#116 - In this week's episode of Subscription Box Basics, you will meet Josh Ledgard, the co-founder of KickoffLabs, a viral contest marketing software.
KickoffLabs's goal is to help businesses grow through viral campaigns that deliver high conversion rates and social engagement. You know how much we love giveaways when it comes to building an email list for your subscription box business. Listen to Josh as he shares how KickoffLabs can help you grow your email list.
SUMMARY:
LINKS AND RESOURCES
#116 - In this week's episode of Subscription Box Basics, you will meet Josh Ledgard, the co-founder of KickoffLabs, a viral contest marketing software.
KickoffLabs's goal is to help businesses grow through viral campaigns that deliver high conversion rates and social engagement. You know how much we love giveaways when it comes to building an email list for your subscription box business. Listen to Josh as he shares how KickoffLabs can help you grow your email list.
SUMMARY:
LINKS AND RESOURCES
Julie (00:01):
So you wanna launch a subscription box and don't know where to start. Girl, you are in the right place. I'm Julie Ball, a subscription box coach, and your host here at subscription box basics, a podcast for new and aspiring subscription box entrepreneurs that want to avoid overwhelm, grab a coffee, some pen and paper, and let's have some fun. Hey everybody. Oh, welcome back to subscription box basics. A few months ago, I did an episode about giveaways as you guys probably know by now, I'm a huge fan of using a giveaway to not only during your pre-launch, but also to continuously grow your email list for your subscription box business. So I wanted to bring a pro on the podcast today to talk to you about how you can use his contest software to just like unbelievably and exponentially grow your email list. So I would like to welcome to the podcast, Josh a Ledgard. He is the co-founder of kickoff labs. Welcome Josh.
Josh (01:01):
Uh, thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Julie (01:04):
Awesome. Well, we are so excited to dive right in, but a lot of people will be meeting you for the first time. Why don't you start with telling everyone a little bit about your background?
Josh (01:13):
Yeah. Uh, so my background let's see. So I'm a computer engineer by trade. So I'm always on the, I'm always been on a very technical side of things or at least that that's my that's my background. I had worked for a long time at Microsoft. Um, and one of the formative things I did there was I worked on their customer communities and that really taught me the power of, um, customer engagement in marketing and how important that was, that it wasn't just important to like sell something and like yell at people and say, buy this, buy this, buy this. But it was like important to pull them into some part of the process, whether it's the support process or the marketing process. And so always kind of had that idea in mind that like, you know, there should be some more, there should be more marketing tools that activate that user and customer engagement, uh, with a product. And so, um, you know, eventually be actually 11 years ago now we launched, uh, we launched kickoff labs.
Julie (02:08):
Nice. So I, 100% agree with that because we could put a lead magnet out there all day long, but unless we're like really pulling someone in and getting them involved in the process, it could fall flat. Um, what tell, let's talk about like, what is kickoff labs and what does it actually do? Because this is a new software to a lot of people I've shared about some other giveaway softwares, but once I found kickoff labs, I was like, wait a second. This is, this takes it a step further. So what is kickoff labs?
Josh (02:37):
Yeah, so essentially kickoff labs is a contest platform, uh, and to do it yourself platform for the most part that enables you to out a promotion, uh, that's designed to grow your audience, uh, in email SMS or social media. Um, so the idea is obviously like everybody knows, like, you know, you wanna maintain like an audience, um, of you wanna maintain an audience of fans and potential buyers, cuz not everybody's gonna buy today, but if you keep yourself top of mind, um, they may eventually buy or subscribe to your, uh, to your product. Um, and so, you know, the, the idea is just be, we wanna help people grow that list. Um, and as I said before, the idea that marketing, you know, traditional marketing doesn't engage your customers. It doesn't excite them. It doesn't activate influencers. And it doesn't importantly tell you who your influencers are.
