vacations 
myself because they're only available to US-residents and I live in Sydney, 
Australia. But in the 18 months we've been using them we haven't received a 
single complaint, so I guess they must be OK :)

If anyone knows of any other cost-effective sources of giveaways with a 
high perceived value, I'd love to hear about them!

Cheers :)


Adam Thyer

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