How to Get Your First 1,000 Email Subscribers Using “A Simple Hack”

So, why should you even worry about getting 1000 or more email subscribers for your business or brand and what will it do for you? Well, let me just say this – If you can get 1000 people subscribed to your list, that means you have 1000 people you can contact anytime of the day FOR FREE and have them take a specific action (maybe to read a new blogpost of yours, watch a new YouTube/Facebook video of yours, download your eBook, checkout your new products, use a coupon code to get a discount on your store…the list goes on!).Whether you run a business online, a blog or you have a brick and mortar business, having an email list of people who are qualified and interested in whatever you have to offer is a major key. These days, there are misconceptions about the importance of emails since social media is now the “order of the day”.

I and other seasoned digital marketers would argue that having an email list is much more profitable to your business than having thousands of followers on social media. One of the reason for this argument is this; you do not own the followers and assets on social media, even if the content you post are yours, if anything happens to your account or the social media company – you will loose almost everything including “your followers”.

We’ve seen social media platforms come and go whilst new ones keep popping up and becoming the “new media”, what has stayed relevant has been emails and email providers! Secondly, people on social media are there to be social just like the name of the platform says. They are not in the “buy mode”, they are most times there to catch up with friends, watch funny cat videos, spy on their friend’s lifestyle and if they are like me – look at videos of girls twerking, lol ( I don’t do this all the time).

You get the gist. Do not get me wrong tho, I do provide and run successful Social Media Marketing campaigns for my clients and for my businesses but email subscribers are not only cheaper but they are laser targeted, the people you get on your list are QUALIFIED TO BUY, LISTEN or PATRONIZE your product / service.

Perhaps the most appealing advantage of email marketing is the ROI (return on investment). No print costs, no postage fees, no advertising rates. Email marketing is as affordable as marketing gets. Email marketing outperforms search, display and social media marketing.

So, the BIG question is “How do I get people to opt-in to my email list”?”People don’t like giving emails anymore”. The answer is good old PROVIDE VALUE…but with a twist! In this post, you will learn how to learn how to get your first 1000 email subscribers who are interested in your products, service and will be happy to receive an email from you. What you will use to achieve this is called a LEAD MAGNET! Do not worry if you are not familiar with the term, don’t know anything about digital marketing or like fancy terms.

I will make this as beginner friendly as possible so that even my grand-ma will understand and can implement things talked about below.

LEAD MAGNET.

So, what is a LEAD MAGNET? In the simplest form, a lead magnet is something of value that you promise to give someone interested in your product / service in exchange for their email address. Another explanation of Lead Magnet that I like is from DigitalMarketer.com —- “Lead Magnet — noun — an irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information.

The goal of the Lead Magnet is to maximize the number of targeted leads you are getting for an offer. Most websites, businesses and blogs use words like “Subscribe to our newsletter” or “Join Our Mail List”, as a way of collecting emails. This is super wrong. People don’t just wake up everyday looking for email lists to join or newsletters to opt in to. Most people are in need of information, discounts, deals, knowledge and things that will add value to them. So, if you are providing something of value, you have a higher chance of getting TARGETED people into your email list and providing a Lead Magnet is the best way to do this.

Practical Example: I used to have a paid online course called “The Puzzle Hustle”, its a full course that teaches people with ZERO skills in Web & Graphics design how to design high quality websites and build a career as a creative designer. Even though the course was very affordable for the amount of content it contains, most people still couldn’t afford it – this is normal in life, no matter how “cheap or affordable” your product is – some people won’t buy it not because they don’t want to but because they can’t afford it. In retrospect, you might think that because someone doesn’t buy your product or services, it means they can’t afford it or they don’t need it.

They can and will if they are nurtured and provided more value, this is where LEAD MAGNET comes into play. Its going to do 2 things for you  – it will build your email list and also make the person closer to making a buying decision than they were before getting the led magnet. I did a couple LEAD MAGNETS; One of them is; I created a Free Webinar and I titled it “The Secret To Becoming A Skilled and Well Paid Web / Graphics Designer (Working from Home with ZERO prior experience in design or coding)”. 

