What are incentivized subscribers?
Incentivized subscribers refer to anyone who signs up for an email list to receive some sort of incentive (sometimes referred to as a “lead magnet”). More often than not, this incentive is free (but it doesn’t have to be) and is simply used by the company as a strategy to collect email addresses from their target market.
Examples of incentives offered by businesses to collect email addresses include…
- Ebook — Usually longer than at least 5,000 words, this is a digital book that offers advice or guidance on a topic that will draw people with the correct intent to the company’s email list.
- Quiz — Often meant to reveal something helpful about the subscriber’s situation or offer answer-based advice at the end, a quiz is a common way for business websites to collect subscribers and build a relationship with those subscribers all at once.
- Whitepaper — This is a quick and easy-to-reference downloadable guide for people interested in the topic material. It’s often just a single page long.
- Checklist — A downloadable checklist is an incentive offered to subscribers that is usually meant to help them quickly achieve some goal. A checklist works best when the intent of that goal is aligned with the company’s own products and email offers.
- Guide — This is a guide that helps the subscriber accomplish a goal or get rid of a pain that they’re experiencing. It’s usually shorter than an ebook but slightly longer than a typical blog post.
- Webinar — A webinar is a video presentation that teaches an audience how to do something they want to learn how to do. It’s often done live the first time but re-purposed as a recorded webinar after that so that it can keep generating leads.
- Sweepstake — A common way for businesses to grow their email list is to run a giveaway and generate awareness for that giveaway. To sign up and have a chance at winning whatever the sweepstake is offering, people must provide their email address.
Some more details about sweepstakes…
A sweepstake sign-up refers to when a company runs a random giveaway and the participants of that giveaway must provide their email address to enter. The more valuable and intent-specific the item that the company is giving away, the better the sweepstake usually performs.
A few examples of typical (and effective) sweepstake giveaway items are…
- Tickets — Many companies offer tickets (usually two tickets so that the winner can bring a spouse, friend, or significant other) as a sweepstake prize. This could be tickets to a high-value conference, a vacation, or something else.
- Lengthy subscription — Another common thing for companies to offer sweepstake winners is a several year (or even lifetime) subscription to a highly desired product or service. This could be anything from a lifetime coffee subscription to a 3-year SaaS product subscription.
- Money — Money is also a common sweepstake prize. The only potential problem with offering money as the giveaway gift is that it doesn’t necessarily collect email addresses from the company’s ideal market, but rather from everyone (because everyone is interested in money, of course).