Josh (03:24):
So when you run a kickoff labs contest, you maybe say, Hey, we're gonna give away these prizes, uh, either to, uh, people who are selected randomly because they had their most number of points in the contest or because, uh, they're at the top of, of the leader board. Um, and we're gonna reward you for referring and inviting your friends. So at the core of kickoff labs is, um, is that we are tracking the actions that you do and we're tracking the referrals that you generate, um, for a list. So if you sign up for a kickoff labs promotion, we give you a unique link and say, Hey, tell your friends about the promotion. It'll increase your odds of winning or get you more points towards a specific reward. Cause we have all sorts of different contest modalities. Everybody could win or something. If they earn enough points or you could do a random drawing based on the number of entries somebody has.
Josh (04:14):
Um, and so all those different modalities do is they get people sharing that link cuz in their interest to share the link, take the other social actions like following you online or like posting the Twitter or like posting, uh, to Reddit. Um, and, and then we're measuring that and you get then at the end of the contest, hopefully a whole bunch of new subscribers you didn't have before. Um, and you potentially get purchases. If that's part of the competition that people are purchasing something and earning points for their purchase, um, or you get, uh, and, and importantly, you get a list and this is what a lot of our customers tell, tell, tell us is that, Hey, we met 20 people doing this contest that we didn't know were influential in this space. And we invited them into then a, a more private, um, slack or Facebook group or whatever makes the most a sense or a discord.
Josh (05:02):
And now we've got this connection with 20 like VIPs in our industry that we know now that when we do another marketing promotion, we can start with them and say, Hey, can you guys spread the word? Like we have this, you know, big holiday sale or this discount and that now they've got this like set of insiders that they didn't know existed because they just ranked the, the list of people from the kickoff labs competition said, Hey, there's number one through 20 of the people who actually got somebody else to sign up for our, our list. And aren't those the type of customers that you wanna have a deeper connection with as a, as a business owner. And, and I think you do. And I think, uh, I think everybody does.
Julie (05:37):
I love that. I hadn't thought about that before, cuz in the past with giveaways we've own only used it to collect the email addresses and then randomly choose a winner. Right. So, and then game over. Yeah. But you're saying you can take it a step further and say, okay, looking at all the people that participated who are the people that were most engaged and most influential in sharing based off of right. Like their points. Yep. Kinda like a point system that they're winning. Um, and then you build a deeper relationship with those people.
Josh (06:07):
Yeah. And in fact, uh, we get, uh, a lot of successful campaigns that have been run, actually do that strategy in the middle of the campaign. So we've heard from several customers, if they're running a campaign that's maybe four weeks or six weeks long, once they start getting, you know, the list of five or 10 people in the first couple weeks that are influential, they just invite them right then to like this private communication channel and give them like some insider access or freebie and say, Hey, you guys are doing a great job sharing. Here's some more information you could share if you want it actually, uh, it actually it's like, it's like, they're kind of like giving them assistance in the, in the competition to a certain degree, but you've already established like I really like these people, so I'm gonna do something special for them because they're out there sharing. And then they end up sharing like twice as much as they were before. Um, and so it even works like during the, the campaign to do that and to continue getting that promotion and feedback during the, the cycle of the camp, the specific campaign you're running, um, to create that, that V I P group. And that's one of like the hidden benefits of running, you know, any sort of competition where you're scoring people on their level of engagement and on the referrals that they're actually generating for you and a reason to do that.
Julie (07:15):
That is so smart. And guys, if you have, haven't done this before, like let me paint the picture real quick. You have a landing page or a popup contest box on your website. Someone enters their email address to win, and then they're gonna have, you know, post enter. They're going to have an opportunity to earn these extra entries by things that you have carved out. So for example, follow us on Instagram. And when they click on that link, it's gonna take them directly to your Instagram so they can follow you. And then they get their point. Yep. Same thing with, you know, maybe it's subscribe to YouTube or go to this, go to my website. Like how great would that be to have this, um, increased traffic flow to your website because you're awarding these points, just a, getting them on your website is helping train that customer to do business with you.