Everyone that opted in to attend this FREE Webinar know what the webinar is all about from the topic and are very interested in the topic. That was my very first webinar, I had a total attendee of 1653 people who opted in for the webinar, because they opted in for the webinar – they had to provide their email address to get the link and date to the webinar. Boom! I had a list of over 1000 people who are targeted and interested in Web and Graphics design training. In the webinar, a lot of value was provided.

Some people bought my paid training to learn more, some bought my eBook and for the people who didn’t make any purchase – they left amazing feedback on the webinar. I still send them emails of new videos I create, new blogposts they would find valuable, my new eBooks and Free courses.

The value never stops.

Another Lead Magnet I created was; An eBook. I titled the eBook “How I made Over £18,855 Doing Web / Graphics Design With ZERO Skill In Nigeria”, just like the title of the eBook – you can tell that the people who would be interested in reading this have keen interest in the web and graphics design and how to be successful with it. The eBook provides the information and value promised. It was given for FREE in exchange for an email address to send it to.

This eBook as a lead magnet generated 1278 emails. These emails are targeted, they are active, they are interested in what I have to offer and they are now my property. I can send them future value-adding emails.

You get the gist? Advice: Every business has something of value that they can give for free. Sit down and think about the aspects of your business and things you know people who are interested in your products or service would find valuable, turn that thing into a lead magnet and give it out for FREE. If you are an e-Commerce store for example, you can offer a percentage discount coupon code in exchange for an email address.

Once you get that person’s email address by giving them something of value, the relationship doesn’t end there. You are able to cross-sell and up-sell them paid services or products you offer within your business. A very good thing to note is this; no matter how good your LEAD MAGNET is, if the tittle sucks and doesn’t do a good job of pointing out exactly what the user will be getting and what value it will be adding to them, no one will opt-in.

So, in the next paragraph I’ll be talking about how to properly tittle your Lead magnet and the promise so it catches attention and makes people want to opt-in!

LEAD MAGNET TITTLE.

This is the title of the lead magnet – the exact thing you will give in exchange for the email of your reader or prospect. This title has to be catchy and something they would find valuable, interesting and worth giving their email in exchange for. Below are examples gotten from Google Images. If you take a close look at some of them, you would see they achieve the things said above – they are straight to the point, they tell the person what they will get and they provide value.

LEAD MAGNET PROMISE.

The Lead Magnet Promise is what will make people give their email to you. The promise is always a sentence but in that sentence, it embodies everything you would say to the person if you were to meet them in person and explain the importance of the lead magnet you want to send them. Sometimes, the lead Magnet Promise is also the title. An example is “A Cheat Sheet For Writing Blog Posts That Goes Viral” that can serve as the title and also the promise. Its straight to the point.

TYPES OF LEAD MAGNETS

• Free eBook
• Cheat Sheet / Handout
• Software download / trial
• Report Guide
• Quiz / Survey
• Video Training / Free Webinar
• Discount / Free Shipping Coupon
• Assessment / Test

The 7 Points Lead Magnet Checklist

• Must Be Specific; Lead magnets should never be vague, they should “Ultra-Specific” and offer an ultra-specific solution to an Ultra-specific market or audience.
• One Big Thing; Almost everyone wants a “magic pill” an “instant solution”, lead magnets should provide “one big thing” instead of little bit of everything.
• Speaks To A Known Desired Result; Ask yourself, WHAT does your market, target audience or prospective customers REALLY WANT? If you can provide a lead magnet that provides that, they will gladly give you their contact information and their UN-divided attention.
• Instant Gratification; People these days want things RIGHTNOW! Avoid using sequences that takes days in order to provide what they opted in for. Once the contact email has been gotten, send the information immediately.
• Shifts The Relationship; A good Lead Magnet does more than inform, it positions you or your business as a thought leader in your space and warms the minds of your prospects to be willing to engage with you on future dealings.
• High Perceived Value; Just because its FREE doesn’t mean it has to look FREE. Make use of professional, modern and clean graphics and layouts to accentuate the value of the lead magnet in the minds of your prospects.
• High Actual Value; Most people use bait titles and promises to get emails and do not provide what was promised. If your lead magnet does not deliver on what it promises to, you might have gotten their email but it wont last – they will either unsubscribe or go cold on you.

