How To Grow Your Email List Fast With A Free Bundle Giveaway [Ep. 75]

Updated on March 24, 2024

By Jessie Festa. This episode on building an email list contains affiliate links to trusted partners!

Interested in learning how to grow your email list fast?

Well, you’re in luck, as in this episode of The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast, we’ll be focusing on how to get more email subscribers quickly by hosting a free bundle giveaway.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:

What a free bundle giveaway is
How to grow your email list for free using a free bundle
Tips for implementing this strategy so that you get new subscribers quickly
How to pitch other bloggers to take part in the bundle — outreach template included
And more!

In short, you’ll have a powerful email marketing strategy that you can implement in your own blogging business!

Table of Contents

How To Grow Your Email List Fast With A Free Bundle Giveaway [Podcast Episode Audio]

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Free Travel Blogger Resource Library

To help you really jumpstart your blogging success, I’ve added 55+ blogging resources like printables, video tutorials, and workbooks into a FREE resource library for travel bloggers — including a sample Free Toolkit Collaborator Outreach Template!

These resources are meant to help you grow your traffic, community, and income faster and with less overwhelm.

I’m all about implementation and I really want to make sure you don’t just listen to the episode and forget about it, but that you actually use what I share to make your blogging life easier!

resources helping you understand how to grow your email list quickly — Click here to snag instant access!

Master Building An Email List Quickly With These Helpful Tools:

Email Marketing Membership from Liz Wilcox. For just $9 per month, you’ll snag access to weekly newsletter templates and swipe examples (with video trainings on how to use them), email marketing workshops, monthly guest expert Q&As, and more. Best of all, while her emails can help you increase sales, you *don’t* need to sell a product to utilize her workshops and templates!

Beaver Builder. I personally use both their theme and plugin. The plugin allows you to create beautiful landing pages using a user-friendly drag-and-drop page builder. This is what I like to use to create landing page when hosting free bundle giveaways.

ConvertKit. Of course, an important part of any list-building strategy is having an email marketing platform. Luckily, ConvertKit is feature-rich yet user-friendly and is made by bloggers for bloggers. My affiliate link gets you a 30-day free trial — no credit card required! Alternatively, you can join their free plan here.

Teachable. This is my favorite platform for creating profitable online courses, which you can incorporate into a sales funnel that begins with the opt-in freebie you share through the free bundle in our list-building strategy.

how to build an email list fast with a free bundle giveaway

How To Increase Your Email Subscribers With A Free Bundle [Episode Transcript]

If you’ve been in my community for a bit, you know that I’m obsessed with list-building. It is one of the main strategies that has really been worth my time and that has really helped me to grow and monetize my business.

I’ve talked in a previous episode about using opt-in freebies as part of your email marketing strategy — as in, free pieces of content you give your audience in exchange for their email — though the tricky part is often getting your freebies in front of new people.

While promoting your freebies on social media and within blog posts as part of your regular content plan is smart, I’ve got another tactic for you that can help you rapidly get your opt-in freebie in front of new eyes.

And that is collaborating with other bloggers to create a free bundle or toolkit. I’ll be detailing how to successfully set this up and promote it step-by-step in this episode.

What is a free bundle giveaway?

In short, it’s a collection of high-quality digital resources that help your readers solve a specific problem.

For instance, a few years ago, I collaborated with Jen of Jen on a Jet Plane to create a Make Money Travel Blogging Toolkit that included free workshops, workbooks, cheat sheets, and Lightroom presets from us as well as other bloggers we reached out to.

Everyone involved promoted the toolkit, which helped us all to grow our email lists, as to receive each resource a person had to enter their email address to then be sent it in a welcome email.

Basically, collaboration helped us help each other to grow. Strength in numbers!

Okay, but how do you actually go about creating something like this for your blogging business?

Let’s break that down right now step-by-step, starting with:

Step #1: Come up with a purpose for your free bundle

In order to make your bundle enticing, you need an overarching theme.

Better yet, you need it to offer some kind of transformation for the people grabbing it, with all of the included resources working to help make that transformation happen.

Now, important note here:

Consider your own blog’s brand and mission and the audience you want to attract.

If you have a solo female travel blog, creating a social media bundle or road trip toolkit isn’t going to help you attract solo travelers who would benefit from your content.

Instead, you’d source resources that help people plan solo trips or confidently travel solo.

This brings us to…

Step #2: Make a list of potential collaborators

Now it’s time to actually choose who you want to invite to be a part of this bundle.

I recommend starting out by inviting people who already have relevant freebies and digital products they may want to add to the bundle.

Going back to the solo travel toolkit idea, you might research bloggers who already have opt-in freebies, eBooks, printables, and eCourses related to solo travel.

Additionally, you can simply reach out to bloggers in your niche who may want to create a printable or resource to include.