Julie (08:03):
Yep. So I love that. And if you're listening and you've heard me talk about other contest platforms, um, we were happy with them, but then when kickoff labs came into our world and we are like, as we are recording this, we're actually testing out a campaign and it's blowing our mind. Like it is working really well. We are, um, supplementing it by throwing a little bit of ad money to it as well at that front end to just get that traction. But we are seeing some incredible results already. So knowing that I've used other contest platforms, Josh, like what does kickoff labs do that other giveaway softwares don't
Josh (08:40):
Yeah, there's a, there's a couple of things that we pride ourselves on being, uh, on being different. Um, first of all, like I'm a huge believer. I'll just say like right outta the box that like, even though I'm a tech person technology, if it's successful can and will be copied. So any great feature you're like, I love this feature of this email software. I love this feature of that. If it's a useful feature, another product will have it within a couple months. Like technology is like super easy to copy. Um, it's kind of a commodity for most cases, unless you're like, you know, building rockets to space, like it's a commodity these days. And so one of the things that we try and pride ourselves on being set is having a really great experience that goes through the support channel. So like we do anybody, who's a paying customer gets like a dedicated, like onboarding meeting so you can sign up yeah.
Josh (09:25):
And get the onboarding meeting and then we'll walk you through, like if you're having trouble setting up the campaign, like we'll help you set it up during that time. If you're having, if you just have a question like, Hey, you know, what can I, I've got the campaign set up, but what can I do to market it? We, we walk people through like, Hey, here's people in your situation and here's what they've done to market it and give them that one-on-one assistance and the level of support that you might not get, um, with another, with another contest plot form. So when people ask me about the differences, I try to focus like, okay, our goal and, and my goal as a company is like, can I, I build a company that people like have a solid supported experience using because that's the biggest thing that matters because we want you guys to be successful.
Josh (10:05):
Um, we don't just want like a, a million customers who can't ever get a hold of us or a hold of our support team or get a response in a reasonable amount of time. That's number one. Um, number two, uh, is, is the flexibility. So as you mentioned, um, you know, the, the UI and the, and the contest interface, um, you can run it in several different modes with kickoff labs. So you could, um, create your own landing page in our, uh, in our software and build a page and publish it with all the different components of this, of the contest and the rewards and arranged in the way you, that you want them to be on the landing page. Um, or you say like, Hey, I really don't like your landing page builder. I've got this great design team and a website, and they've built this contest page for me.
Josh (10:47):
How can I activate that contest page and turn that into a like a contest page without having to build all the contest mechanics on the back end. Like we just have a script, you can just drop to that thing that you wrote your, the page that your design team did there themselves. And that page then instantly becomes a contest page. Like we'll collect the information, we'll do the fraud checks. We'll do all of the stuff that we do behind the scenes for emails that send out. Um, but you got the design a hundred percent the way you wanted it, uh, because you had the expertise in house to build it. Um, then as you pointed out the simplest option, like, Hey, if you just wanna like, get up and running, like really quickly, like on the other end of the spectrum from that custom design page or using the API and the script, like, Hey, just build the popup box or the box and just drop the script on your site.
Josh (11:32):
And there you go, the, the contest is, is live. And all you had to do really was like, add some copy, you know, describe your rewards, maybe add an image and you just do those things and you're up and running. So that level of flexibility from like super simple, like, I just wanna be up and running in, in a half hour with this contest to like really complex, like, oh, I've got this really big website. And I wanna like, customize everything about the contest and everything. Like, you can do that with our software. And so that, that stretch of like, you know, we're kind of gonna kind of meet you where you are and with what you need, um, is the, is the second big advantage, uh, to what we're doing. And then the third thing is really just what you, what we talked on before is just like, um, other systems have, you know, Hey, tell your friends about the contest, but they don't have like the, the scoring to back it up.
