How to grow your email list with a giveaway

Updated 11 November 2026 · By the Vast team

A giveaway can add hundreds of addresses to your list in a week. Whether they're worth anything comes down to three things: people chose to get your emails, you can show they chose, and your first emails give them a reason to stay. Get those wrong and the list unsubscribes, marks you as spam and drags down the emails your real readers get.

Vast is our product, so weigh that. We checked every source below on November 11, 2026. EUR-Lex, where the EU publishes its laws, returned a bot check instead of the text, so for the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive we read the latest Internet Archive copies, from November 9 and May 14, 2026.

Entering a giveaway is not signing up

The UK regulator, the ICO, puts it plainly in its marketing FAQ: if someone gives you their details "for a prize draw, they're hoping to hear from you if they win," and that consent "can't be carried over for anything else."

So the newsletter sign-up has to be its own choice, separate from entering. In practice:

EU and UK: opt in first

The GDPR defines consent in Article 4(11) as "any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication" of someone's wishes, given "by a statement or by a clear affirmative action." Recital 32 adds: "Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent." Article 7 says you must be able to show that someone consented, that it must be "as easy to withdraw as to give consent," and that whether consent is freely given depends on whether a service is made "conditional on consent" it doesn't need.

For email marketing specifically, the EU's ePrivacy Directive, Article 13(1), allows marketing email only to people "who have given their prior consent." The UK has its own version, PECR, and the ICO's guidance on email marketing spells out what that means:

What the ICO asksWhat it means for a giveaway
A free choice, kept "separate from other things, such as terms and conditions"A separate sign-up step, not a line in the rules
Your name in the consent request, and what you'll send"Get [Studio]'s monthly devlog," not "Subscribe"
A positive action; no pre-ticked boxesThe entrant presses the button themselves
A record of "who, when, how"Keep the date and source of each sign-up
Consent is "unlikely to be valid" if it's a necessary conditionDon't make the sign-up required to enter

The ICO's "soft opt-in" for existing customers needs contact details you got "while selling or negotiating to sell a product or service." A giveaway entry isn't a sale, so don't rely on it.

US: CAN-SPAM

The US law works differently. The FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide says the Act sets rules for commercial email and "gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them." Every marketing email must:

Each email that breaks the law can cost "up to $53,088," per the guide.

Inbox providers want opt-in anyway

Even where the law allows sending without consent, inboxes may not deliver it. Gmail's email sender guidelines say "Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you" and "Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them." They ask senders to keep spam rates in Postmaster Tools "below 0.3%," and to avoid opt-in forms "that are checked by default."

This isn't legal advice; check with a lawyer for your country and prize.

Setting it up on Vast with Mailchimp or MailerLite

Vast is our product, so weigh this section as a vendor's description.

On Vast, the sign-up is an entry action called Subscribe to a Newsletter. You add it in the advanced editor, under How people enter, with Add more actions. It needs the Pro plan, which is $49 a month or $348 a year as of November 11, 2026. Players see the title you give the action and a Subscribe button.

Inside the action, choose Add Email Integration and pick your tool:

The same list has other tools, including beehiiv, Brevo, HubSpot and Kit. We only cover Mailchimp and MailerLite here. One action can send to more than one tool. The Integrations page lists your email tools too (see Connect your accounts).

When a player presses Subscribe, Vast sends the email address on their Vast account to your tool. Players who sign up with email confirm their address with a 6-digit code, and players who continue with Discord, Twitch, X or Facebook use the email verified there (see Log in and sign up). Visitors who enter through an embedded giveaway type a name and email, and get a code only if the giveaway asks for one.

Double opt-in: where the two tools differ

Mailchimp. Vast adds entrants to your list as "subscribed." Mailchimp's developer guide says that on a double opt-in audience, "subscribed skips the confirmation email." Its double opt-in help page says double opt-in "can only be enabled for Mailchimp signup forms." So Mailchimp's own confirmation step doesn't run for entrants from Vast. If you need confirmed opt-in, ask for it in your welcome email (below).

MailerLite. Vast adds entrants to your group without setting a status, so MailerLite's own settings apply. Its double opt-in article says to turn on Double opt-in for API and integrations, under Account settings, then Subscribe settings, to use double opt-in "for subscribers being added to MailerLite via an integration." Test it by entering your own giveaway with a spare address.

What Vast doesn't do for you

A welcome sequence that keeps them

The first email decides whether a giveaway sign-up becomes a reader. Set it up before the giveaway goes live.

In Mailchimp, welcome flows start with a Signs up for Email trigger. Mailchimp's welcome email article says it adds contacts "who are new to your audience and have a status of subscribed," and that "already-subscribed contacts won't be added again." You can filter the flow by signup source, tags or groups.

In MailerLite, the double opt-in article recommends a generic confirmation email, then an automation "to send a content-specific welcome email," started by a group-based trigger when double opt-in is on. Vast adds entrants to a group, so trigger on that group.

A short sequence to start from:

  1. Right away: thanks and expectations. What you'll send, how often, and when the giveaway ends. If your tool skipped double opt-in, add a confirm button, and stop emailing people who never press it.
  2. Two or three days later: your best thing. A devlog, a trailer, a wishlist link. One link.
  3. About a week later: one question. Ask what they want to hear about. Replies tell you who's real.
  4. After the draw: the result. Announce the winners, with their permission, and give everyone else a reason to stay.

Every marketing email needs your postal address and a clear way to opt out, as CAN-SPAM requires.

Avoid junk sign-ups

Junk sign-ups are addresses that never wanted your emails. They don't open, they report you as spam, and Gmail says frequent spam reports make your future emails more likely to be marked as spam.

Measure what worked

A big number on the day the giveaway ends tells you little. Measure 30 days later.

NumberWhere to find itWhat it tells you
Sign-ups from the giveawayYour tool's group, segment or signup sourceRaw growth
Confirmed, if you use double opt-inYour tool's subscriber statusesWho really wanted it
Unsubscribes and spam reports in 30 daysYour tool's reports; Gmail Postmaster ToolsList quality
Clicks on the welcome emailsYour tool's reportsReal interest
Wishlists, sales or joins from those emailsYour store, Steam or DiscordWhether it paid off

Treat opens with care. Mailchimp's open tracking article says bot activity "such as Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) can falsely inflate open and click metrics," and recommends excluding bot activity from reports. Replies, and clicks with bots filtered out, are better signals.

On Vast, each giveaway's Actions and Entries tab can filter entries by action, so you can compare how many entered with how many chose the newsletter. Next time, change one thing, such as the prize, and compare.

Run a giveaway on Vast with an optional newsletter action that adds entrants to Mailchimp or MailerLite. Start a giveaway

FAQ

Can I add everyone who enters my giveaway to my email list? Not under the GDPR or the UK's rules without separate consent, and the ICO says consent is unlikely to be valid when agreeing to marketing is a necessary condition. US law is opt-out based, but Gmail still asks senders to email only people who opted in.

Do I need double opt-in? MailerLite says it "is not required by GDPR." It helps you show consent and keeps bots out. MailerLite can apply it to integrations; Mailchimp's doesn't apply to contacts Vast adds.

Which email tools work with Vast? Mailchimp and MailerLite, plus others such as beehiiv, Brevo, HubSpot and Kit. The action needs a Pro plan.

Sources

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