Lead magnets allow you to get more prospects on your email list.
“Lead Magnet – noun – an irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. The goal of the Lead Magnet is to maximize the number of targeted leads you are getting for an offer.“
This definition by the very well known DigitalMarketer.com tells you a few things:
1) You’ve been doing it all wrong 🙂 Prospects won’t just “sign up for your newsletter” unless you offer them an indispensable, irresistible, immediately downloadable offer.
2) You can increase your email list by… 1000%, even 10000% if you create just 1 or a few Lead Magnets (this takes 30 minutes!).
3) And the more specific the Lead Magnet, the more prospects you can acquire within that Niche.
We’ll learn and study possible strategies we can implement TODAY on our websites to increase opt-ins (sign-ups) to our Email Marketing.
Email Marketing is the number #1 Digital Marketing channel. And it’s free.
Now, what about getting some free leads, get their permission to send them content, education, offers and sales pitches, with a simple Lead Magnet?
Great, let’s see the rules you should follow to make it work for your business.
1. Be Relevant
We’ve already seen what a Lead Magnet is, so no need to repeat that. What’s important to cover here is the “relevancy” bit.
Your opt-in rate (i.e. the percentage of users who opt-in based on the number of visitors who see your lead magnet) can grow exponentially when your offer (the Lead Magnet, indeed) is relevant to the website page, blog post, ecommerce product or website section that users are on right now.
You can see on one of Hubspot’s blogs, How to Publish on LinkedIn Pulse, that at the end of the article and on the bottom right of the page, they offer a super relevant “How to Use LinkedIn Guide”:
Now, that’s what you call a Lead Magnet. It’s irresistible, it’s valuable and is definitely relevant to the blog users are reading. The opt-in rate on an offer such as this is definitely higher than a random Lead Magnet or, even worse, than a “Sign up to our Newsletter”.
Nobody cares about a Newsletter (well, unless there is immediate value). A Lead Magnet is much more effective. Can you find a relevant one for your business (or even better, for that specific website page)?
2. Offer Amazing Value
When you create a Lead Magnet you have to consider the fact that readers have limited time and will soon abandon your website. Which means, you have even less time in order to capture their email address.
One good way of offering something AMAZING is by providing a huge resource.
You can see on one of DigitalMarketer’s blog posts called “101 Best Email Subject Lines of 2019” (which is already promising a lot by the way), that the lead magnet is incredibly offering over 600 email subject lines. Now, that’s what you call an irresistible offer:
The article has referenced to this free resource at the beginning, in between its content, at the end and even in the sidebar. It’s evident what their goal is.
So, is there something you can put together without investing months in it, but that is definitely going to be an awesome offer?
3. Suggest Media Alternatives
Your blog posts should be written as tutorials and how-tos. That’s what I state in my book. Anything else, and you’d waste your time.
Problem is that many readers would rather watch a video. Or listen to a podcast episode. Or download a PDF so that they can easily focus.
Different people love different media. And for those who read development tutorials on my most popular blog, Business Bloomer, my Lead Magnet consists of a relevant, valuable, short video tutorial to better understand the behind-the-scenes (i.e. how to properly code):
You can see the lead magnet in action on one of my most popular blogs, “WooCommerce: Separate Login and Registration Pages“. At the bottom of the tutorial you see the free videos as per the above screenshot, and this is currently the only method I’ve used to “win” my 10,000 and growing active email subscribers.
4. Lead Magnet Examples
No screenshot this time, but as you may imagine a Lead Magnet can really be anything. As long as it’s immediately downloadable.
We’ve already talked about a free video, a free guide and a swipe file. But you can also offer:
- PDFs
- Ebooks
- Checklist
- Templates
- Cheatsheets
- Infographics
- Video Course
- Email Course
- Brochure
- Catalog
- Report
- and so on…
The only secret here is to offer something relevant to your users, so that they can’t say no. Now all it’s left is to install a Lead Magnet opt-in form on your website, so you can start testing and capturing as many leads as possible.
5. How to Create Lead Magnet Opt-ins With Mailchimp
This same website provides several opt-ins to readers and browsers. One of the most important landing pages for capturing leads is https://ecommerceandbeyond.com/the-book/.
In here I give online users two choices: buying my Ecommerce and Beyond book, or otherwise downloading a free chapter (a PDF I created with chapter 6, basically the core of the book).
That’s my lead magnet, and in order to download the free chapter users are required to opt-in and leave a name and email address.
This opt-in form is connected with Mailchimp, my email marketing provider, so that upon opt-in, subscriber is automatically added to my email contact list and automatically sent a welcome email, containing the PDF.
But this is easier to explain with a series of screenshots. Trust me, you will now find out how easy it is to implement email marketing automation on your own website.
Login to your Mailchimp account, then go to “Audience” > “Sign up forms” > “Embedded forms”. You will see this:
Now copy the HTML as per the screenshot, go to your WordPress website (or your content management system) and paste it inside your landing/opt-in page.
This is what now shows on my landing page, after embedding Mailchimp’s HTML:
At this stage, your website and Mailchimp are “linked” together. This means if someone signs up on my website, Mailchimp will automatically add a user to my list, and also send a welcome email.
Actually, instead of a single welcome email, I created a Mailchimp “campaign”.
Automatically, upon opt-in, users receive a series of emails (“welcome” is the first one, which also contains the PDF) for the next 5 weeks. This is called “lead nurturing”. I get to present myself, I get to give them the PDF bonus, I also get to ask them specific questions, give them more content, and finally ask them to take a specific action at the end of the sequence.
Here’s a screenshot of my campaign. As you can see the first email contains the PDF, while the others are follow-ups:
Each campaign email can be customized (content) and scheduled (trigger). In the example above, the first email is sent immediately, while the following ones are sent one week after the other.
Besides, I can now target these users via newsletters (as I explain well in my book); however these email “autoresponders” are much more effective because are more personal and work with triggers. Anyhow,