100 Easy Lead Magnet Ideas That Grew My List To 30k Subscribers
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Do you want to discover the easy lead magnet ideas that I have personally used to grow my list to more than 30,000 subscribers and customers?
Lately, I have been seeing many new bloggers on Facebook posting that they are struggling with growing their list.
They can’t figure out how to get email subscribers, and many have never heard of lead magnets when I suggest it.
So, today I thought to share some of the lead magnet ideas that have worked for me, as I have grown my list of happy, engaged people.
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Lead Magnet Ideas That Grew My List To 30k Subscribers
In addition to HerPaperRoute.com, I have a few other websites, and a few email lists for each one.
If I were to do a full count I think my subscriber count would be closer to 50,000. But for the sake of this lead magnet ideas guide, I will just count the one list.
So, what is a lead magnet, anyway?
A lead magnet is anything that you give away, in exchange for a person’s email address. It is also known as an ‘opt-in freebie.’ You give them something awesome, for free, as soon as they subscribe to your list.
Listen to this episode on the podcast here and download the list of 100+ lead magnet ideas here:
Why Use These Lead Magnet Ideas To Grow Your Email List?
Why use these lead magnet ideas? There are a few reasons.
Giving away content to your audience for free benefits you in many ways. It will quickly grow your list, yes. But it also has a much higher impact.
How? Because, when you have people on your email list, opening your emails and engaging with you, you are building a relationship with your audience that is priceless.
Over time, you become an authority figure to them. Meaning you will become trusted and known to your community, who will be all the more excited to buy your offers when you present them.
How do I get people to subscribe to my email list?
In order to get people to subscribe to your email list, you need to offer them a good lead magnet.
Before we dive into this list of lead magnet ideas, we need to make sure you have the important foundation of list building basics in line.
Privacy Compliance
When you want to get people to subscribe to your list, the first thing you may think you need is an email service provider, like ConvertKit or FloDesk. But actually, that’s the second thing.
The first thing you need is a proper privacy policy page on your website. This is a page which states your compliance with privacy laws like GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to pass the bar yourself to figure this out! You can actually use a fill-in-the-blanks legal privacy page template written by a lawyer and have all of your bases covered.
This will ensure that you are collecting email addresses within the law, and protect you from being fined. The fines for not being GDPR compliant can be massive, so this is not something to skip.
Plus, you can’t start collecting email subscribers until you have a proper privacy page on your site. It’s also a requirement to have if you want to be accepted into any affiliate program, and any ad network like Adsense and MediaVine.
Choose An Email Service Provider
Once you have your legal privacy page, the next step is you need a way to collect and manage email subscribers. So you will need an email service provider that will do this, and automatically send them your lead magnet when they sign up.
I recommend either FloDesk or ConvertKit for this. ConvertKit gives you more features, but FloDesk is significantly cheaper, and has prettier forms and landing pages.
Just look for yourself at how gorgeous the templates are at FloDesk:
If you use my special FloDesk invite, you’ll get 50% off for life, which is only $15 per month, and unlimited subscribers. I don’t know of any better deal than that anywhere!
Whichever email service provider you choose, you can use the free eNews extended plugin to connect it to your website.
Create Your Lead Magnet
Now for the fun part! It’s time to create something that your audience will absolutely love to sign up to your list get.
But figuring out just what to offer can be the hard part.
Above all, the most important thing you need to consider is that you need to make sure that your free lead magnet makes sense for your paid offers.
Your lead magnet needs to be something that will attract your ideal customer who will later buy your paid products.
Let’s explore some creative lead magnet ideas that I have used over the years now.
Free Download: 100 Lead Magnet Ideas
The Top 10 (of 100) Lead Magnet Ideas That Grew My List To 30k Subscribers
Here are some lead magnet ideas that have worked for me!
1. A free version of your premium course
If you have a premium course offering, I recommend that you also make a free mini-course to support, too.
Why? Well, having a free preview version of your full course can be an excellent way to not only grow your list but also increase your paid course sales too.
The free version could be a ‘get started’ guide that preps students for the paid course, like a prerequisite.
Or it could be one lesson from the paid course, for free.
Either way, it gets people on your list, so that you can warm them up with valuable free content, and see if they will be a good fit for your paid resources.
For example, I teach a well-known course called The Blog Monetization course. In the course, I teach the tried-tested-and-true affiliate marketing strategies that I have used to grow my blog into a business that earns $20,000 per month.
The lessons can be learned by anyone – BUT there are a few things students need to have in order, first, to be able to make money with their website.
And that is that they need to have a self-hosted website. So, I offer a free course on how to easily set up a website correctly so that it can be monetized.
The free course provides incredible value to students while giving them the foundations they need in order to be able to earn money from their website. And then when they are ready to learn the high-level strategies that will help them make the big money, they can enroll in the premium classes.