Josh (12:18):
And the, and the, uh, the level of rigor in terms of validating those referrals that are coming in, it's just sort of an afterthought where us that referral mechanism and tracking the individuals act actions and how they're referring and the number of views you're getting from the referrals or purchasing referrals. Like that's just core to what we do. And it's a, and we think that's a primary, um, function, whereas like, you know, it's great that everybody can have this action in their contest of like, watch this YouTube video or subscribe to us on YouTube. And those are like nice baselines, but that's not necessarily getting you the additional, like person in your audience, because we're really focused on that audience growth metric. And when we look at our metrics internally of like, are we being successful for customers? We look at like, is their audience growing? Are they getting valid email addresses on their audience? Are they getting referrals? And like, that's one of the key metrics we look at when we measure our own software updates and say like, is this helping customers? And that's the, that's the, that's one of the key metrics we look at.
Julie (13:16):
So I like that you had, um, when you were talking about key metrics, I was thinking about the reports that you offer. And that was something that I didn't see, some of the other platforms offer where I can actually go into my giveaway and look at how many leads I've been generating in, you know, this way, but how many have been generated by referrals or through social media. And I love that, that insight, I think that helps me understand, you know, where things are coming from, where I need to be spending more time. Yep. And, and pushing it. Um, when you talked about customer service and customer support, I think that was really important because many of the people listening are gonna be solopreneurs or they have maybe one or two team members. So very often we have to figure things out on our own, or we might feel like we're on an island.
Julie (14:06):
So I was really pleasantly surprised when I signed up for kickoff labs that I did get real people emailing me. And I, I can you guys for that, I think that does, um, separate you from the rest. And then you had also talked about multiple modalities. And so this contest that we're running right now, we have a landing page for it, right? Like the full built out landing page, that's where we're sending ads, but we wanted to also capitalize on the traffic. That's already coming to our website. So were that same giveaway. We added a contest, like a popup box. Yep. And, um, when I'm talking about it in our promotions, let's say I do an Instagram, um, story. Or if I do a Facebook live, I'm saying, you know, instead of like some wonky, you know, URL that I have, I'm saying go to subscription box bootcamp.com bottom right corner. You'll see that little contest box. So it's a really easy call to action. Yep. Um, so I love that. And you had taught me that you can use multiple types of contesting too. Let's talk about that for a quick second. So you can have a, give a, a running and maybe you're going to randomly choose that, but you could, you know, randomly choose your winner, but you could also have the leaderboard running too so that people can see, you know, how many, what am I up against?
Josh (15:23):
Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, and that's a really good point. So we get this, uh, we get this all the time. So like, there's not just one way to run a content. And so like, and so like to think about like the different types of contests, like you mentioned, like a giveaway might be, uh, I've somebody enters to win and like, everybody has a chance to win this and you might earn more entries, but there's just like one prize and there's just enter to win. Uh, sometimes that mode of contest is discouraging to people. Cuz a lot of people have a mentality of like, oh, I never win the lottery. Or like I never, like that never happens for me. Like I don't, I don't win those kind of things. So it, it feels like something that's unattainable. And so we also have the ability to add like something for everyone.
Josh (16:06):
Um, and in a, in a contest like, so you could do a, you know, just give them something for entering like, like, Hey, give them kind of a traditional lead magnet approach for, for entering. So you can combine a contest with a lead magnet and send the lead magnet out as like, just, Hey, thanks for entering. We're giving you this like 10% off. Like a lot of people do just for collecting email address on their list, but they're also entering the contest. Then you could say, take it further and say, Hey, as you mentioned, post entry, there's these actions that we ask people to take, whether like sharing with friends or subscribe to YouTube or follow us on Instagram. And so you might have the ability for people to earn like five points of these additional actions really easily that they could get as just a measure of like, Hey, this person is at least engaged enough to get those other five points.
Josh (16:50):
And maybe you wanna send them like a small bit of swag for that or give them an additional discount for taking those five points. And so we call it reward levels where you could just give away a reward of saying like, Hey, anybody who gets five points also gets this sticker or gets this other thing that will send to you. Um, when you check out or when you make your next purchase, like you will have earned this just by taking these like additional actions, because then you get those, the two mindsets of people, you get the mindset of the people who are like, oh, I'm really excited to win this thing because I really like think I can win. And then you'll also get the mindset of like, well I might not win it, but you know, at least I'll get the discount or at least I'll get like something else out of like taking these other actions because people take these additional actions.
