213: A Tour Of My New Business Venture GoBrandWin With Toni Anderson

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A group giveaway lets several non-competing ecommerce brands each contribute a modest gift card into one large prize pool, then promote that single sweepstakes to all of their combined audiences. Every participating brand receives the full list of entrants afterward, which turns a $200 contribution into thousands of email subscribers at a few cents each.

In this episode my business partner Toni Anderson and I announce [GoBrandWin](https://gobrandwin.com/), the service we built to organize these giveaways for ecommerce sellers. Toni and I also run the Sellers Summit together, and this project came out of her own struggle to build a customer list off Amazon.

This post covers how the mechanic works, the real numbers other sellers have seen from group giveaways, the follow-up sequence that separates a useful list from a worthless one, and how to avoid the two things that usually go wrong.

Key takeaways

• Group giveaways pool gift cards from several non-competing brands so each participant reaches every other brand’s audience.
• A $200 gift card typically costs you around $50 in cost of goods, which can work out to a few cents per email subscriber.
• Mike Jackness acquired 6,000 email subscribers at 14 cents each with a $3.47 blended customer acquisition cost from one giveaway.
• One student collected over 6,000 names from a group giveaway and converted 61 buyers for more than $3,000 in sales.
• Toni converted roughly 17% of a giveaway list into buyers over six months, driven entirely by the follow-up email sequence.
• Pair with brands serving the same customer in a parallel category, so shoes and scarves rather than shoes and shoes.
• Warm entrants up with an autoresponder introducing every participating brand, so your first email is not a surprise.
• Match participants by list size as well as audience, so one brand is not carrying the promotion for everyone.

How does an ecommerce group giveaway work?

Each participating brand contributes a gift card worth at least $200, those cards combine into a single prize pool worth several thousand dollars, and every brand emails the same co-branded sweepstakes to its own audience. Entrants submit their email address on one shared landing page.

The economics are what make it work. Each brand risks a couple hundred dollars in product value and gets exposure to the combined reach of every other participant.

After the sweepstakes closes, one grand prize winner is selected and every participating brand receives the complete list of entrants. You promoted to your own list and came away with everyone else’s.

GoBrandWin also distributes the entry forms to a blogger network, which adds reach beyond the participating brands’ own audiences. That network numbered close to 1,000 bloggers across various niches at launch.

Why build an email list off Amazon?

Amazon customers belong to Amazon, not to you, which is the problem Toni set out to solve for her own store. She loves the revenue and traffic Amazon delivers, and none of those buyers are people she can reach again.

The pressure on this has only increased as overseas sellers compete aggressively on price. Competing on price alone is a losing position, so the alternative is building a brand people return to directly.

Building a brand requires bringing visitors back repeatedly to earn mindshare, and an email list is the mechanism. That is why cheap list growth matters more than it used to.

The usual alternative is Facebook ads, which get expensive over time and burn budget while you figure out the right targeting.

What results do group giveaways actually produce?

The numbers vary widely, and the best results are genuinely impressive. Mike Jackness runs giveaways regularly and one of his recent campaigns produced 6,000 email subscribers at 14 cents per subscriber, with a blended customer acquisition cost of $3.47.

A student in my course named Abby joined a group giveaway and collected over 6,000 names. Of those, 61 people purchased for a total of more than $3,000.

Toni’s own results reached roughly a 17% conversion to sales over a six-month period on a giveaway she ran independently. Her cost was the value of the gift card’s cost of goods and nothing else.

My own giveaway results have not matched Mike’s, and many entrants did become repeat customers. That spread is normal and it tracks closely with how well you handle the follow-up.

Why the follow-up sequence determines whether a giveaway works

The email sequence you send after the giveaway is what separates a 17% conversion from a dead list. Toni has run several of these and attributes both her successes and her failures almost entirely to this stage.

The first job is filtering. Some entrants are habitual sweepstakes hunters with no interest in your product, and identifying them quickly keeps your list metrics clean.

The second job is conversion, and authenticity is what moves it. Toni found that the more genuine and purposeful her communication was, the better the results.

Set the expectation that this takes months rather than days. Her 17% figure came over a six-month period, not from a launch sequence.

How do you avoid low quality subscribers from a giveaway?

