5 tried-and-tested lead magnets to build your email list

Keep warm leads warm until they're ready to buy

In an ideal world every visitor to your website would be ready to make a purchase. In reality, you’re probably looking at around a 5% conversion rate from casual clickers — and that’s a best-case scenario.

Email funnels can be great for lead nurturing, but not every business operates on sales leads. In fact, for some businesses, an overtly sales-oriented approach is going to be exactly what not to do if you want to generate a long-term relationship with potential customers: sometimes, your best marketing strategy is simply to stay in touch and make yourself welcome in a future client’s inbox.

And how do you do that? Well, the answer is going to look different depending on your demographics and your overall goals, but some form of regular email communication is going to be key.

Whether that be a monthly newsletter, information on new product launches, vouchers and special offers, or some combination of all of the above (plus whatever else is going to add value to your subscribers), capturing the contact details of website visitors before they navigate away is a fantastic way to make sure that your brand stays front and centre in their memory until they’re ready to make a purchase.

As to how you get a potential customer to part with their email address — well, you could just ask them to sign up, of course, and some more-than-slightly interested punters might very well do just that. But to really seal the deal, you can’t go wrong with a solid freebie. You're offering something of value for something of value (an email address and permission to stay in touch) so you are, hopefully, making it easy for your casual visitor to take that next step into connecting with your company. Any freebie that you offer will have to be relevant to your business, meet your clients’ needs, and something that’s not going to require much effort on their part to redeem, but, beyond that, the choice is yours. So if you’re ready to grow your mailing list, here are a few suggestions for capturing contact details.

1. A money-off coupon

There’s no denying that a voucher for 5 or 10 or 20% off their next purchase can be a powerful incentive to pass on an email address: research suggests that email promising a discount has a 70% open rate. But it’s worth noting a couple of considerations before diving in. First off, and most obviously, offering a discount means that you’re actively making less money on that sale. Too small a discount may not be tempting enough to persuade a website visitor to part with their contact details — but too large a discount is going to impact your profit margins. Secondly, you run the risk of training your new customer to expect a reduced price — as JC Penney found out when they attempted to do away with coupons and saw their sales drop by 23%. And finally, for small businesses with minimal online trade, your web hosting package may actually require you to upgrade before your customers will be able to redeem a money-off voucher. You don’t want to promise an incentive that your customers aren’t able to claim.

2. An ebook

Offering a free ebook on just the right subject can draw email addresses to your mailing list like iron filings to a magnet. Best of all, after an initial outlay of time and any costs associated with production (which can be as large or as small as you choose — bearing in mind that the product must look professional and worth the customer’s investment), there’s no impact on your bottom line. (Ebooks also make a great lead magnet for a sales funnel, by the way, but that’s another post.) Also consider the fact that your ebook, if pitched correctly, can drive sales — not just sign-ups — by presenting just enough of the answer to your customers’ question that it feels satisfying, but not quite as much of an answer as they’d get by signing up to X product that you offer. Say, for example, you run an interior design company. Your ebook might address the best way to choose paint colours for different types of rooms. You’ll pour in as much of your expert knowledge as you can possibly translate to the page, so that your reader feels that they’ve truly benefited from exchanging an email address for the information you have to offer — and when it comes time to put that knowledge into effect, and they decide that they’re ready to pay an expert to give their home a bright new look, you’ll be the first designer that comes to mind — the more so if you’ve been using that email address to stay in touch with them in the meantime. (And, even better, they’re coming to you with a clear idea of what colours they want to use where, so that part of the job is already done.)

A few things to bear in mind, though: your ebook must look professional. It must be well written (no typos, grammatical errors, inconsistent spellings, etc) and properly formatted, so if those areas are not your strong suit, you’ll need to bring in a professional to help. A good copywriter can deliver a ghostwritten ebook that will make your company shine (and Fabula Copy is run by an award-winning author, so…) and, considering the reputational impact this book stands to have on your company, it’s well worth investing the money to get it right. Also, take your time in deciding on subject matter (again, a copywriter can advise): you want to pitch this information so that your potential customer just can’t navigate away without signing up. And it’s also worth remembering that an ebook isn’t necessarily going to be the most appealing incentive for customers of every company. If you’re selling home made Cornish ice cream, for example, an ebook on the history of vanilla isn’t going to have wide appeal to a casual visitor to your site (though I for one would absolutely sign up for that — but that's just me).

3. A checklist​

This is a variation on the ebook theme, only much shorter, punchier and to the point. Email marketing strategist Meera Kothand swears by the checklist over the long-form freebie, insisting that busy consumers don’t want to invest time in a how-to; they’re looking for simple, actionable tips and tricks to upskill in whatever area you’re keen to pique their interest. Producing a checklist is also a much smaller demand on your time and resources than producing an ebook. But you also have a much more restricted format in which to showcase your expertise, and, since it’s so concise, you’re going to have to invest plenty of thought in making sure that it’s relevant and appealing enough to persuade your website visitors to sign up. 

4. A quiz

Quizzes are fantastically flexible, and, if used strategically, can also be a great way to get your customers primed to consciously consider the kind of pain points that your product is designed to address. What’s more, they’re easily adaptable to most brand voices. If your brand is fun, irreverent or playful, a silly quiz that links to your product might be just the thing to pique the interest of a potential customer. For example, an artisanal bakery looking to appeal to a younger adult demographic (say, 18-25) might ask visitors to their website: What type of cupcake are you? Based on the results, you have the option to then showcast the relevant product. Alternatively, a service-based industry might quiz potential clients on, say, which social media platform works best for their brand — and then list the potential benefits they can offer in terms of platform-based expertise. 

A well-pitched quiz can potentially generate double the sign-ups to your mailing list over other freebie content. However, they’re not without their drawbacks. Customers are often not thrilled to get to the end of a quiz and discover that they’re obliged to sign up to a mailing list in order to see their results — it can lead to a loss of trust. For that reason, online quiz generator Interact recommends that you always offer quizzers the option to skip the sign-up en route to accessing their results, which means you may lose a fair few email addresses at the last hurdle. And, on that note, adding a quiz to your website generally requires a plug-in of some kind — which may mean upgrading your web hosting plan or, indeed, forking out for the right quiz-building software.

5. Access to exclusive content

What sort of exclusive content? Whatever is going to be of most value to your customer. The sky’s the limit, really: webinars offering solutions to recognisable pain points, advance notice of new releases (and possible money-off vouchers as applicable), a subscribers-only Facebook group where members can access expert advice and/or peer feedback, AMA sessions with big-name specialists in the field, access to early-bird sales, free shipping on all orders over X amount (so long as X amount is lower than your usual free shipping limit) — whatever you think your subscribers are going to want and, crucially, you know you can deliver. There’s no point in, for example, promising a regular livestream from a different author every month if you only know a handful of authors and you’re going to have to spend all your free time sourcing others once you’ve exhausted your friend group. But if you can link up with other solopreneurs to cross-promote each other, and that’s something that could be of value to your subscribers, why not? You’ve not only aced your freebie; you’ve also built your network and fostered mutual goodwill among other key players in your industry.

Whatever your strategy for building your list, make sure it’s not something that’s going to overwhelm you or flatten your profits. Fabula Copy specialises in generating content around mailing lists — whether that be your sign-up incentive or the mail-out communication itself — and I love to work with clients to generate the big idea that’s going to transform their email communication. Get in touch today for a free consultation to see how I can help you build, grow, and maintain your email relationship with your customers — both current and future.

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