Selecting Incentives for Marketing Campaigns

Are you struggling with finding the best incentive for your marketing campaign? You know, that carrot that you dangle in hopes of getting your leads a little further down the funnel. That carrot could be a lead magnet for your email subscription list, a must have reward for your latest contest, or a freely available but extra valuable list of resources you provide on your website.

Here’s the strategy that makes choosing an amazing incentive easy: understand what your potential users want.

Choosing an amazing incentive is easy: understand what your potential users want. Click To Tweet

There are actually five different types of incentives to choose from. Be sure to GRAB YOUR FREE LIST OF INCENTIVES & EXAMPLES too!

Based on your business, here’s our feedback for choosing a great incentive:

1. Digital based

These incentives are best for getting people to take immediate action:

• Downloadable ebook – any kind of valuable learning resource.

• Downloadable white paper PDF – a business study with industry research.
• Subscription to an email drip course – a 7 day (could be any length) email course providing learning resources. Our Landing Pages 107 email course is a good example. This helps to keep your business top of mind with customers. KickoffLabs doesn’t offer this feature, but we fully integrate with Drip, a lightweight marketing automation solution.

• Subscription to an exclusive email newsletter – a curated list of articles, advance notice on special events & discounts, etc.

• Other digital incentives can include:
  • a webinar recording,
  • slides from a presentation,
  • alternate (print-friendly, downloadable) versions of blog articles, etc.

2. Time based

These incentives are great for engaging prospects, giving you the chance to reach out personally:

• Free personalized phone or Skype call.
• Free email consultation.
• Free business quote.

3. Monetary based

These incentives add value to your offering and are usually “free” to you:

• Free beta early access to your product.

• Free month when new users sign up.

• Free upgrade to a better plan.

• Free upgrade to the “pro” version.

• Discount towards the purchase of your product.

• Free online credits to your product.

4. Goods based

These incentives are great for brand building, but can be more expensive and resource intensive:

• Pens, stationery gifts, etc
• Stickers
• Coffee Mugs
• Branded T-shirts

• Free swag

5. Prize based

These incentives are also great for brand building, yet can be the most expensive and leads may not be of the highest quality:

• Free product (if you’re offering physical goods).
• Ipad or the latest trendy gadget.

• Gift Card (Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, etc).
• Any high value prize your audience would love to get their hands on.

Keep it simple

With all these choices and recommendations, remember to keep it simple.

Don’t complicate things and confuse potential signups with too many reward levels or goals. The incentive doesn’t even have to be that big… even something like an “early adopter” or “founding member” can work wonders.

Don’t forget to email

Email plays an important role in your marketing. Email can help you get the word out, encourage referrals, and deliver the goods.

Here at KickoffLabs, we offer three types of email messages that you can adapt for your marketing campaign needs. Check out how to use these emails to reward any combination of incentives to your leads:

1. An Auto-reply message, which is sent immediately after people sign up and basically thanks the subscriber for signing up and provides them with helpful links to check their progress (in a referral contest), share the page with their friends, etc.

Pro tip: Works best with Digital, Time, and Monetary based incentives.

2. An Influencer Email, which is sent once a day to anyone who has gained a referral and alerts them of their referral progress while encouraging further sharing.

Pro tip: Works best with Digital, Time, Monetary, and Goods based incentives.

3. Incentive Emails, which can be used to deliver rewards/reward instructions to your subscribers who have reached a referral threshold. Example: refer 3 friends receive a downloadable eBook, refer 5 friends get X reward, refer 7 friends get X reward, and so on.

Pro tip: Works best with Digital, Time, Monetary, Goods and Prize based incentives.

What about waiting lists?

If the product isn’t launching for a few months, we recommend syncing your list to a third-party email service provider (like MailChimp) and keeping your list engaged with newsletters (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc). Your launch plan should include reminding people regularly about your product, without being obnoxious, of course. :-)

Final Thoughts

Don’t forget to GRAB YOUR FREE LIST OF INCENTIVES & EXAMPLES

Choosing an incentive for your marketing campaign is easier than you think once you figure out which category will resonate best with your users. Remember that we’re here to help you every step of the way. For more information about maximizing your emails, check out Viral Incentive Emails.