Blog
Posted on Feb 7th, 2012
You may have run a giveaway before; either through your own website or through a 3rd party site (mommy blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc). When running a giveaway, you need to have a few things in mind:

First, what are you looking to get out of a giveaway? Do you want more exposure for your brand, more sales, more likes on Facebook or followers on Twitter? You have to go into your promotion with predetermined goals so that when it ends, you are able to measure its success. We see way too many companies running promotions with no predetermined goals in mind, so when all is said and done, they often end up feeling like they got nothing out of it.

Second, when running a giveaway, it is important to understand that you most likely won’t see sales pouring in. You may get a few sales, but don’t make sales your number one goal when running a promotion. We often see companies measuring the success of their promotion based on the amount of sales they received. If they did not get as many as they were hoping for they are usually unhappy and feel as if their money was not well spent. The problem with this train of thought is that no marketing platform can ever really ‘guarantee’ sales. If you’ve run campaigns with Google Adwords or Facebook Ads you know that you have to spend hundreds of dollars to get enough people to click through to your website. Even after they click, it is still JUST a click – nothing more. You need to hope that those people that clicked now make it through your sales funnel and make a purchase.

With an AnyLuckyDay promotion you get hundreds of visitors to your website (without paying per click), you get hundreds of people liking your page on Facebook, following you on Twitter, subscribing to receive your newsletter, and there may of course be a few who make a purchase. Don’t you think it is much more worthwhile to run an ad campaign where you are able to collect all those new users and re-market to them as potential customers? You really can’t do that with other ad platforms because once that user clicks through to your website you only have a small window of opportunity – they’ll either see something they want or close out immediately. Hoping that they also subscribe to your newsletter or follow you on Facebook/Twitter is just a shot in the dark.

Now that we have that out of the way, below are a few tips on how you can get the most out of your giveaway so that it becomes a successful marketing campaign for your brand.

Discounts
Provide users with a discount that they can redeem at your website, but only provide it for the duration of the promotion. This encourages users to make an impulse buy because they have the opportunity to get a discount but they only have a short period of time to redeem it.

Interaction - Facebook
Interact with your new users on Facebook and Twitter. Remember, these platforms are not meant to be used as a one-way form of communication. Do less pushing on these platforms and more pulling (less talking and more listening). When you get those 500 new facebook fans, your first post shouldn’t be “HEY NEW FANS, YOU CAN BUY OUR PRODUCTS AT XYZ.COM”. Instead, engage with them and build a relationship with them. Lets say you run a company that sells bedding products -- start out with something like “Welcome to all of our new followers. Are there any problems that you have with your current bedding products that keeps you up at night? Let us know, and we’ll see if our experts can help find a solution to your problem." This opens the floodgates for your users to start leaving comments talking about their sleeping problems. You then chime in and respond directly to each customer, helping to find a solution to their problem. Remember, building the relationship with them first is the key to turning these people into customers who are likely to buy from you in the future. A great example of a company doing this well is one of our clients, Natures Sleep

Interaction - Twitter
The same goes for Twitter – use it as a platform to interact with your new users, not as a platform to constantly push out information about your products. Sure, every once in a while you need to plug your company/products, but your last 10 tweets should at least contain a conversation with another user. Another great way to take advantage of Twitter is by using search.twitter.com. This allows you to search for any keyword that people are currently tweeting. So, if you run a bedding company you can search for something like ‘I hate my bed’, and you will see all the results of people who have recently sent out a tweet with those keywords. You can then simply reach out to them and build a relationship by asking them why they hate their bed and if you can do anything to help.

Promote to your own audience
This one is simple and should be a no-brainer. Promote your giveaway to your current audience via Facebook, Twitter, your website, and your newsletter. What is the point of running a promotion if your own users don’t know about it? Yes, you may just want to track the number of new people your giveaway brings in, but you would be foolish to forget that your current users could bring in more of their own friends and family which you would be missing out on. So, on the day of your promotion, make a post about it on Facebook, Twitter, link to it from your own website, and email it out to your users.

