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How do you make an irresistible lead magnet that gets people to sign up for your email list? That’s what this issue is about.

You know that you should build your email list.

Building a lead magnet that works is hard, though.

I’m experiencing this myself as I rebranded my newsletter to the Uncommon Solopreneur.

The newsletter certainly isn’t growing as quickly as I want it to. That’s why I dove deep into building lead magnets and I’m going to share my findings with you.

If you nail the lead magnet, your email list grows with the RIGHT subscribers and you’ll have an easier time selling to them.

Unfortunately, most marketers get the lead magnet wrong because they take the right steps in the wrong order …

The 4 Key Areas Of Creating An Irresistible Lead Magnet

You cannot just put up a checklist, ebook, or template as a lead magnet and expect website visitors starting to throw their email addresses at you to get them.

Creating an irresistible lead magnet requires research, conversations, design, and smooth delivery.

Most people, including myself in the early stages of my business, would skip the first two steps happily because we’re:

• Too impatient and want to grow our list fast
• Don’t know where to begin with our research
• Don’t realize research and conversations actually matter
• We don’t have an audience to have conversations with

I’ve done every one of those mistakes. Don’t feel bad if you have, too.

You’re about to learn how to do the work that lets you create an irresistible lead magnet with ease.

Step 1: Survey your current customers and subscribers

Knowing who already bought from you and who’s on your list is the lowest-hanging fruit.

Before I create my next lead magnet, I am sending out a survey to qualify my subscribers.

In the email I sent yesterday, I gave you five options:

The goal of this survey is simple: learn about what my subscribers care about, so I can create relevant content.

Once you clicked on one of those five options, you’ve been directed to a website with a short video, a form, and my best free and paid content for that specific topic.

And inside ConvertKit, I can apply tags for each link clicked to segment my list and create more relevant emails for each segment.

This is how I increase my chances of hitting Product-Market Fit. And how you can, too.

Step 2: Listen to conversations on Reddit, Twitter, etc

What if your newsletter open rate is only 10%?

Or if you only have 200 subscribers?

If your audience is too small to give meaningful results from a survey, social media and platforms like Reddit come to the rescue.

Pay close attention to the conversations that are going on and focus on:

• What do people complain about?
• What goals do people in your audience have?
• Which words do people use to describe their situation?

You and I need to use their words to describe the situation they face right now.

Step 3: Creating an irresistible lead magnet needs good design

I hate to break this to you but humans judge books by their covers.

We are superficial by nature, that’s how our brain quickly decides which information is important and which can safely be ignored.

There’s no way around having a pleasant design for your lead magnet.

Thankfully, tools like Canva make designing lead magnets in all shapes or forms quite easy.

Step 4: Deliver the lead magnet fast and smooth

After you’re done creating an irresistible lead magnet, you need to get it into the hands of your subscribers.

Oftentimes, we have more than one lead magnet that’s relevant to our audience.

Or we have lead magnets that are completely unrelated. For example, I have lead magnets serving freelancers, podcasters, and solopreneurs in general.

The decision we have to make at this point is whether or not we send the lead magnet directly or take the subscriber to a “Lead Magnet Overview Page” where they can pick the lead magnet for themselves.

I advocate sending the lead magnet directly – and using related, relevant lead magnets as additional bonuses in follow-up emails in your onboarding sequence.

There’s no point in building a page where all your lead magnets are listed and expecting the subscribers to pick their favorite themselves.

Think about the last time a brand you didn’t love asked you to do something yourself to get a bonus or a download.

Chances are, you didn’t just ignore them but you also have a negative tendency toward the brand now because of their unreasonable expectations.

Don’t make that mistake.

TL;DR

To create irresistible lead magnets, you need to know the goals and desires of your audience.

Assuming what they want isn’t good enough, you need to use their words when writing the copy for your lead magnet.

You can get that information by running surveys or listening to ongoing conversations on Reddit, Twitter, etc.

Any irresistible lead magnet has a beautiful design, too. The times when simple Google Docs worked as lead magnets are mostly over – 99% of those will bomb.

Lastly, you need to deliver the lead magnet in a smooth and compelling way.

I’m in the process of creating a new lead magnet right now and I certainly don’t know everything.

But I can share what works for me so you can apply the same strategies for yourself.

Whenever you’re ready, here are three ways I can help you:

1. Enroll in Get Your First Sponsor for just $1 and get sponsors for your content.
2. Build a profitable newsletter by joining List Building School (3,900+ attendees, free to attend)
3. ​Work 1:1 with me to grow your brand or business.

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