A giveaway that became a Christmas lights lead list

Jas Singh runs Winnipeg Digest, a local newsletter that goes out three times a week in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We caught up about a month after his last visit. He had just ordered Christmas lights, run a giveaway to find his first customers, and closed a $2,500 job. Here is how that giveaway worked, plus his views on cash drops, reels versus carousels, outbound sales and welcome emails.

A conference worth the flights

We opened with the Business of Local conference, October 19 to 21 in Salt Lake City, which looks built for local media companies. I had booked my ticket that morning for about $400. Flights and a hotel make it closer to three times that. Jas had not heard of it and said he would look at the speakers.

My pitch was simple. I went to a general newsletter conference in Austin almost a year earlier, and the value was being around people deep in a very niche space. A room that is all local media should be even better.

Why Jas is not sold on cash drops

We talked about the cash giveaways going around, after Louie from Spark Loop covered one on his podcast. Jas said they are an easy way to start growing, but not a good brand play. You can gain followers much faster, but you can end up with 10,000 followers and 20 likes a post, because those people may not care about your other content.

I added that the people who get excited about free cash are close to the opposite of who reads our newsletters: upper middle class homeowners and 50-year-old moms. In a high-end area it makes less sense. In a middle or lower middle class area it might make more.

Jas thinks it depends on where you are in the journey. Early on, put the effort into growing the audience. Once you have a few thousand followers and some trust, you can try more. He much prefers a kindness angle, like paying for someone's meal, over "$100 on duct tape," because you are supporting a local business.

Coffee parties, then Christmas lights

Jas's second coffee party sold out again, this time with 75 people. They played a Jenga tournament, winners got pastries and losers took espresso shots. He says they will probably wait until next summer to run more, because he wants to spend his time on bigger opportunities.

For this winter he is putting his eggs in one basket: Christmas lights. The lights arrived around the start of August. He named the business Digest Lights, an offshoot of Winnipeg Digest, and decided to wait on separate branding until a second season.

The giveaway that built a lead list

The giveaway was simple. One winner got a free home of lights for the first year. Entrants gave their phone number, email and home address, and rated from 1 to 5 how interested they were in lights if they did not win. About 240 of the 300 answered 3 or higher.

Jas then filtered the Google Sheet to those entrants, highlighted every home worth roughly $500,000 or more, and called only those people with $150 off. Smaller homes are not worth it, since he charges about $800 just to come out. He got on calls with 30 to 40 people and booked seven design consultations. The first one, last Saturday, closed at $2,500, and he was nervous walking up to the house. A course on Christmas lights helped.

He got the idea from Alex Hormozi, who suggested a similar giveaway to an offshore hiring company: give one winner a year of free help, and treat everyone else who entered as a lead.

He bases that on what other installers have told him: about 85% of Christmas lights customers come back each year. This is his first season, so it is not his own number yet.

The goal: 80 homes in 10 weeks

His goal for the first season is about $100,000, or 80 homes in 10 weeks. His minimum order is around $800 and he is assuming about $11,200 a season on average. He thinks Winnipeg Digest only needs to bring in 30 of those homes, because yard signs get neighbors calling. He is going 70/30 on profit with a cousin for the first season, with no equity.

By the end of the episode, the update was $2,500 in booked revenue from one consultation and three more scheduled for the next day.

Welcome emails and following up with leads

I asked about welcome sequences, since I only send one welcome email. Jas said Philip sends a second email on a day the newsletter is not going out, and Milk Road sends three or four emails in the first week. His rule is value first: a welcome email, then a restaurant guide, then a guide to the month's events, then a last email that asks people to share.

I had just launched a newsletter with a real estate agent, and 25 people had said yes to buying a home soon within five days. Jas would send them down a second sequence: a PDF on getting a home ready to sell, a checklist, a calendar link for a 15 minute call, and the ask only in the fourth email. He quotes Gary Vaynerchuk: jab, jab, jab, right hook. The newsletter keeps the realtor's sponsorship in front of them in the meantime.

Carousels, reels and a small team

Jas has three people helping: one virtual assistant writes and researches, another makes the Instagram carousels and does outbound outreach, and one commission-only person hops on sales calls. None are in Winnipeg.

He posted four or five reels a week for about eight months, then moved to carousels six or seven months ago. He did not want the brand tied to his face, and carousels are easy to scroll and share. They can still show up in the For You tab with music, and a VA can make them.

He still thinks reels are the better long-term route for creative campaigns, like promoting Christmas lights or a coffee party. His summary: reels when you are starting out and need exposure, carousels once you have an audience.

How Jas sells ads

Jas now sends about 40 to 50 outbound messages a day and books about 10 new outbound leads a week. Some want a one-off ad, but he tries to sell the annual. He expects to run short of ads to sell soon, which is part of why he is building Digest Lights. He does not want to go to five sends a week, because he already sometimes struggles to find content for three.

He built it by gluing together a few existing Notion templates. For payments he uses QuickBooks, which has similar fees to Stripe, with everything in one place.

About 97% of the time he gets people on a call. The rest get the media kit and a long email, and spending over $12,000 a year earns exclusivity. He also reaches out to others in an industry once one company says yes, since exclusivity will soon be gone.