Lead magnet idea: If you don’t currently have a premium course, you could still create a free course as a lead magnet! Take one of the blog posts you have already written, and turn it into a free course. Take a look at my course creation platform of choice, Podia to launch your school today!
2. The first chapter of your book
Did you publish a book? Do you want to be a best-selling author on Amazon? Great! You need to generate interest for that book, and you need reviews if you want it to top the charts.
So, I say, give away one chapter of your book for free as a lead magnet!
Use it to get people signed up to your list, and they will be excited to read more.
Consider offering a discount code that your subscribers can get to buy the full book, in exchange for leaving you a review too.
3. Bonus blog content
Go through Google Search Console and Google Analytics to find your most popular and highest ranking blog post. Create a lead magnet that expands on the blog post topic, gives more information or bonus resources.
So when your reader gets to the end of the current article, there is an opt-in box to sign up to get the rest of the article or the related resources.
4. A membership vault
Create additional resources that your audience can access with a password. This creates a sense of exclusivity and community and can be a lot of fun too.
I offer a membership for bloggers and entrepreneurs, where members get instant access to my vault of money-making resources, and a weekly tip via email! Join us for free here!
You can use Podia to create your own membership vault, as well as use them to host your courses, too for one low price.
5. A masterclass
Sharing your expertise via a 10-20 minute masterclass with your audience is a great way to build your credibility, alongside growing your email list.
Create a short video of yourself, or just of your screen/slides and voice.
Be sure to include helpful and valuable tips, and make your paid offer at the end. It doesn’t have to be fancy! This is often called a ‘webinar.’
When a subscriber signs up to your mail list, they get access to watch the video. Podia gives you the ability to host webinars now, too!
6. Templates
People love customizable templates that they can edit and use for their own needs. Think logos, pricing guides, business planners, calendars, meal planning charts, Pinterest pins….
Use Canva to create your template for free, and then share the link with your subscribers when they sign up.
7. A behind-the-scenes look at one of your business SOPs
“SOPs” stands for “standard operating procedures.” You would be surprised at how many people would love to know exactly how you organize and plan the day-to-day operations of your business.
Other business owners are always looking for tips on how to make their own company and life as an entrepreneur easier and more efficient.
So, share your secrets with them via a short ebook or password-protected web page that they can access after joining your list.
8. A Viral Giveaway
I promise ‘viral’ is not as difficult as it sounds. In fact, it’s super easy to host a viral giveaway, and you don’t have to do anything cringeworthy on Youtube to make it happen, either.
In February of this past year, I hosted my own giveaway to drum up some attention for the launch of season 2 of the HerPaperRoute Podcast. I made a graphic showing the prizes, and then posted it on King Sumo.
Within hours, it took off and spread like wildfire. It was so easy and ended up growing my list by 6,000 new people!
King Sumo works so well because, in order for someone to get more entries, they need to share your giveaway on their social media, which then brings you more interested people who then enter the giveaway.
…And those people then share it with their audience and so on and so on.
This same giveaway also grew my Instagram followers, Youtube subscribers and my podcast subscribers!
Honestly, this lead magnet tip is such a great secret to growing my list. Don’t overlook this.
9. A quiz
Offering a quiz is one of the best lead magnet ideas as it quickly pre-qualifies your subscriber for your paid content.
You get a ton of valuable information about them, so you know how to help them right away.
I use a quiz tool called Interact for my own lead-generating quizzes – and love them!
You can see my quiz in action is you scroll to the bottom of this page.
FloDesk and ConvertKit both work with Interact.
Learn more about how to build a lead quiz to grow your list!
10. Media feature
Do you have a podcast? A Youtube channel or a blog? Well, my friend, you are the media and you have a valuable asset!
Consider offering guest writer/speaker opportunities on your platform, to those who are signed up to your list.
Not only is it a great resource to offer your community, but it’s also a great way to meet other inspiring people in your niche.
I have made life-long friends by having guests write articles on my blog and appear as a guest on my podcast!
We send out guest feature requests, round up post invitations, and podcast guest invitations to members of the HerPaperRoute community. If you would like to be featured in a future call for submissions, sign up to be invited here.
11. Your newsletter itself
This one is one of the more ballsy lead magnet ideas. That’s because typically people don’t want to be added to just another newsletter, as they worry they will get bombarded with emails.
They would prefer to get a gift first, and then decide if they want to stick around and stay subscribed later.
But, if you craft your newsletter pitch with care and explain just how much valuable information people will get by signing up, your newsletter itself can actually be its own lead magnet.
Related: How to create a lead magnet people actually want
Lead Magnet Ideas That Grew My List To 30k Subscribers – Conclusion
I hope this list of lead magnet ideas has given you some inspiration to create your own high-converting freebie.
Let me know in the comments what freebies have worked to grow your list!