Okay, now let’s discuss to next piece of strategy on how to grow your email list fast…

Step #3: Do your free bundle outreach

Once you have your list of potential collaborators, you want to actually reach out to them.

By the way, I’ve added a sample Free Toolkit Collaborator Outreach Template to my free Travel Blogger Resource Library — linked in the show notes.

But, a few tips for this:

1) Make it clear why people should participate. What is the benefit for them? For example, you might mention that you’re recruiting 20+ bloggers in the same niche to collaboratively promote the bundle to help everyone grow their email list with targeted subscribers.

2) Be specific with what is needed to take part in the free bundle. This not only includes the content, but also any deadlines, image dimensions, etc.

You might even create a form, like a simple and free Google Form, to collect all materials to help keep everything organized and in one place.

3) Have an agreement detailing expectations. For instance, you might have a simple agreement noting that all contributors are required to send an email to their list at least once and post at least once across all of their active social media channels.

This helps set clear expectations for everyone, and helps ensure that everyone is contributing to the success of the bundle. Remember, the goal is that everyone increases their email subscriber count!

Now it’s time for…

Step #4: Create a landing page for the bundle

Personally, I use the Beaver Builder plug-in to create my landing pages, though many email marketing platforms include landing page builders. Here is also a 30-day free trial of ConvertKit for anyone who is in need of an email platform with landing page functionality.

If you’re on a tight budget, you can also use WordPress’s native Gutenberg editor to create a more basic landing page.

On this page, you want to include…

The benefit or transformation people will receive from grabbing the free bundle
The dates the bundle is live
Instructions on how it works
The resources included in the bundle

To give you an example, here is what the “Make Money Travel Blogging Toolkit” landing page said:

an example of a free bundle giveaway that grows your email list fast

From there, it showcased the various resources that people could grab. These resources were listed individually, and people would need to sign up for an individual contributor’s email list to be sent the freebie.

Okay, moving on to…

Step #5: Test your free list-building bundle

Make sure all of the links and sign up forms work properly to provide the best possible user experience for those who sign up.

This will also help you avoid wasting time answering emails from people who complain that links aren’t working. This can be easily avoided if you test everything beforehand.

After this, you can move on to…

Step #6: Provide contributors and affiliates with promotional assets

To really help make the promotion a success, consider creating a promotional toolkit with email swipe copy, social media graphics, and a sample promotional schedule to make it easy for contributors to share.

Additionally, if you have an affiliate program for your own products already it’s smart to let your affiliates know about the promotion — particularly if your opt-in freebie is part of a sales funnel.

For instance, one of my revenue streams is creating courses for bloggers in Teachable. This platform also allows me to create an affiliate program, so that other people can promote my courses and earn referral income when they send new enrollments my way.

Well, many of my opt-in freebies are the entry point of my sales funnels. For example, some freebies might unlock a limited time discount through a tripwire funnel or offer one of my courses with special bonuses at the end of an automated welcome sequence.

Because my affiliate program offers a 30-day cookie, my affiliates can promote my opt-in freebies — Teachable actually allows them to convert links from my website into tracking links — and then if anyone purchases one of my blogging programs within 30 days they’ll get affiliate credit.

In short, get as many people involved in the promotion of the bundle as possible to really maximize email signups for everyone, and possibly even sales for those who have products.

Now finally we are on our last step…

Step #7: Promote, promote, promote

The success of these types of multi-contributor events comes from everyone promoting to their audiences, so spread the word far and wide.

Create a sitewide banner promoting the bundle, pop a call-to-action box in your relevant blog posts, share across your social media channels, and let your email list know.

Really anywhere you have eyes looking at what you say, share about the bundle.

Bonus tips for seeing success with a free bundle

1) Consider tying your bundle to a trend or seasonal event – such as a romantic travel toolkit around Valentine’s Day or a holiday bundle in December. You’ll be able to tap into what is trending and create promotional content around it, which can help boost engagement and visibility.

2) Consider tying your free bundle to a paid offer. This can help you monetize your travel blog while growing your email list. For example, as mentioned previously, you might create a sales funnel that begins with your freebie and ends with a pitch to a related product.

Pro tip: To really see success with this, the paid product should solve the same problem as the opt-in freebie.

So, for instance, if your freebie is a PDF sharing a list of places where you can sell your travel photography, you might add these new subscribers to an automated nurture sequence that ends with a pitch to your paid Monetize Your Travel Photography Course.

3) Thank your bundle contributors for participating afterward. This helps to leave the doors open for collaboration in the future, and growing your blog through collaboration, in my opinion, is a very smart strategy.

Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you feel inspired and empowered to create a free bundle or toolkit that helps you grow your email list fast.

Don’t forget to grab access to my free resource library for bloggers. There are a ton of social media resources in there.

There are a ton of resources in there on growing your community and increasing your blogging profits.

And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.

Happy blogging!

resources on how to grow your email list fast — Click here for a free access to the Travel Blogger Resource Library!

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