Build Your List: 7 Irresistible Lead Magnet Ideas

Email marketing requires huge amounts of time to do right. Time spent writing emails, coming up with strategy, and testing, testing, testing.

However, none of the above is possible without a list of folks who are ready to receive your marketing messages. So, before you spend an afternoon crafting the perfect subject line, let’s talk about your list. Or, more specifically, how you can build your list using lead magnets.

What’s a Lead Magnet?

Lead magnets are possibly the single easiest way to begin adding interested, qualified leads to your email list. They’re typically bitesized, snackable pieces of content that your readers can access (for free) in exchange for their email address.

Most web users won’t think twice about handing over their email if it means they get free content as a result— especially if that content is interesting, useful, and relevant to their interests. This makes them extremely powerful when done correctly. Keep reading, and we’ll talk about 7 of the best lead magnets you can begin putting together today!

• Free Checklist

If you have a blog, creating a one-page checklist or worksheet is a great way to turn any of your blog posts into a list-building machine! For example, let’s say you run a men’s fashion blog and have just finished a post about choosing a good pair of shoes. At the bottom of the article, you could create an opt-in box that gives away a free gift, “The Gentleman’s Shoe-Buying Checklist”.

This is a piece of content that will help your readers choose a sharp pair of shoes in exchange for their emails. And, because you’ve included it within the context of the footwear article, you know they’ll be interested in shoe-related marketing emails later on.

Make sense? Here’s a few real-world examples to help you wrap your head around the concept.
On The Social Butterfly Gal, author Christina Jochoa has put together a good article about creating opt-in content for your readers. At the end of the article, she’s added this short form:

This offer fits in neatly with her target audience (entrepreneurs who are new to blogging/social media marketing). It also compliments the content of the article and makes sense within its context.
In another example, an article about creating a resume by The Interview Guys offers, “The Perfect Resume Checklist” to anyone willing to enter their email address:

Again, this is a perfect marriage of lead magnet and content. When creating your own lead magnets, make sure the offer is relevant to your readers and the kind of content they expect from you.

• White papers, Reports, eBooks, or Case Studies

Offering new information to your readers is another great way to get them to hand over their email address and join your list. Try compiling reports, white papers, or case studies that are relevant to your audience.

For example, if you’re a driving school trying to drum up business using the web, you could add leads by giving away, “FREE Report: Driver’s Training Can Add Up To Five Years to Your Life”.

Again, just like with the checklists we mentioned above, this kind of lead magnet is sure to draw attention from folks who are interested in what you have to offer (driver’s training). Otherwise, why would they waste their time reading about its benefits? In your own business, think about what kind of data, facts, and statistics are important to your audience. Then, either collect the data yourself or compile it from other sources.

Want to see a great example of an email marketing lead magnet?

Click here to receive our free eBook, Inbox Better and learn how to maximize email open rates, engagement, and CTR.

In this example, Clear Story Data offers a whitepaper that promises to teach readers why Data Intelligence is, “the new way”. If you were a business intelligence professional, this might be right up your alley.

In another example, Kindle publisher Steve Scott offers a free eBook aimed towards anyone looking to dip their toes in the Kindle publishing industry (Steve’s target market). This is a fantastic example of marketing done right— notice how Steve is offering this lead magnet on his 404 page! So instead of losing leads when they arrive at a dead end, he’s turned his 404 page into yet another lead-generating page.

And, once you click that big, tempting, please-just-click-me button, you’re hit with this pop up:

Now, Steve can collect email addresses from anyone interested in Kindle publishing. In one-click, they’ll be added to his list.

• Toolkits

The last two lead magnet ideas require you to create your own content. This can take a lot of time, especially if you’re putting together entire eBooks or white papers. If you’d like to put something together quickly, try giving away a toolkit.

A toolkit is a collection of resources software and other tools that you feel will be useful to your readers. For example, if you owned an authority site about women’s fitness, you could put together a list of helpful apps to help folks track their exercise and workouts. This takes very little original content creation, as it is simply a curated list of great tools.

What would look like? Here’s a few examples to inspire you.

Here, Hero Health Room is offering a similar lead magnet to the hypothetical toolkit we discussed above. By entering your email, you’ll get immediate access to tools, checklists, and resources to help you get in shape. In return, they’ll add you to their list and begin marketing to you:

In the marketing world, WPBeginner offers its visitors “The Ultimate WordPress Toolkit”. Again, this is simply a collection of tools, plugins, and resources that first-time WordPress users might find helpful.

