If you opened your inbox right now, you'd probably find several emails from brands you love. Almost everyone uses email marketing to build brands and boost revenue.
There's a good reason! The average email marketing ROI is around $36 for every $1 spent. Yet, people don't sign up for email newsletters without a good reason.
That's where lead magnets come in.
What is a Lead Magnet?
If you want to grow your email list and improve customer feedback, lead magnets are the way to go. Also known as freebies, these tools are free assets or discounts that businesses offer to potential customers in return for contact information, like names and email addresses.
Have you ever entered your email into a pop-up to get 15% off? That's a lead magnet! But, there are lots of others, including:
- Long-form content like e-books or white papers
- Webinar access
- Digital downloads like templates or worksheets
- Personality or style quizzes
Lead magnets are super powerful. They allow you to gather potential customers' email addresses and turn them into loyal fans over time. Remember that the ROI on email marketing is high, so using lead magnets effectively is critical.
Using contact information, you can turn leads into customers with personalized marketing. That will create better brand awareness, answer questions, showcase expertise, and more.
Every interaction is an opportunity to connect with leads and push them further down the sales funnel.
Lead Magnets and Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy involves multiple channels. Lead magnets work best with email marketing and boost results when done correctly. Here's why it's important:
- A large percentage of marketers say that email is their top marketing channel.
- Email marketing can help businesses gain more customers than other channels combined.
Lead magnets build your email list and can help with personalization, segmentation, and more. Let's look at three ways lead magnets improve email marketing:
- List Growth: Great lead magnets offer something valuable (like a discount, content, or free class) that's compelling enough that leads will give you their email addresses.
- Segmentation: Segmented emails drive better results than generic emails. Lead magnets help you segment by buying journey and interests, creating a better experience that boosts email marketing revenue significantly.
- Traffic: Lead magnets drive traffic to your website, whether hosted on a landing page or requiring registration. With increased traffic, you gain more opportunities to convert leads into customers.
To get the most from your lead magnets, share them across channels. Try sharing them in blog posts, add banner ribbons to the top of your site, or embed on landing pages. You can also use them as website pop-ups, or share them on social media.
After you get a potential customer's email address, start building a relationship with a welcome email that sets expectations.
Making a Great Lead Magnet
With strong conversion rates, freebies are essential for customer acquisition. But what makes the top ones stand out? Let's go over the common components of quality lead magnets.
Provide Value
Data is powerful. When people share data willingly, it's your job to use the data responsibly and make the transaction worthwhile. You can best do that by providing value.
You can give your audience something they can't get elsewhere, like industry reports or valuable e-books. Remember, this should be relevant to your audience.
Your lead magnet should focus on helping prospects save time, share unique insights, or solve problems.
Be Relevant
Don't try to appeal to everyone. You want qualified leads—those that find value in your product/service, are interested in your brand, and are ready to buy.
To attract valuable leads, make a lead magnet that's relevant and specific to your target audience. Generic resources might attract more people, but they might not be qualified.
For example, an HR tech brand might offer a webinar on ways to stand out as an employer over a more generic webinar on the importance of employer branding.
Give Enough
It can be tricky to balance providing value without giving away too much. You want to make people feel that giving you their data was worth it, but you don't want to give away so much that they don't need your product or service anymore.
Suppose you're an email marketing provider. You might offer a few email newsletter templates as a lead magnet. If people want to send the emails or access more templates, they will need to purchase a subscription.
Build Credibility
Trust is very important, and only a small percentage of customers really trust businesses.
Lead magnets help build that trust. The resources you offer in return for email addresses should be credible, and demonstrate your expertise with data, interviews with credible sources, and research-backed insights.
Make it Shareable
If you create valuable content, you want people to share it! So, make it easy with social media share buttons for all the platforms.
If you make your lead magnet simple to share, you're more likely to increase reach and incoming leads.
Lead Magnet Ideas
Need some inspiration for lead magnets? Here are a few:
- Templates
- Infographics
- Guides
- Case studies
- Free classes
- Free trials
- Quizzes
- Reports
- Videos and webinars
Webinar Example
A webinar lead magnet is a solid choice, offering insights, tips and tricks.
Report Example
Use exclusive data from thousands of customers, helping further establish the organization as an industry leader.
Masterclass Example
Use social proof to build trust and clearly articulate the value of the free masterclass, explaining what the audience can expect.
Template Example
Provide customizable templates that will help speed up content creation.
In an ever-changing marketing world, email marketing remains essential. Compelling lead magnets that add value for future customers can help build an email list, segment an audience, and help obtain more customers that drive business growth.
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