A business owner’s most important asset today is their customer email list. A healthy email list will ensure healthy profits. In fact, marketers report earning 38 to 40 dollars for every dollar they spend on email marketing.
Using lead magnets to incentivize your ideal customer to sign up for your list is a classic and effective way to grow your list. The value exchange is considered fair and reasonable to the customer. The list provides demographic data and an audience to whom you’ll market your solutions.
You give them something that has instant value and solves a problem for them. They give you their email address, and sometimes other information such as the size of their business, their name, or other data that you want to collect to qualify the potential customer.
After that, you can use their information to communicate with them about more of your recommended solutions. In the following pages, you’ll learn what lead magnets are, how they work, why they work, and even see some examples that you may already be familiar with but did not realize were lead magnets.
Definition of a Lead Magnet
You get that a lead magnet is a bribe you give to interested parties to collect information like email addresses so that you can market to them. A lead magnet can exist in any form, from a PDF download to some software, a checklist, a report, eBook, white paper, video, a trial, a course or any other easy to deliver piece of information or content that solves a problem for the subscriber and adds a potential customer to your email list.
While customers help build a healthy list, you need to build a list before you have paying customers to truly experience the benefits and power of having an email list. For this reason – using lead magnets to grow – it works wonders.
A healthy email list needs some form of lead magnet or entry-level product to help the business owner build their list. The offer needs to be something that solves a singular problem fast and efficiently, is attractive enough to the prospect to make them sufficiently curious to give you their email address, and leads them to want more while it also demonstrates your expertise.
Some common names for lead magnets are:
- Ethical bribe
- Opt-in incentive
- Irresistible offer
- Freemium
- Freebie
- Content upgrade
- Free gift
You may have heard other names for lead magnets, but the idea is the same. Give the ideal audience something of value to get them to sign up for your email list. Then you can send targeted information via email messages that encourage them to buy something – whether your offer or an affiliate offer.
Common Types of Lead Magnets
Here are some common lead magnets you’ve probably even signed up for yourself without even realizing it was a lead magnet.
| Short eBook | A case study | Training |
| An ultimate guide | A secret | software or app |
| Unannounced bonuses | Webinars | How to’s |
| Learn more PDF Download | A course | Recipes |
| Resource guide | Targeted email offers | Directions |
| Coupons and coupon codes | A compilation file | Free consultation |
| Checklist | Swipe files | Discovery call |
| Workbooks | Free trial | Tool kit |
| Templates | Cheat sheet | Spreadsheet |
If you’ve seen anything like this, you’ve also seen how effective lead magnets are to get you to sign up for an email list. The only other way to build your email list is to make sales, since the only legal ways that you can add people to your list are if they’re your customer or they agree to sign up for the freebie.
A freebie can be anything that you can create and offer to your ideal customer in exchange for their information so you can add them to your email list. Once they’re on your list, you can start marketing your own products or products you recommend as an affiliate, as well as educating them about your expertise. To ensure that you are attracting the most targeted list members, it will help to know what should be included in your lead management to make it as useful as possible.