Josh (17:34):
I mean, it's frankly like it's bribery, but you know, sometimes, uh, sometimes you gotta go there, uh, to get people to like take those first few steps, uh, of, of engaging, engaging with your brand. And like that enables you to have like something for everyone and something like at the end to make a big deal of, and like, Hey, this person won this prize at the end of the, the contest. Um, and that way nobody feels like, oh, it wasn't worth entering or I never win because at least there was an opportunity for them to, um, to earn something additional outfit.
Julie (18:04):
Yeah. I like those reward levels a lot. I liken them to, um, quick story. Like I've been an affiliate for courses that I have taken in the past. And when a lot of times the affiliate programs will have all these prizes. Right. And I know I'm never gonna win that top prize because I just don't have the, the, the size of a platform as some of the other people do. But when they offer the, you call them reward levels. But I, I like to call them latter prizes. Yep. Like the higher I climb up that ladder, I can still win that prize no matter what anybody else is doing. And it's so fun to have a little bit of healthy competition to maybe get in that top 10. But I still know with those reward levels or what I call latter prizes, but I can earn other things based off of my actions. And it's independent of what everybody else is doing.
Josh (18:55):
Yeah. Exactly. And like, that's a, that's a huge, uh, that's a huge thing for the, for the latter prizes or, or the reward levels is like some people ask all the time like, oh, can I have a leaderboard? And I actually do discourage some people from running a leaderboard depending on their industry. Like just a pure leaderboard, really like the top five win. Yeah. I say, I would never almost do that on its own. In most industries. There's some verticals where it works really well. Like the gaming space or like, you know, the NFT space nowadays, or like the like Bitcoin space. Like those people are like highly motivated by this competition. Even if they're not in the top 10, they just like, they wanna crawl from level like 1000 to level 900. And like that motivates certain people. Right. But I think a lot of consumers and a lot of, uh, a lot of customers and, and just average people in the space, like you're kind of interested, but you're like, I'm not gonna like devote my life towards climbing to the top, you know, 10, 10 positions on this leaderboard, as you said, because you just look at the leaderboard and it's like demoralizing to say yes, like, you know, I always tell people, like, I, I like liken it to like Brun brunch or so like, you know, if you told me, like, if you told me like, Hey, like, can you get like three people to come to brunch or like meet you?
Josh (20:04):
Like, I could probably find three people interested in any specific space to come like, meet somebody. But if you told me like, Hey, I need you to get 30 people, people in a room on Sunday, like I'd have a really hard time doing that, cuz I'm not an influencer in any given space in, in that way, like right. And, and I think most people are like that. Most people are not like that hyper influential persona. And so you have to think about how do you position your contest and the rewards for those people.
Julie (20:30):
Okay. So now that our listeners know what the platform is, know how they can use it. How easy is it to launch your first campaign?
Josh (20:39):
Uh, like I say, it can be, it can be in a matter of like a matter of, like I say minutes, it's probably minutes for me. I think for most people, like, I I'd love to hear your experience. Like how long did it take you to get it up? Um, the basics functioning.
Julie (20:50):
Yeah. It was about 30 minutes. Um, honestly, because, you know, I knew what I wanted. I already had my, my giveaway mapped out. So that's step one, like figure out when you're gonna run your giveaway, what you're gonna giveaway as your prizes. Yeah. And then think about what are some of the actions you want them to take. So walking into it, when you sign up for the software, like if you already know that stuff, that's half the battle. Yep. Um, honestly the, the signup and the setup was pretty easy and I think I had one or two questions, which I was able to get answered very quickly through email support. So I, yeah. And I had, um, I used Canva to create the imagery. Yep. So, you know, that took me another 10 minutes just to, you know, put together the right size images, but you'll do that for any promotion you're gonna do.
