Airdrops are dead… Is something we often hear from the industry. Whether it’s users who are looking to find the next crypto airdrop that will make them rich. Or companies who are looking for large sums of capital in the Airdrop Alert community. Both sides of the coin are not getting what they are searching for.
Does that mean the days of giveaway campains are over?
Hell no! It just means the industry is evolving.
In the example above, both user and company have unrealistic expectations which lead to disappointments. Truth is: you don’t get rich from freebies and you don’t find big capital in an audience looking for free things.
Luckily, we’ve seen the airdrop industry maturing over the past year, and here are a few top examples on how airdrop campaigns are still relevant in 2021.
6 Effective Ways To Launch Airdrops In 2021
1] Holdlers Airdrops (Spark)
Back to the basics of airdrops. In the beginning, there was only Bitcoin. Only a few years after in 2011, the first altcoins like Litecoin launched. But after the launch of Ethereum in 2015, the real alt season started.
With limited interest from the general public, the new crypto coins had to find a way to reach current owners of BTC and others. What better way to reach current crypto fanatics by giving them a new coin?
This is how early airdrops of Stellar, OMG (previously OmiseGo), and Byteball worked. And today, we see this is still a highly effective way today with the Spark airdrop for Ripple (XRP) holders.
After the announcement was published, the Google search results in Google went up and the price of XRP climbed up 123% in 30 days. We’ll have to see what it does to the price after the airdrop distribution. However, it’s clear to see that this type of campaign creates the wanted brand awareness and community that Flare Network (Spark) team is looking for.
2] Goverment Airdrops Are Here!
The very first crypto airdrop was Auroracoin. In 2014, this project gave away free coins to all citizens of Iceland and failed miserably.
Late 2018, president Maduro of Venezuela announced the launch of its own cryptocurrency Petro, including an airdrop if you signed up on their platform to claim it. The exchange also allowed trading with other cryptocurrencies, which leads to believe Venezuela was targeting its own citizens to successfully launch the platform.
$3 Million in Digital Yuan Giveaway
At the time of writing (December 11th, 2020), the Chinese city of Suzhou, is starting to hand out 20 million yuan of the new central bank digital currency (CBDC) to 100,000 Chinese citizens.
Not only are they giving away the new Digital Yuan, the government also signed up 10,000 stores to their pilot program. This means the coin has an immediate use case, which usually means it leads to quicker adoption.
When The Netherlands stepped away from their currency The Dutch Guilder to adopt the Euro in 2002, they gave away free Euro’s to all Dutch citizens. This is the same strategy as Governments, like China, are using today with new Digital Currencies backed by governments. I expect we’ll see the same with the Digital Euro.
– Morten Christensen, CEO AirdropAlert
Let’s see how quickly other goverment-backed tokens will use airdrops in 2021.
3] Learn & Earn Programs
After Coinbase acquired Earn.com in 2017, they integrated the platform into their Exchange with their Learn and Earn program. The goal of these programs is to educate the users about a project, while in the meanwhile they are earning some crypto. A few familiar names joined hands with these programs on Coinbase to attract new crypto enthusiasts, including EOS, BAT, Zcash, Compound & DAI.
This year more exchanges and projects start implementing these educational programs, and we expect to see a rise of Learn & Earn airdrops in 2021. With crypto companies like CoinMarketCap, Changelly, Binance & OKEx launching competitive programs in 2020, it’s a great signal towards the rest of the industry.
4] DeFi Airdrops 2021 Are Coming
Will DeFi create a next boom, like the ICO’s did in 2017? Only time will tell.
However, what stands out is the news surrounding airdrops on the DeFi network. The SushiSwap & UNIswap airdrops caused a lot of noise on crypto news outlets.
Simultaneously to the value locked in the Defi industry, we see the amount of DeFi token airdrops rising. Today projects like KingSwap, Warp Finance & PEA farm currently have their giveaways listed on AirdropAlert.com. We expect to see a surge in DeFi Airdrops in 2021 if the sector keeps its current growth rate.
5] Deposit Bonus
This strategy works best when you’re increasing your user retention. A person who holds funds on your platform, is more likely to come back right?
This marketing trick has been used for years, and today we see it successfully used by casinos, exchanges, wallets and more.
Companies like Swissborg, currently run campaigns to incentivize the referral program including deposit bonuses.
Investors who share their Wealth App referral code with others can earn Bitcoin. After the referred user deposits a minimum of 50 EUR in their account, both user and referrer receive a ticket for free bitcoin, which can range between 1 EUR, and for some lucky winners up to 100 EUR.
6] Funnel Marketing
Growth Hacking, Funnel marketing, conversion optimizations. Nowadays, these are all popular terms amongst digital marketers.
With the rise of airdrops in 2017, the crypto marketers found a holy grail by combining multiple layers of marketing all in one go: an airdrop. With a single campaign, they managed to built communities, create brand awareness, grow their social media channels, and find users and investors, simply by handing out free tokens.
This hype could only last as long as the ICO frenzy. Today we still see effective airdrop campaigns, but most often they are focused on growth for one or two specific areas, instead of an “all in one hype campaign”.
Airdrops in 2021 are best served as the top of the funnel: Awareness.
Once you start gaining traffic and interest, you work your way down the funnel which eventually leads to a sale, investment or active user.
Final Thoughts
Over 6 years since the first crypto airdrop, the string of endless crypto giveaway’s still hasn’t ended. On the contrary, they’re evolving, and with the right strategy, they are more successful than ever before.
No, your Telegram group wont grow to 100k members in a week. But is that really what you are looking for?
If it is, please read this blog again from top to bottom and hopefully you will come to a different conclusion.
Whether you’re looking to start an airdrop, competition, raffle, lottery or other viral marketing campaign to shake the industry in 2021, feel free to reach out to our team.