Utilize Comments
Be sure to utilize our Facebook commenting system on your promotion page (or any commenting platform if you are running a giveaway elsewhere). To get to it, simply click on your promotion on our homepage, enter the promotion with your email address, and then you will see Facebook comments at the bottom right of your page. The great thing about this is that hundreds of people will be leaving comments. You can click the ‘Add a Comment’ link, then click the ‘change’ link next to the comment button. A drop down menu will appear and you can choose your Facebook page. Now, when you reply to people, your comment will showup with your company name. Don’t forget, this is another way to build a relationship because once you reply to a comment, that user is automatically notified on Facebook.

So to recap, here are the Do’s of getting the most out of your promotion:
1) DO provide a discount code for your new users during the promotion.
2) DO go into the promotion with predetermined goals that you can measure.
3) DO interact with your new users on Twitter/Facebook. Remember, less pushing and more pulling.
4) DO utilize Facebook comments to reply to comments.
5) DO promote the giveaway to your own audience.

And here are the Don’ts of your promotion:
1) DON’T ignore your new users on social networks.
2) DON’T push too much content to your new users until you've built a relationship with them.
3) DON’T work with any other marketing platform other than us :).
Posted on Dec 12th, 2011
Before we get into 2012, let us recap 2010 + 2011: I have worked with over 700 different and amazing companies. I’ve learned a lot along this journey, and most of all, I have realized that growing AnyLuckyDay can no longer remain a one-man operation. For those who are not aware, AnyLuckyDay has been a one-man operation since its inception in 2009. I’ve handled the marketing, the support, writing the content, doing the videos, answering emails, everything! Starting in January, Steven Kovar will join AnyLuckyDay as the Head of Marketing and he will also oversee Client Relations.

Enough about the past! Lets talk about 2012 and what is to come.

First, we will no longer be doing one promotion per day that lasts 24 hours and we will no longer have a calendar. We’ve received a ton of feedback from both our clients and our audience and this has allowed us to move forward into the format for 2012. We want to thank all the companies who responded to our random sponsor survey for their valuable input!

For 2012, promotions will be setup in time blocks. You can purchase a 7 day, 14 day, 21 day, or 30 day promotion and we’ll arrange a date with you for it to begin. Your promotion will run simultaneously with other promotions that are also currently running, but it will receive the same amount of exposure as every other promotion.

Second, we will no longer be handling the information for promotions through email or through a web form like Wufoo like we used last year.

In 2012, each company that we work with will receive their own username and password to login to our client dashboard. The dahsboard will allow you to submit the information we need for the promotion, as well as collect data about your promotions.

Third, videos will no longer be included by default with the promotions. Doing hundreds of promotions per year means making hundreds of videos per year. Unfortunately it has been a battle of quality vs. quantity and the quality of the videos have been sacrificed so that we can produce as many as possible.

In 2012, you will have the option of purchasing a video for your promotion at checkout. We will work directly with you to produce the best video possible, and you will also maintain all rights to the video and will receive a "clean" copy of it without our video bumpers in it.

Fourth, when promotions end, we often are asked by clients “how did it go?” We do track the basic statistics of the promotion, however, since they are so short (only 24 hours) and we have so many, it is hard to keep up with tracking each one.

Starting in 2012, since promotions are a minimum of 7 days, we will be able to track them better and provide more meaningful statistics. When purchasing a spot on AnyLuckyDay you have the option of purchasing promotion analytics. We will track everything ranging from visitors to clicks, tweets, likes, shares, comments, subscribers and more. You will receive a detailed report in your dashboard and a downloadable PDF version as well.

Fifth, companies often ask us “how many sales will I get when I run a promotion?” That’s a tough question to answer. It wouldn’t make sense to ask Google or Facebook “how many sales will I get if I run an ad with you”, since they just provide a marketing platform for you to advertise on. Since there is no way to provide an accurate estimate, all we can say is that we create content which is distributed to our audience and some sales may come from that. But, we want to do better...