Josh (21:38):
Yeah. And so that's why I tell people, like, I think, uh, I, I, I think the reasonable estimate is like a, you know, a couple hours you can be up and running and I tell people like the most, the most times spent, or you probably should spend the most time is just thinking through before you start the process at all is like, you know, what are the mechanics that I think are, are gonna motivate my customers to do it? And what are the prizes that are gonna motivate my customers to do it? Um, so that, you know, you're actually take, you're actually giving them something that they want, you're making it, like we said, approachable with those, with those latter prizes. And you've thought through like, what are the latter prizes? And I think that's where people can and should be spending most of their time in the contest and the setup stuff with like our software.
Josh (22:20):
Um, and frankly, I mean, I've used other contest software too. Like a setup stuff should be fairly quickly on any side of the contest site. It's the, where people go wrong is not thinking through all of those things in advance. And then you get caught up trying to think about both the software and those things at the same time when like, no, like I tell people, just, just tell us, like, tell me about the contest you wanna run. And then let's see if we can support each of those things. And you just go through and, and set those things that you had in mind up for the contest.
Julie (22:48):
Yeah. And it can, it only is as complicated as you're gonna make it. Yep. You know, like this can be a really super easy way to grow your email list, make it easy for people to interact with it as well. And it's it's yeah. I'm, I'm a huge fan. So, um, so how can our, our listeners get started? So I'm gonna put a link in the show notes, but what else do they need to know if they wanna try out kickoff labs?
Josh (23:14):
Yeah. So they can go to kickoff labs.com. Um, you can sign up for a free account, so there's no credit card required and the free account will walk you through basic, like essentially all the basics you could set up your contests. Um, for the most part, the free account. The one thing we don't let you set up is the, the specific emails that go out. Um, but those can be turned on after the fact after you, um, after you, after you upgrade or pay for a plan and the plans range from $29 a month, um, on up and say on up, because we support like some really huge customers and we support like, um, some, a lot of small businesses as well. So we really kind of run that, that gamut, um, of the customer set. And then, um, as you said, like once you've got the, the contest you wanna run in mind, um, we walk you through, like, we have an onboarding when you set up a campaign, it'll say, what kind of contest do you wanna run?
Josh (24:00):
Here's some recommended templates. Like, how do you wanna promote it on your website? And we kind of set up those basic things. Um, and then it's up to you to just go in. And as you said, like, add your copy, add your image, add your imagery to the, uh, to the campaign, um, have that onboarding call with us, um, and say like that way, like if no other reason I tell people they should take advantage of the onboarding call just to have us walk through and like take a look at the campaign because we love looking at campaigns. We love saying we have our checklist that the team goes through and says like, Hey, you know, I mean, you could download our checklist and go through it yourself.
Julie (24:33):
I Did, I downloaded mine.
Josh (24:35):
Um, but, but
Julie (24:36):
I love a good checklist.
Josh (24:37):
It's great to, it's great to just have like, somebody else looking at your, at your thing, especially, like you said, if you're a, so, and you don't have somebody like, like to bounce the off of and just to validate like, Hey, is this good? Or would you phrase it this way? Or is this sound really complex? Because we're, we're pretty good at like, recognizing like, Hey, you know, you've got like 10 ladders here. You just might wanna simplify that down to like two or three ladder levels or like you've got these like five different types of prizes for different categories. And like, maybe just simplify that down a start, cuz you can always add on, it's hard to take away from a contest. Like if you say like, boy, I really don't wanna give that stuff away now. Like, well, from our perspective, you already announced these things.
Josh (25:18):
So you kind of have to stick to it. So like you said, we, we really push people to like start really simply. And then if they say like, Hey, this is working well, we add this other thing onto the mechanics. Like yeah. Okay. Once you feel like you've got it working, well then go ahead and like say, Hey, now we've added this additional prize or this other category as a way to like market the contest as it's going. But don't try and start with like level 10, start with like, let's just get this up here and let's just see like get people entering.
