How I grow my email list with lead magnets?

The key to building an email list is building traffic to a relevant lead magnet.

Sounds simple enough but what does that mean?

It means getting the right website visitors and giving them a reason to signup to your list.

Ok so how do I actually do that?

Traffic – First you need to think about how you are getting traffic to your website. I made a diagram here of places you might get traffic to your lead magnet on your website or landing page if you don’t have one.

The above visualization of different traffic sources going to your lead magnet. I find it is often good to think visually about this as well as numerically so you can actually make a strategy.

You will need to think about anywhere you might have a following or way of sending visitors to your lead magnet. So first write down any potential sources of traffic you could get.

Website Traffic for your Lead Magnet

• SEO Articles – If you have a website, you probably already get at least some website traffic from Google from SEO (organic search results). Or if you don’t have a website and write for Medium or another publication, this would also be included.
• Podcast – A podcast is also a place where you could potentially get traffic to subscribe to your email list. Many podcasts now aren’t just audio either and are also video. But even if they are audio only, you could tell people on your show where and why you might want to subscribe. If it is also on video you could actually show them where to go.
• Facebook – Facebook Pages or groups are another source of traffic. You can put links to your lead magnet in the actual header or anywhere Facebook allows you to. The more obvious and relevant the lead magnet is, the more sign ups you will get.
• Youtube – Youtube is also a great place to get leads for your email list, especially for your Youtube subscribers, because they trust you already and if you are asking them to signup with Youtube Cards or in the description they are much more likely to click over and signup.
• ? – The last one is just a ? because it could be anything else you can think of such as friends, family, advertising, Quora or Reddit posts, forums… you get the idea. The more places, the better.

The point of writing all the traffic sources is to get you thinking about where you might want to add links to point over to your lead magnet, but also you will probably have new ideas to try just by going through this exercise.

Now that you have all the sources, if you don’t already, write down how much traffic you get to the lead magnet. If you don’t know, it’s a good time to setup the tracking because it is very hard to grow something you can’t measure and learn from. You might be surprised by how little traffic you get to your email subscription or why you are getting so few subscribers. We’ll put in pretend numbers to give you an idea of how this might look.

Daily Traffic Sources to Our Lead Magnet

Lead Magnet Conversion Totals

Based on our traffic data and a 3% theoretical conversion rate, here’s how our signups break down:

• Daily: Approximately 5 signups
• Weekly: Approximately 35 signups (5 signups/day * 7 days)
• Monthly: Approximately 150 signups (5 signups/day * 30 days)
• Yearly: Approximately 1,825 signups (5 signups/day * 365 days)

These figures give us a clear picture of the signups we can expect from our current traffic sources to our lead magnet.

We used 3% as an example for our conversion rate. This would vary greatly depending on the traffic relevancy as well as the lead magnet itself.

Once you have this data you can then set numeric goals to try and hit as well as try different lead magnets and test which ones provide the best conversions.

This step is crucial of course but we can discuss different lead magnet conversion rate strategies in another article.

Lead Magnet conversion rates vary drastically. It is good to look at historical real examples also for the best converting examples. PayPal, for example, saw incredible growth through its referral program, shooting up to an average annual growth rate of 1,650 percent. They reached 1 million users by March 2000, just two years after starting, and grew to 100 million users six years later. This growth was achieved by offering referral rewards, leading to an average daily growth rate of 7 to 10 percent​​.

Here is an article of how to build lead magnets with ebooks to give you other ideas. The above strategy offering money might be unrealistic unless you are in the banking or have something to sell at a high price tag. It is often very effective to offer really good content through ebooks in exchange for signing up and you don’t have to give away any money.

Try LeadSlide for free and make lead magnets that help you increase conversion rates and increase sales.