We are so excited to introduce Episode 016 of With Grace and Gold: The Podcast – a business education podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs. With Grace and Gold: The Podcast features 5-minute episodes with clear, actionable steps to guide you toward successful small business ownership. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Spotify, or elsewhere!

3 Lead Magnet Ideas to Grow Your Newsletter List

Newsletter marketing or e-mail marketing can play a huge role in your business — how you connect with your audience, how you serve your audience, and how you sell your products and services. Newsletter marketing means using a newsletter system like MailChimp, ConvertKit, or FloDesk to send newsletters via e-mail to those who subscribe to receive newsletters from you. 

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 77% of Business-to-Business Companies use newsletter marketing as part of their marketing strategy. 91% of consumers open their e-mail Inbox on a daily basis.

We would argue that every type of small business owner can benefit from using newsletter marketing on behalf of their business; it’s just a matter of determining what your goal is and using each newsletter as an opportunity to step toward fulfilling your goal.

So, how do you get people to subscribe to your newsletter in the first place? To get people to subscribe to your newsletter, you can create what’s called a lead magnet — an offering to attract people to your newsletter and encourage them to subscribe. This means, it’s not always enough to say something like “Subscribe for updates!” or “Sign up for my newsletter!” We, as business owners, have to create an incentive for subscribing.

Today, we’re sharing 3 lead magnet ideas for your creative business — 3 creative ways you can encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter, so you can connect with, serve, and share your products and services directly with your audience.

We believe every type of small business owner can benefit from using newsletter marketing on behalf of their business. Before you create a newsletter for your business, though, asking yourself these 3 questions can go a long way:

1. Who am I hoping to reach through my newsletter? Ideally, this should be a person or people who can benefit from purchasing your products or booking your services. With every newsletter you write and send, you’ll want to keep this person in mind — because every newsletter you write will be written to fill their need.
2. How will I structure my newsletter? Will I send monthly or weekly newsletters to connect with my audience? Will I follow a certain pattern, or rotate among the topics I talk about? Bringing structure to your newsletter sending process will help you to approach every newsletter you write with strategy — and help to ensure you’re using every newsletter as an opportunity to serve your audience.
3. What will the overarching goal of my newsletter be? How will I bring value to subscribers, so my newsletter can serve and educate subscribers in addition to sharing about my products and services? How will I measure how successful or effective my newsletter is? When I open up my newsletter system every day, what goal will I have in mind?

Knowing who you hope to reach, how you’ll structure your newsletter, and what your overarching goal is will help you to approach every newsletter you write and send with purpose. But today, we’re talking about just one aspect of newsletter writing: how to encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter in the first place.  I’s not always enough to say something like “Subscribe for updates!” or “Sign up for my newsletter!” 

You can use what’s called a lead magnet — an offering to encourage people to subscribe to our newsletter — to grow your newsletter list. A lead magnet should align with who your Ideal Client is, and the problem or problems they’re facing. Your lead magnet should answer a question they have, or fill a need they have, in an introductory way. 

1. First, you might consider an educational PDF download. Maybe your PDF is a checklist to guide them through a process, an audit they can complete, or a step-by-step guide they can follow. Maybe you can create a one-page daily planner, a brainstorming planner, or a graphic organizer. Your educational PDF should help to answer a question you know your Ideal Client has. It should be something your Ideal Client would value using.
2. Second, you might consider providing access to a private Facebook Community. Having a Facebook Community can be a great way to build community on behalf of your business. Your Facebook Community can even contain education, resources, or anything else you’d like to share with an exclusive community of audience-members.
3. Third, you might consider providing an educational e-mail series or a challenge. This could be a 5-day challenge offering advice, guidance, or education. At With Grace and Gold, we once held a 5-day content and copywriting challenge to guide visitors toward developing purposeful content for their web design. How could an e-mail series or a week-long challenge serve your audience?

Then, once you’ve developed your lead magnet, how do you go about sharing your lead magnet with your audience — in order to gain subscribers and grow your newsletter list? Here are 3 ways to share your lead magnet and grow your newsletter list:

1. Blog about your lead magnet. When you do, you can share about the benefits of your lead magnet and encourage your audience to subscribe. Better yet, you can PIN a graphic from your blog post to Pinterest, which can then be shared and re-shared, allowing your post to reach more readers and connect with an even wider audience. 
2. Share about your lead magnet on social media. Growing your newsletter can mean diligently and strategically sharing about your lead magnet. Determine which day — or days — you’ll share about your lead magnet on social media. With social media algorithms in mind, it’s important to share and re-share our most important content to help it reach a wider audience over time. 
3. Add your opt-in to your website in strategic ways. Consider adding a call-to-action on your website. Adding a call-to-action to your footer area — which is present on every page of your website — can increase the likelihood of website visitors seeing you lead magnet and choosing to subscribe. Further, you might also consider adding your opt-in to the bottom of future blog posts.

Newsletter marketing can play an important role in the way you connect with your audience and sell your products and services. We are so hopeful today’s episode helped you to brainstorm a lead magnet idea — or ideas — for your business, and to strategically share about your lead magnet across your business’s platforms, too!

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave a 5-star rating and a review! When you do, send us a screen grab to let us know, because one reviewer is chosen every week to receive a special gift from our team to yours!

Since 2014, With Grace and Gold has provided brand and web design for creative small business owners. Hire With Grace and Gold or shop With Grace and Gold’s pre-made designs and Showit website templates – and come away with an elevated brand and web design for your small business!

About Brand It, Build It Podcast, Hosted by Kelly Zugay

Hosted by Kelly Zugay, co-founder of With Grace and Gold, The Brand It, Build It Podcast is a leading small business marketing podcast for small business owners, creatives, founders and entrepreneurs. Enjoy weekly, actionable episodes to build a successful, sustainable small business from the inside out.