Julie (25:45):
Yeah. I can see all that would work with really well, like mid giveaway, you know, new prize level or new reward level just announced. Yep. And it almost creates that like hype again for the people who may be joined and they're just kind of waiting for it to, you know, the winner to be announced. Yep. But maybe you can get them engaged again to try to get this next reward level and that encourages them to share and share and share even more.
Josh (26:08):
Yeah. And we that's one of the practices we tell people when we meet with them is saying, Hey, think about through the campaign. Like, are there inflection points in the campaign where you can like reengage people because if you've got, you know, 200 people in week, one in week two, can you send those 200 people on mail and say like, Hey, like just so you know, like here's, you know what we've done for the contest or here's the like an additional thing we've added just something to keep them engaged because I think the best, uh, the best, um, campaigns we see run have that continual engagement, whether the campaign is being run for like three weeks, six weeks or 20 weeks, like having regular touch points along the way seems to be like a common thing of like people that run successful campaigns. They do that as opposed to people who are unsuccessful, say like, boy, I had this spurge in the beginning, but then I got like, you know, 10 weeks later and no one bought anything at the end of the campaign.
Josh (26:59):
And like, well, did you send any emails along the way of the 10 weeks? Or did you they're like, no, I didn't. I just had that initial burst of traffic. I'm like, well, you kind of got what you were gonna get outta the initial burst. Like yeah. You know, the, the software is a referral base. And like, so I like to tell people like, you know, what our software does is it like adds a boost to what you're doing. So like if you were gonna spend a hundred dollars worth of effort on marketing you our software, my goal is that you're getting $135 worth of results, but we can't turn $1 of marketing into $135 worth of results. And anybody who tells you that their system can is, is selling snake oil because that just doesn't exist. Yeah. Um, and so that's, you know, it takes that seed effort, that constant engagement and that, you know, that personal touch make it to make it work for each audience.
Julie (27:46):
Love it. Listeners, you should see I'm taking all these notes. I'm learning this with you. Um, I, I appreciate all of this great information and there was one thing I wanted to ask you before we wrap it up that we didn't talk about is, um, a lot of our listeners are in the idea stage or the pre-launch stage of their business. You have a contest modality called waitlist. Can you talk about that real quick? Um, because I think that would be really valuable for those that are in pre-launch like, you know, with launch is just right, you know, in the next couple weeks or maybe next month and this waitlist modality is so cool.
Josh (28:24):
Yeah. So the wait list is you can think about it, like kind of like we already talked about like a leaderboard mechanic of like having a leaderboard. And that's kind of essentially what a wait list is, is, is our goal. Is it for people who are launching that they've got and they're running a contest that they, when they open their doors, they've got a line around the block of people that want the product. Right. So think about the people lined up for like the Xbox series X or like a PlayStation five or something outside of like a best buy for when it opens. Like that's what we want to enable people to have. And so in the, especially in the case of like a physical goods or like a box service or something like you've got, you may have a limited capacity in your first run. Um, and so we see a lot of people like with Kickstarters or subscription boxes or just any sort of physical product where, you know, your capacity in your first run might be only like 500, you know, you could only support five or
Julie (29:15):
Even 50 or a hundred, you know, or hundred.
Josh (29:17):
Yeah, whatever that number is, you know, that you, your first sale is only gonna be to that 50 people. And how do you pick those 50 people? Right. And so when you run a wait list with kickoff labs, people sign up and if they didn't do anything else, the wait list is literally like whoever was in first is the first person on the wait list. Um, but then as people start taking those actions that we talked about earlier, like referring friends, or like following you online, they start moving to the front of the line. They start moving up that wait list and positioning themselves higher up the wait list. So in this case, you do get that mechanic of like, Hey, you know, you're being honest, like we've only got a hundred spots to fill and you wanna, if you want to get that early email and that announcement to you can be in the first 100, you have to take these steps, um, to, to do that, to move yourself up into the wait list.