AnyLuckyDay will be launching a marketplace in 2012. We have such a huge selection of products that we feature that it just makes sense for us to also sell them directly through our site. We’ll charge a $50 start-up fee to get your company and products listed in our marketplace, and we will apply a 5% transaction fee for each product sold. We handle the sale and the payments, you just ship the product. Checks will be mailed at the end of every month for sales made in the previous month. If you decide to become a part of our marketplace, you will be able to view this information in the dashboard.

Sixth, our main goal has been to get as many people as possible to enter and share our giveaways. For the past 3 years, the only way to enter has been to leave a comment. The most entries we’ve ever received in a giveaway with this method was 700, with the average around 150-200. We wanted to do better.

And we have. We’ve been testing new giveaway pages for 3 months now (Sept-Dec 11’), and they have proven to be true winners. Conversion rates are substantially higher, and we broke the record number of entries (700) on our very first test, with over 1,200 entries in 24 hours. The entries in our tests have averaged between 750-800 in 24 hours, which is a 400% increase over the old pages.

Seventh, AnyLuckyDay has remained a pretty small tight-knit community for the 3 years that it has been in existence. Growth has always been one of my main goals, but unfortunately with all the daily tasks that I have had to handle as the sole owner, growth has been extremely slow.

Over the past 3 months we’ve implemented several tactics to substantially increase our subscriber rates and our traffic. Here is some data to show you just how fast we are growing:

January 1, 2010 - We had 1,827 subscribers.
December 31, 2010 - We had 5,016 subscribers.
174.54% increase in subscribers in 2010.

January 1, 2011 - We had 5,036 subscribers.
September 1, 2011 - We had 5,764 subscribers.
14.45% increase in subscribers in the first 9 months of 2011.

September 2, 2011 - We had 5,764 subscribers.
December 1, 2011 - We had 10,726 subscribers.
86% increase in subscribers so far in the final 3 months of 2011.

What we are doing is working and we are only going to grow faster with the new format in 2012.

It’s been a long journey for me at AnyLuckyDay, and it’s only going to get better. I’m excited to have Steven join the team and I really believe 2012 will be a home-run year for our clients, our audience, and our company.

Thank you for your support and we hope to work with you in 2012

- Giancarlo Massaro
Founder, AnyLuckyDay
Posted on Mar 23rd, 2011
After receiving great feedback from our members last year, we have officially launched 'The Mall' this year. One of the biggest complaints we received was that a user would want to make a purchase from a vendor that we featured in the past, but they couldn't remember their company name or website address. Instead of having to search through hundreds of pages of promotions to find vendors and the deals that they offered, we have instead created an area for vendors to showcase their company and sell their products.

In 'The Mall' you'll find a list of participating vendors and a discount code that can be used at their site when making a purchase. These listings will last the entire year and the discounts are good throughout the year as well.

Want to get your company listed in 'The Mall'? When buying a day on the calendar simply add the Mall Listing to your cart.
Posted on Jan 3rd, 2011
With the launch of a new website comes many changes and bugs. Over the next week we will be making several small changes to our system so you may see some pages not working or some things that are out of place. Please ignore this as everything will be clean and tidy in the weeks to come. If you experience any problems on the site, or notice any bugs, please don't hesitate to utilize the 'contact' link at the bottom of the site to let us know what the problem was that you encountered.
Posted on Dec 31st, 2010
I can't begin to tell you what an amazing year 2010 was. After starting AnyLuckyDay in 2009 I had no idea that it would eventually spiral into what it has become. I want to thank the amazing and supportive audience that visits daily and I want to especially thank the sponsors for choosing AnyLuckyDay as a venue to promote their products and services.

Now onto business. I hope everyone enjoys the new and improved look and feel of the site. I really think I've included everything that everyone has requested that wasn't available last year.

Up top you will find your four main navigation links that should help you get around the site. If you need more information on how the site works, you can check out the 'How It Works' page. If you want to see what is coming up in terms of giveaways, you can view the calendar and rollover any day that has a sponsor logo in it. When you rollover the day, a box will pop up providing you with more information about the day's giveaway. Cool, eh? You will also find all the past contests for 2011 on the Past Contests page, and you can view the 2010 contests by clicking the link at the top of that page. Finally, we will have a shopping mall this year where sponsors will offer exclusive discounts. I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Years!