The genius behind GoPro’s daily giveaway campaign

GoPro, known for their awesome first-person action sports footage, is truly a leader in the video camera industry. You know that GoPro produces a great product when it is used by Hollywood films crews in the making of their movies and commercials. However, making video cameras is not the only things that they do well. Maybe this is just the marketing geek in me, but I believe that they have one of the best executed ongoing email marketing campaigns in the outdoors industry.

We have all seen their campaign: “Win one of everything we make, daily. Enter for a chance to WIN one of every product GoPro makes! We pick a new winner every day.” For the cost (manufacturing not retail) of a HD video camera and giving it away daily to an individual who had entered in their personal email address the day before, GoPro is able to do some significant marketing damage. Through the contest GoPro is gathering emails of individuals who are interested in their product. (or at least would like to get something for free) This act of joining the contest is a voluntary act of opting-in. Every time I submit my email for the contest I know I am adding myself to their ever growing email marketing list. They even say so in their disclaimer: “By submitting your information, you agree to receive communication from GoPro about this sweepstakes, GoPro products & our services.” And best of all, this list of emails renews its self every day.

This does one of several things for them. First, the marketers of GoPro never have to worry about the quality or the age of their email list, which cannot be said of most companies. Certain leads that you find/purchase through various channel cannot (or should not) be directly added to your current marketing campaign. Many of your email marketing service providers such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, etc. prohibit use of the purchased and tradeshow lists. Most service provider require the use of permission based emails which mean that they have to asked you for your consent before they send you commercial advertising.

Second, nobody wants to hit the spam button and send all GoPro emails, including the one potentially announcing you as the winner, to the trash bin. Any email campaign that gives you a reason to not report it as spam is a winner because if an email campaign starts receiving too many spam clicks their server can be blacklisted by email service providers such as Google.  (And good luck getting your server off that blacklist) Now if GoPro is smart, (And I can guarantee that they are) they probably have some kind of built-in cut-off that after of so many months of inactivity (i.e. no response to emails, no clicked links, hasn’t enter into daily contest, etc.) by an email or user that automatically removes the email form the marketing list. This removal prevents recipients of their email campaign from tiring of their emails and newsletters flagging them as spam.

Although I love their email marketing campaign, the thing that makes their email campaign work is the content. You can’t go wrong with first person perspective action sports video. I like getting their emails and newsletters and that is the true genius to the marketing.

Tags: Campaign, Email, GoPro, Marketing, Spam