17 Lead Magnet Ideas For Email List Growth
If you’ve been thinking of a perfect lead magnet idea for your blog or business, but can’t really decide what to go with, this guide might just spark some ideas for you.
Whether you’ve just started your blog, or a service-based business, list building is the foundation to the audience growth.
No matter what lead magnet idea you decide to go with, make sure that it is something that your audience will truly benefit from. I also suggest creating a lead magnet that leads to either a paid offer or an affiliate product becomes accustomed to you selling in your emails and generally in your business.
Here are a bunch of lead magnet ideas to help you create your next one:
Value- Focused Lead Magnet Ideas:
The main goal of value focused lead magnets is to provide valuable information to your audience.
1. Ebook/ Guide
An ebook or a guide works great as a content upgrade. You can create a super valuable ebook that goes deeper into a particular topic on your blog, or it could be on a topic that you offer as a service.
For example, when I first started my business as a Facebook ads and messenger marketing expert 3 years back, I offered a 72- page Facebook ads guide as a lead magnet.
I shared everything that someone needed to know in order to start with Facebook ads.
Since this guide helped me gain my first 500 subscribers in 45 days, without a blog, I immediately knew that it was something my audience really wanted.
I recently revamped it and now offer it to anyone who joins my Facebook group.
Now I am not saying you need to create a 72-page guide, in fact you shouldn’t. In 2020, your audience is looking for quick information, so even if you decide to create a guide or ebook, make sure to keep it short and to the point.
2. Email Course
I find email courses to be really valuable when it comes to providing value to your audience and taking them through a journey to get to know you better and build your authority.
A lot of bloggers offer email courses on starting a blog. My favorite one is Adam Enroy’s email course on starting a blog as a start-up.
RELATED: Best email list building strategies for 2020
3. Webinar/ Masterclass
Running a live webinar, or sharing a pre-recorded masterclass is another great way to grow your email list and connect with your audience.
Anastasia offers a free masterclass as a lead magnet on her homepage.
Having taken her course, btw, this is the best Pinterest course I’ve taken, I know that this free masterclass is really valuable.
4. Resource Library
I find resource libraries to be somewhat vague, but I know these work great for a lot of bloggers.
5. Free Challenge
A free challenge is my favorite way to grow an email list. This works especially well, if you don’t have a blog but want to build an engaged Facebook group.
You can run a challenge live, or use a platform like Membervault for an evergreen challenge.
I regularly run free 5-day challenges in my free Facebook community.
6. Virtual Summit
Virtual summits are a great way to provide a lot of value to your audience, grow your network and also build your email list in the process.
Krista Miller at Summit in a box has some great resources to help you run your own virtual summit.
Implementation Focused Lead Magnet Ideas
The main goal of implementation focused lead magnet ideas is to provide a tool that they can use to implement their ideas.
7. Calendar
Content calendars, social media calendars etc. make for great lead magnet ideas. If you offer social media services, this is a great way to grow your email list with a highly target audience.
8. Workbook
I really like workbooks that provide actionable steps and fillable spaces in order to organize your ideas and take that next step in your business.
9. Templates
Templates work as great lead magnets because they are easily consumable and actually provide value.
Google sheets and Trello boards work great as templates.
This is an example of a template lead magnet offered by Hubspot.
10. Swipe-files
Email swipe-files are a huge craze these days.
While swipe-files can work great, you want to make sure that you are creating something that is truly useful for your audience and different from the hundreds of similar swipe-files currently being offered.
Time Intensive Lead Magnet Ideas
These lead magnet ideas will be a little time intensive, but will also help you interact more closely with your audience. If you offer services in your business, this is the best way to show your expertise, get on a call and then pitch your paid services.
11. Audit
You can offer an audit as a lead magnet which will help you get people on your email list who are interested in your service.
For example, if you are a Pinterest expert, you could offer a quick audit of their account, something that takes you 15-20 minutes to complete.
Make sure you offer something that takes you less than 30 minutes to deliver.
12. Free Consultation
Free consultations work great as lead magnets, especially if you offer paid services.
You can offer a 15-20 minute free consultation to understand your prospects’ needs and give them a quick win, while leading into a paid offer.
Fun focused Lead Magnet Ideas
13. Quiz
A quiz is a great way to add a fun element to your lead magnet. You can create a quiz using a platform like Interact.
You can add a theme element to it to make it more engaging.
Campaign monitor uses this email marketing quiz to get you on their email list.
Buzzfeed has this themed quiz called “ Which board game are you based on the business you create?”
14. Giveaway
Giveaways and contests are a great way to build your email list.
When you use a giveaway as a lead magnet idea, make you give away something related to your business, for example, if you have a food blog, give away recipe books or a chance for training by you.
This way, you are making sure that those who get on your list are truly interested in what you have to offer, and that you are not building your email list just for the sake of it.
Pat Flynn grew his email list by nearly 3418% in 11 days using giveaways.
Kingsumo is a great platform for creating giveaways.
Other Lead Magnet ideas
15. Free trial
You can offer a 7-day free trial of your course, software or membership to not only get people to sign up for your email list, but also try your product and decide if it’s a good fit for them or not.
16. Sneak Peak
You can offer a sneak peek into your digital product by giving away one of the modules for free. This is also a great way to not only get interested people on your email list, but also give them an inside look into your product.
17. Discount coupon
Discount coupons work great to convert someone to a subscriber and eventually have them buy your product.
Here are some of the tools you can use for your lead magnet ideas:
- Canva : Canva is my favorite graphic designing tool. It’s perfect for people like me who are not well-versed with tools like photoshop.
You can get started with Canva for free.
2. If you plan to run a live webinar or masterclass, you can do that in a Facebook group or using a platform like Zoom.
You can also use Youtube live to run the webinar live on Youtube and then later share the Youtube link for the replay.
If you are looking to pre-record a masterclass, you can use the Loom chrome extension. It is free and works great for both a talking head video or screen recording.
What do you think of these lead magnet ideas?
I hope this list gives you ideas for your first or next lead magnet. Which one would you pick?
Let me know in the comments below.
