Freebie Ideas to Help You Grow Your Email List
If you’re a business in 2024, chances are you have a freebie. Or at least you know you SHOULD have a freebie. Or maybe even a few freebies.
But what kind of freebies are actually going to convert subscribers and help you grow your email list?
What is a freebie?
If you don’t have a lead magnet and do not know what it is, let me give you a quick overview.
A freebie or “lead magnet” is essentially information you give to a site visitor in exchange for their email. They are strategically designed to attract and capture the attention of subscribers or potential customers.
Common freebies
When it comes to what makes a good lead magnet for your business, you have a lot of options as to what they can look like. And each one suits certain businesses and personalities better than others.
Ebooks
One of the most common types of freebies is ebooks. Ebooks can be educational or entertaining, but they’re typically easy reads that cover a topic a potential subscriber is interested in. Here’s an easy trick to making an ebook freebie — if you have any long-form blog posts, make them private and turn them into an ebook!
Checklists
We all love a good checklist, which is why checklists are very popular lead magnets. Just make sure it addresses common pain points or challenges your audience faces. Your checklist should serve as a tool they can return to regularly.
Email courses
Another common lead magnet is an email course. They typically cover an important topic that a potential subscriber wants to learn about, with the course broken up into multiple days.
What’s awesome about this lead magnet is that it gets your subscriber to get used to seeing your emails in their inbox. And if they signed up for an email course, then they at least intend to open all these emails.
Quizzes
A good lead magnet quiz provides a personalized answer to the user’s question depending on their answers. They are incredibly effective lead magnets that can possibly lower your cost per lead by 90%.
Want a great example of an effective quiz lead magnet?
Tori Dunlap of Her First 100K has a money plan quiz that has attracted hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Now, if you’ve read my blog post on how big your email list needs to be to make money, you know that you don’t need a list that is nearly that big, but her example just shows the power of a good quiz.
Webinar
Webinars are another way to exchange information for an email. A webinar can be a bit more of a personal lead magnet because it’ll typically be a live video event, where attendees can ask questions or a recorded version of the live event. Either way, you're the star, as you’ll be on video!
Discount
Who hasn’t signed up to a store’s email list in exchange for a discount? These lead magnets are incredibly popular ways to build your email list.
The good part?
You don’t spend any time creating an ebook/video/checklist/quiz like the other options. They also make it more likely that a visitor will make a purchase on your website to try out a new product for the person.
What makes a good freebie?
Not all lead magnets are created equal. And the reality is that some convert, and some don’t. Or they convert but are not the type of subscribers you want. So what makes a lead magnet good and effective in both encouraging subscribers and preventing immediate unsubscribes (we’ve all done it!).
A good freebie is valuable
A good lead magnet needs to be something that your ideal subscriber actually wants. And for them to want it, it needs to be valuable.
Don’t just give any old information that they can find with a quick Google search. Give something that can actually help frequently in their lives or business.
A good freebie is relevant
A lead magnet that is effective for your business also needs to be relevant to your business and your offers. For example, if you’re a health coach, a freebie related to growing a business is not going to be relevant to your audience. You need to create freebies that are related to your offers and are created for your target audience.
A good freebie is exclusive
Your lead magnet also needs to be exclusive. That information should live in your lead magnet and nowhere else. Don’t put it in your blog, on your YouTube channel, or in your email marketing. That just takes the allure away and takes away the incentive to get the lead magnet.
A good freebie makes you want more
A great freebie makes the reader want more and want more from you!
So, while a valuable lead magnet with insanely good information solves the immediate question your subscriber had, you also want to be careful not to give away all your information so that the desire for more also goes away.
A freebie is promoted well
A freebie is not going to “sell” itself. If you’ve already been focusing on your website's SEO for a while and have significant visitors coming to your website organically, you’re in luck! Just adding a sign popup and plugging your lead magnets in relevant blogs can go a long way in converting your visitors into subscribers. But if you haven’t been focusing on your website's SEO and blogging, there are other ways to promote your lead magnet and immediately. For example:
Promote on social media
Promote on YouTube
Promote on Pinterest
Offer it at the end of podcast interviews
Use paid ads (Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram)
A good freebie has an equally great landing page
A big chunk of the people that see your lead magnet offer is going to read your landing page (lead magnet opt-in page) first. This is typically what you’ll link when promoting your lead magnet outside of your website as the final way to “convince” the reader to pull the plug. Bad landing pages can also scare away subscribers.
Landing pages matter. A LOT. So make sure you make a great one!
A good freebie is followed by a welcome sequence
A great lead magnet is also followed by a welcome sequence. A welcome sequence is a series of emails a subscriber gets from you after signing up for your list, where you have a chance to tell your story, segment your audience, and even make an offer.
They’re also the most opened sequence of all, so they give you an opportunity to make your emails way more memorable.
We get A LOT of emails a day, and it’s really easy to forget about the lists you signed up for if you aren’t properly welcomed into the fold. Without a welcome sequence, you risk your emails drowning in the whirlpool that is your reader's inbox. So, takes some time to create an effective welcome sequence.
How many freebie do you need?
Even if you have the best lead magnet and make it valuable, relevant, and promote it everywhere, it might not convert. Think about it: you have different types of ideal customers/clients, each at a different place in their journey or with different interests. Not all of them will want the same thing.
For example, let’s say you’re a financial planner with a budget spreadsheet lead magnet that converts a lot of beginners wanting to create their first budget, which is an ideal customer for you. But maybe another ideal customer is someone a little further along on their journey who already has a budget and now wants to learn more about investing the money they’ve saved.
Chances are, this ideal client is not going to want your budget spreadsheet.
So, it’s important to have multiple lead magnets that are targeted to each kind of ideal client you have.
Want to learn more?
Hopefully, this blog post has given you some ideas for your business’s freebie. But do you want more tips? You can learn more about blogging, email marketing, business, and more on our blog!
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