5 Types of Free Offers to Grow an Email List Full of Ideal Clients
If you want to build your email list, you may be wondering what type of free offer to create. Since there are many options to consider, we are narrowing it down to 5 types of freebies you can use to grow an email list full of your ideal clients.
In this episode of The Wellness Business Podcast, you’ll learn:
- The simplest and easiest type of free offer you can create on your own
- The best format for testing your freebie title and topic
- The freebie option that will accelerate your email list growth the fastest
Tune in to discover which type of free offer might be best for you AND your audience right now, so you can start growing your email list now.
As you probably already know, a freebie or lead magnet is something you offer as a way to grow your email list. People sign up to receive your free, must-have valuable resource, and they typically also receive an email follow-up sequence that may lead to booking a discovery call or joining one of your paid programs. There are all kinds of different freebies, and today we are covering 5 of the most common and most popular.
Before you decide on the TYPE of freebie you want to create, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind:
- The topic and title of your freebie are WAY more important than the format you use (a PDF guide vs. a video series for example) because your free offer should provide a small solution to a problem or struggle you know your ideal clients have. Your audience doesn’t really care how they get the solution – they want it in the easiest way possible in most cases, so keep that in mind.
- Your freebie should directly relate to your paid program and what you offer. So, as you toss around ideas for what to put together, ask yourself if it ties into your coaching program in a logical and seamless way.
Let’s dive into 5 options for your freebie, so you can decide which one is right for you at this time.
1. PDF guide or short eBook.
Let’s start with this option because it’s the easiest format to create. You can use canva.com for this or outsource it to a virtual assistant or find someone on Fiverr.com to do it for you inexpensively. The goal of any free offer is to have people consume it, so they get value from it and learn a little about what you do and how you may be able to help them. You don’t want to create a free 50-page PDF guide that people likely won’t ever get through, so we recommend 3-10 pages as a range – something easy to read that gives folks a quick win.
Starting with the simplest freebie format can be a great way to gauge interest in your offer, and then you can add more bells and whistles or tech later if you have a winner.
2. Resource list, checklist or cheat sheet. This would also be a PDF, but it’s usually shorter than a guide or eBook – sometimes just 1-2 pages long, but still high value for your audience. These can be a fun to put together, especially if you have a list of free resources you know your audience will appreciate. If your niche is gluten free living, you can include your favorite apps, websites, places to shop, etc. People like quick and easy, so what can you put together that would be a helpful reference?
3. Recipes for your niche. If your niche relates to a particular dietary style such as plant based, keto, paleo, etc. a recipe guide can be a good option. If you are trying to make changes to your diet, figuring out what to eat is a struggle for most people, so if you can make it easy for them, they will appreciate it. A free recipe guide could have 20-30 recipes in it – just enough to give people a few to try out. You can use services like That Clean Life or Meal Garden to put together guides to use as freebies and also use them with your clients as extra goodies. This makes it easy, so you don’t have to create the recipes from scratch.
4. Workshop or video series. Now, we are getting a little more advanced, but free workshops and/or video series can work well because people get to see you on video, and that means they get to know you and connect with you faster and on a deeper level, which tends to expedite the customer journey.
The workshop can either be live, delivered in real time on Zoom or it can be pre-recorded. A video series can be two or more videos and they would be pre-recorded. Both of these options involve more tech, but if you’re ready to dial things up a bit, this could be a good option to test.
5. Virtual summits. Taking the tech up another notch would be something like hosting and running a virtual summit. This can be an amazing way to turbo charge your email list growth quickly because you’ll have several speakers on your summit and each of them should be required to email their subscribers and spread the word on social media. If you had 15 speakers and they each had an email list of 3,000+ people, you would have the potential to get exposure to thousands of new people in a very short period of time. People would need to enter their email address to register for the summit, so you are growing your email list. The benefit to each speaker is that they are getting in front of new people too, and they will usually be allowed to share one of their freebies too, so they can grow their email list too during the summit, so it’s a win-win for everyone.
Which type of freebies are you most drawn to right now? Take a look at what others are doing to get some ideas and inspiration and then set a due date for when you want to have yours complete and ready to share with your audience.
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