Warm entrants up with an autoresponder sequence that introduces every participating brand before those addresses ever reach the individual sellers. That way your first email is not the first time they have heard your name.

GoBrandWin runs that sequence during the contest, introducing each brand alongside smaller gift card offers. Entrants learn who is behind the giveaway rather than just entering and forgetting.

The alternative outcome is what makes people distrust giveaways entirely. An entrant who never registered your brand marks your first email as spam.

How do you make a giveaway go viral?

Award additional contest entries for sharing, which gives every entrant a direct incentive to promote the giveaway for you. GoBrandWin uses ViralSweep to handle this.

After someone enters, they are offered extra entries for sharing on Facebook, pinning on Pinterest, or sharing through Messenger. Each additional share extends reach beyond the participating brands’ lists.

That incentive structure is what separates a group giveaway from a simple cross-promotion. The entrants become a distribution channel.

How should you choose partner brands for a giveaway?

Partner with brands that share your customer while selling something different. Shoes and scarves both serve a fashion-focused buyer, and two shoe brands are competitors splitting the same prospect.

Matching by list size matters just as much. Being paired with brands that have tiny audiences means you carry the promotion and receive little in return.

Toni and I match participants on both dimensions personally, drawing on the same judgment we use to assemble mastermind groups at the Sellers Summit. Getting the pairings right is most of the work.

What do you need to participate in a group giveaway?

Three things: your own branded ecommerce website, a gift card worth at least $200, and an existing email list or social media audience to promote to. That last requirement is what keeps the exchange fair.

The cost is lower than it looks. A $200 gift card typically represents around $50 in actual cost of goods, and a few thousand subscribers at that price works out to roughly two and a half cents each.

Why we built GoBrandWin instead of running giveaways alone

Running these individually means finding partners, negotiating terms, building the landing page, and handling the technology every single time. I had done smaller versions of this before, partnering with other wedding companies to cross-promote to each other’s lists.

Nobody was facilitating it at scale. The coordination is the hard part, and it is exactly what a service can absorb.

Our own motivations are straightforward. I wanted a genuine value-add for students in my course and attendees at our conference, and I use the resulting lists for Bumblebee Linens.

Toni’s motivation is the same as any participant’s. She took her own store from no customers to profitable largely through giveaways of this type, and she wants access to more partners in her category.

What I learned from three failed business ideas

The business you choose matters less than who you work with and how much time it demands. After quitting my engineering director job, I went through two software ideas and an influencer marketing idea that never made it past validation.

The software attempts taught me the real constraint. Getting a SaaS business off the ground would have required more hours per week than my old job, which defeats the reason I started businesses in the first place.

Killing those projects early was the right call. No significant time or money went into any of them because I stopped before the investment got serious.

The second lesson is about partners. Life is too short to work with people you do not enjoy, and starting another venture with Toni followed directly from how well the Sellers Summit has worked.

Frequently asked questions

What is a group giveaway in ecommerce?

Several non-competing brands each contribute a gift card to a single large prize pool, then all promote the same sweepstakes to their audiences. Every participating brand receives the full entrant list afterward.

How much does a group giveaway cost per email subscriber?

A few cents in many cases. A $200 gift card representing roughly $50 in cost of goods, divided across a few thousand entrants, works out to around two and a half cents per subscriber.

Do giveaway email subscribers actually buy?

Some do, and the follow-up sequence determines how many. Reported results range from a 1% conversion on one 6,000-name list to roughly 17% over six months with a well-run sequence.

How do you filter out sweepstakes hunters?

Run a follow-up sequence that lets uninterested entrants unsubscribe early, and introduce your brand during the contest so entrants recognize you. The people who stay engaged after several emails are the real prospects.

What brands should you partner with for a giveaway?

Brands serving the same customer in a different product category, and with a comparable audience size. Direct competitors split the same prospect and mismatched list sizes make the exchange one-sided.

How do you make a sweepstakes go viral?

Offer extra contest entries in exchange for shares on Facebook, Pinterest, or Messenger. Tools like ViralSweep handle the entry tracking automatically.

What do you need to join a group giveaway?

Your own branded ecommerce site, a gift card worth at least $200, and an existing email list or social following you can promote the sweepstakes to.

How long does it take to convert giveaway subscribers?

Plan for months rather than weeks. Toni’s 17% conversion accumulated over a six-month email sequence.