Fire It Up Giveaway

Campaign Overview

Burch Barrel makes a barrel-style grill and fire pit. In early 2020 it ran the Fire It Up Giveaway on fireitup.burchbarrel.com, pairing its own product with a year of meat from ButcherBox, the meat delivery subscription. The page's pitch was "Make it a great summer. Enter to win a Burch Barrel Grill/Fire-pit and 12 months of meat from Butcher Box."

The giveaway ran from January 5 to April 30, 2020, with one winner drawn at random on the closing day. It collected 18,077 sign-ups and 146,621 page views. The campaign did not require email confirmation, so every sign-up counted as an entry.

Campaign Strategy

The prize answers the question a grill raises: what are you going to cook on it? Pairing the Burch Barrel with a year of meat turned a single product into a summer's worth of use, and kept the prize tightly on theme for people who like to cook outdoors.

The rules were short and plain: no purchase necessary, one entry per person, entrants had to be over 21, and one winner would be selected by random drawing from valid entries on April 30, 2020. Email confirmation was switched off, which kept entry to a single step.

After entering, people could earn extra points:

• Social actions: like Burch Barrel on Facebook, follow on Instagram, or like the brand's last two Instagram posts (1 pt each).
• Referrals: 100 points for every friend who entered through a participant's share link.

There were no milestone rewards or secondary prizes. Everything on the page led to the single grand prize draw.

Viral Mechanics & Growth Engine

The point values made the priority obvious. Each social action was worth 1 point and each referral 100, so one friend brought in was worth a hundred times any follow. The three social actions together could add at most 3 points; the rest of any entrant's score had to come from sharing.

The social actions still worked as follower growth. Entrants logged 3,280 Facebook page likes, 3,168 Instagram follows and 2,757 completions of the "like our last two posts" action, for 9,205 social actions in total, about one for every two sign-ups.

The long window suited the prize. Running from early January to the end of April gave the campaign almost four months to collect entries before the grilling season began, and the page framed the prize around the summer ahead.

Results & Impact

• 18,077 sign-ups between January 5 and April 30, 2020, with no email confirmation required.
• 146,621 page views, roughly one sign-up for every eight page views.
• 9,205 completed social actions, about one for every two sign-ups.
• 3,280 Facebook page likes and 3,168 Instagram follows for Burch Barrel.
• 2,757 completions of the action to like the brand's last two Instagram posts.

For a single-product brand, the result is a list of 18,077 people who asked to win an outdoor grill and a year of meat in the months before summer, plus more than 3,000 likes and follows on each of its two main social channels.

Why This Strategy Works

People enter giveaways for prizes they can picture using. A grill on its own asks the entrant to imagine the rest; a grill with twelve months of meat is a summer of cookouts. That specificity also filters the audience: the people who enter are the people who want to cook outdoors, which is exactly who a grill brand needs on its list.

The scoring then turns those entrants into promoters. When a referral is worth a hundred times a follow, the rational move is to share, and each share reaches someone likely to have the same interests. For any single-product DTC brand with a seasonal peak and a complementary brand to pair with, this is the template worth copying.

Key Takeaways

1. Pair the product with what it is for. A grill plus a year of meat is a more complete prize than the grill alone.
2. Weight referrals heavily. At 100 points against 1 for a follow, sharing was the only real way to improve an entrant's odds.
3. Decide on email confirmation deliberately. Leaving it off kept entry to one step, at the cost of unverified addresses.
4. Use a long window for seasonal products. Nearly four months of entries built the list ahead of summer.
5. State the rules on the page. No purchase necessary, one entry per person, over 21 and a named draw date.