Josh (30:07):
If you weren't in the first 50 to sign up and then you create a little bit, you create that gamification, that, that system that gets people like engaged in taking those actions to, um, to get there. And then that works in the end for launches. Because as, as we talked about earlier, like presumably then the people that you're going to be rewarding and giving that, that first 50 items to are the people who were influential in the product, the people who you probably wanted to give it to anyway, but they sort of naturally selected themselves through this wait list campaign by getting themselves to the front of the, to the front of the wait list because they were so excited it and engaged with your product. And then hopefully because then they're getting it first and your product is amazing and they love your product.
Josh (30:47):
Then they're starting to tell those other people, cuz they were already well connected for you in whatever space you're in. Um, and then, and then, you know, it goes from there when you, the next time you do it is, and, and people will do rolling waitlists. Like we've had people say like V one of the, and they we've got like 50 and they'll do a second waitlist when they launch the second version and say, Hey, this time we're doing a run of a thousand. So get on the wait list for our run of a thousand. And then like, it keeps escalating for there this time we're doing like an exclusive color, like in this list. So get on the contest and the wait list for this exclusive color. And so people that are thinking about this and like growing the list are always think of like ways to get these people engaged and building a new wait list. You know, they're not just, it's not just a, pre-launch, it's a, it's a pre it's a, it's a way to like, you know, run a competition and build excitement for like this, you know, variation of the product, which isn't necessarily a new product. Like I said, in some of our customers cases, it's like, Hey, you know, we've never done one in pink now we've got the pink one. Um, and people are excited about the pink color. And so like, it just like it runs from there.
Julie (31:49):
Yeah. My mind is just racing right now of all the different ways you could use this in the subscription box world, you know, maybe you have a special edition for mother's day or maybe you have a, you know, a special holiday box, um, or you could even go as far as a lot of times with subscription boxes, you might have excess inventory from last month's box. You could create these surprise packs yeah. Or mystery, you know, grab bags. Um, but you only have 50 of them or 25 of them or whatever. And then you create this campaign around it. Then you have that immediate demand for it when you release them to the, the first people on the, on the wait list. And if they don't buy, you give them a time limit, say, yep, you have first DS for 24 hours. Yep. Um, after that we release it to the rest of our followers.
Josh (32:33):
Yep. And that's what a lot of people will do, uh, with, uh, with like Kickstarter campaigns, cuz there's not a, really a, there's not really a way to like limit and say like these people have access, but what they'll do is they'll say like, Hey, there's like 20 early bird specials and we're gonna make sure that we're gonna email the 20 people and then you have one day to buy it. And if you don't buy it, we're gonna email the next 20 people on the list and they have, and so that's exactly what people do. And so you're right on with those ideas there.
Julie (32:56):
Nice. Okay. So where can people follow you guys on socials so that they can kind of get, um, inspired? I'm sure that you guys are posting all kinds of, um, ways to use the software. So where can we follow you?
Josh (33:10):
Uh, uh, the two different ways, like I would tell people like kickoff labs, uh, kickoff labs.com, uh, at kickoff labs on Twitter, we have a Facebook page as well. And then, but if you sign up for a free account, you'll be on our mailing list and you'll get basically the biggest thing on our mailing list is like every other week we're doing blog posts like announcing like with strategies and tips and tricks and techniques, um, that go out there for folks. And so that's probably the best way is like, you know, either follow on social to get that subscribe to that blog list. Um, you're really old school. You can subscribe to the blog log directly. You can go get on the email list to subscribe.
Julie (33:43):
Awesome. Thank you so much again, guys, we will have all these links in the show notes that you can sign up, get your free account, play around with it. And if you launch your own giveaway, I want you guys to tag us on Instagram at subscription box bootcamp so that we can share about your giveaway and help you get even more traction. Josh, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. You have given me so much inspiration and knowledge around the whole software platform and giveaways in general and on behalf of our listeners. Thank you so much. Yeah.
Josh (34:15):
Thanks for, thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun to talk.
Julie (34:18):
Awesome. All right guys. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you in the next episode.