Now that you know what a LEAD MAGNET is and how to create one like a pro, you next question might be how do I get people to see or opt into the LEAD MAGNET? You would need 4 things:

• A Landing page or page!

This is where the lead magnet opt-in form will be. It will explain why people need to exchange their email for your goodie. The landing page should not contain links or menu, it  should allow the visitor do two things and two things only: Enter their email to get your goodie or leave the page and not enter their email! Do not give the user or visitor too much to do on the landing page, it should be straight forward – enter your email to get this goodie.

To create high-converting landing pages and lead generation campaigns you should consider getting an account with LeadPages, you can take advantage of their 14-day Trial to create high quality landing pages and test the ground. Or, if you make use of WordPress, you can make use of  a WordPress Plugin called WP Profit Builder that allows you to create high quality landing pages and connect it to your email marketing provider.

This plugin comes with 100s of tested and proven converting  landing page designs so you don’t have to worry about creating anything from scratch. I currently make use of this on my websites. Use this link to check Wp Profit Builder out and its amazing features.

• An email marketing software or platform

Your email opt-in form must and will be connected to a email service provider which will help you send the lead magnet email to people who opt-in (also called Auto-responsders) . The email provider will help you collect your visitor’s email, send them the goodie and save their contact in a list where you can then refer to in the future to send more valuable emails to them. My favorite email service provider is Aweber, their service is superb and very affordable.

They actually provide a 30day FREE account – you can make use of this free 30days to set your things up, test your auto-responders and start building your list. Its a no-brainer. Some of Aweber’s services and benefits includes Drag-and-Drop Email Builder, Automated Emails, Beautiful Email Templates, Unlimited Image Storage, Industry-Leading Deliverability, Easily Import Subscribers, Sign Up Forms, View In-Depth Analytics, Ability to Connect AWeber with Your Other Third-party tools and more! Go ahead, take advantage of Aweber’s 30 days free account!

• You need Traffic.

People need to see you have a lead magnet to give out in the first place before you can get opt-ins and build your list. The best thing is always to share your posts on your social media channels but if you are serious about building your list and growing your business faster, you should run cost-effective Facebook ads using detailed targeting to reach people who are more likely to engage with your ad. This will increase your list faster with good and qualified lists.

If you want to learn how to run effective ads on Facebook that will make people click your ads, you should check my post called “Use These ‘2 Powerful Hook Words’ To Increase Conversion on Your Next Facebook Ad” this will give you everything you need to run ads that brings a good ROI without having to blow a lot of money on ads like most people do.

• The Lead Magnet.

You must have already decided what you want to give away. Remember, it doesn’t have to be anything HUGE – it should be something that will add value to your visitors and something they will thank you for and feel somehow indebted to you because of the value the Lead magnet has added to them. Fun fact: it can actually be a high quality blogpost and the link to that will be sent to them when they opt-in or it can be an eBook – whatever it is, make sure it is valuable! The lead magnet would have been tied to your email marketing platform so once someone opts-in, they get what was promised instantly sent to their email.

Also, it doesn’t have to be something that needs to be sent, you can send someone to a page that contains a video (if the video is the lead magnet of your choice) or even to a post or page with some valuable information. The above things you need to have in place might sound crazy and hectic to you if you are new to this, do not be afraid – its super easy to get your head around once you get into it.

Did you find this post resourceful? Drop your comment below if you now know what you can create as a LEAD magnet for your business or brand.