5 of the Best Giveaway Email Examples You Can Copy
Ecom Circle Edition #40
📆 Tuesday, 4th Jun 2024
Hey — It's Rhythm. Thrilled to have you back in Ecom Circle, where I spend my time scaling ecom brands & finding best growth strategies to share with you.
DEEP DIVE 💡E-commerce marketers love giveaways for a good reason—they can boost your email list with quality subscribers and drive sales when executed correctly.
When it comes to promoting your giveaway, email marketing is a must.
To help you create compelling giveaway emails, I've curated the seven best examples from my inbox.
However, amid hundreds of emails promising extravagant prizes like "a trip to Bali," many brands fail to make a lasting impression because their giveaways are disconnected from their brand identity.
For a sustainable approach, opt for smaller, relevant prizes over extravagant ones to attract genuine interest and avoid attracting only freebie-seekers.
By consistently engaging your email list with relevant giveaways, you can foster repeat business.
Explore these 5 giveaway email examples that effectively align with their brands, along with strategies for running impactful giveaways without overspending.
Let’s dive in!
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1. Prose’s Order-to-Win Email
Although marketers primarily work with giveaways to collect email addresses, that’s not their only use case.
Effective giveaways, like Prose’s, can also help turn subscribers into customers, and this email is an excellent example of that.
In this email sent with the subject line “Win gifts from us, Lunya, Haus & more!” Prose, first, invites you to shop for Mother’s Day gifts. To do that, the company opens the email with a relatable copy suggesting you buy your mom a personal, custom gift this year instead of flowers and chocolates.
Next, Prose introduces its giveaway by framing it around Mother’s Day:
The prize is straightforward: a gift basket you can win for your mom (or yourself.) But by partnering up with other brands, Prose increases the gift’s perceived value even more.
The email copy “Win all this for you” subtly speaks to your ego. After all, there’s no harm in gifting yourself for Mother’s Day, whether you’re shopping for mom or not.
Prose’s instructions are clear as well. To join the giveaway, you need to place an order by the deadline.
Prose doesn’t leave things to chance either. Instead, the brand follows up a few days later to ensure that you’re not missing out on the offer:
With an urgency-driven subject line that reads “Last Day: Enter for a chance to win our gift basket!” Prose reminds you that there’s still time to enter its giveaway.
This is a brilliant way to target last-minute gift shoppers and best of all, Prose’s giveaway is effortless to participate. Customers don’t need to do anything extra to get a chance to win (other than spending some money on the Prose shop.)
This giveaway also gives Prose a great opportunity to prevent cart abandonment and upsell during checkout, provided they use popups and email reminders.
2. L’Occitane’s No-Purchase-Necessary Email
Take a look at this email the company sends with the compelling subject line “Special Announcement: Win Your Order Is BACK”:
At first glance, the company’s offer resembles Prose’s giveaway: place an order today and join the sweepstakes. However, rather than select a standalone gift, L’Occitane offers you the chance to win a previous order.
So if you were thinking of joining L’Occitane’s giveaway, you might even spend more than usual since there’s a chance you’ll win it all back. Genius.
Even better, L’Occitane doesn’t want to miss out on people who aren’t ready to buy today either. If you’re unsure what to buy, you can still enter the giveaway and decide later.
All you have to do is fill out a short form on L’Occitane’s website and if you win, you can get a future order (up to $2,000) reimbursed.
Now you’re engaged, excited to win, and probably already thinking about what to buy from L’Occitane next.
L’Occitane, meanwhile, gets to enrich its leads, collect more information about its subscribers (such as city and zip code,) and target you with reminder emails to place an order.
Bottom line: L’Occitane’s giveaway email is the perfect example of leveraging a limited-time offer in the best way possible. The deadline to shop drives urgency, but it doesn’t neglect top-funnel prospects who aren’t ready to buy, either.
3. Vinomofo’s Birthday Giveaway Email
Many e-commerce brands use birthdays, customer anniversaries, and milestones as an excuse to offer small discounts.
Vinomofo, on the other hand, goes all-in on its birthday and throws daily giveaways for an entire week.
Similar to the previous two examples, Vinomofo’s giveaway requires you to place an order to enter the giveaway. But the company does a few things differently.
First of all, Vinomofo gives you more than one chance to win a prize. With one winner drawn every day, your chances are high—as long as you place an order.
Secondly, Vinomofo’s prize is an attractive $1,000 store credit. Nothing fancy or complicated. Winners will likely return to Vinomofo’s store, spend their credit, if not more on its products again. It’s a smart gift to guarantee loyal repeat customers.
Finally, in the following emails Vinomofo sends the same week, they make sure to remind you that the giveaway is still going on—but with a twist:
After announcing the previous day’s winner, they ask a personal question directed at you: “Could you be next, Rikke?” It’s a persuasive copywriting technique that invites the recipient to the conversation and makes them think, “Why not?”
4. Charlotte Tilbury’s Loyalty Quiz Email
Take a look at this exclusive giveaway example by Charlotte Tilbury:
This is no ordinary giveaway; it’s for loyalty members, and it comes at a price. If you want to win exclusive gifts from the brand, you need to test your knowledge of the brand.
When you click the email’s call to action, Charlotte Tilbury takes you to a landing page, where you’re asked a single qualifying question:
Where did Charlotte Tilbury grow up?
A quick Google search gives you the answer. But if you’re into makeup and her brand, you could easily answer the question without help too.
In exchange for taking this simple customer loyalty quiz, you can win store credit and a virtual consultation with a beauty expert.
What’s fascinating about this giveaway email is how much it aligns with the brand’s tone of voice and mimics its founder. Charlotte Tilbury calls you a darling, wishes you good luck, and expects you to know her well in return. Fair enough.
Even if you don’t have a personal brand, you can apply this strategy to your company with a few tweaks.
If you want to qualify your giveaway participants, try asking a simple question about your logo, product lines, or anything related to your niche that’s easy to find on Google.
This gives participants a sense of accomplishment and makes them feel more involved in your brand. Plus, they’ll remember you next time they’re shopping.
5. Crate & Barrel Competition Email
Although they’re easy to run, low-effort giveaway campaigns aren’t the only way to go.
If you have a highly engaged customer base, you can ask them to take an extra step to join the giveaway, and photo contests are the most common examples of that.
In this giveaway email, Crate & Barrel, first, features its bestsellers, reviews, and customer photos to create social proof:
Then, the company asks you to keep reading to learn how to get your photos featured and potentially win a $1,000 gift card.
When you scroll further, Crate & Barrel explains its good old photo competition and how you can enter:
By asking for photo submissions to enter, Crate & Barrel collects user-generated content that they can use in its marketing. (And if you’re wondering, they do use it.)
In fact, Crate & Barrel has a dedicated landing page for curated user submissions:
Each photo shows the company’s products in use to help shoppers better visualize these products in their home settings.
Visitors can easily click through and buy the products that catch their attention.
Crate & Barrel’s giveaway has a high-effort entry for participants, but if your brand has a strong social media presence, Instagrammable products, or an engaged audience, you should try this strategy.