• Quizzes and Surveys

Us humans, we love a good quiz (just check out Buzzfeed if you need proof). Your readers are no different. By putting together a quick, easy quiz (and sending the results via email), you can both collect data about your audience and build your list.

For example, check out Jean Paul Zogby’s quiz that promises to tell you how fast time runs in your mind— once you’ve given him your email of course.

After you’ve taken the quiz, Zogby follows up with your results and a subtle CTA promoting his book (also related to time perception). It’s an easy way for him to build his list while still providing value to his audience.

• Webinars and Video Training

Video lead magnets can be particularly great for building your list. Why? Video feels valuable. It requires more effort, more commitment, and (hopefully) will provide more value to your audience than a 10-point checklist. If you’ve noticed that your competitors are all beginning to offer eBooks and text-based content to attract new leads, try mixing it up by creating video lead magnets.

Script Magazine offers a free webinar to readers who are interested in learning to write screenplays (their target audience). This gives them an opportunity to connect with their audience, position themselves as an authority in the space, and—their ultimate goal—build their list with qualified, interested leads.

In an entirely different industry, travel blogger and digital nomad, Stephanie Holland, offers free travel advice for anyone willing to enter their email. This is a particularly good example as she’s created a dedicated landing page for this lead magnet. It’s really well-designed page, and worth using as inspiration if you’re looking to do something similar.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where she’s collecting emails, it’s all hidden behind that purple, “Watch Now »” button. Once clicked, you’ll see the following pop up:

• Free Quote

Ah, the free quote. This is perhaps the oldest lead magnet ever thought up. Car salesmen, insurance agents, real estate tycoons, marketing agencies— in just about every industry, the free quote has been a reliable way to gather information from interested prospects.

This kind of lead magnet may take a little more “backend” work than the rest. You’ll need some sort of tool that takes your users’ information and outputs a personalized quote. However, the benefit of this lead magnet is that it specifically talks about money. It’s a lot easier to move prospects from a quote to a sale than it would be to take them from a free report to a final purchase. If you do decide to build a free quote lead magnet, use the following examples to inspire you:

The website, lowestrates.ca uses a very powerful quote building system that allows visitors to easily get a ballpark price for insurance. However, the system also allows them to follow up through email once someone completes their forms.

At Plato Web Design, visitors can quickly get an automatic quote built for them using the web form. This is a much simpler version than the insurance quote above, but is still a fantastic way for Plato to collect emails.

• Coupons/Discounts

If you’re an ecommerce guy or gal, this lead magnet is for you. Offer your readers a small discount in exchange for their email address. You’ll then be able to continue sending them marketing messages related to their interests.

In this example, big box retailer, H&M is offering 20% off any item when visitors join their email list. This will allow them to continue marketing to their customers long after they’ve used their discount code:

We would have preferred to see H&M advertise this offer with a pop up. As it is, users can only access this deal by clicking the small text, “SIGN UP FOR EMAILS” in the site’s header. Notice how in the example below, Austin Kayak uses a pop up to get their lead magnet in front of visitors and drive sign ups:

The Real Secret of High-Conversion Lead Magnets

So you’ve decided on a lead magnet, you’ve built it, and you’re ready to start building your list by exchanging it for email addresses. Great! Now what? As we’ve said again and again on this blog— you should always be testing. Keep designing and deploying new lead magnets for your audience and measure which kinds of content generate the most emails. Your first idea will likely not be your best idea.
So once you’ve finished creating your first lead magnet, start thinking (immediately) about the next. And, if you want more ideas, inspiration, and top email marketing tips, click here to join our newsletter.

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10 email marketing tools to help build, send, automate and optimize your campaigns

Email isn’t the easiest channel to master, but luckily there is a wide range of email marketing tools to help nail every step of a campaign.
This article covers everything from building an email template to post-campaign optimization. So what can these email marketing tools help with?

Building email templates

There are several levels of complexity when it comes to building emails. At the simplest end of the spectrum is purchasing a pre-built email template. Some email marketing tools will even provide their own database of templates for you to choose from. If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-manage solution, this is a safe bet.
If you need a custom email template (or simply don’t like any of the existing templates), then an email builder should be your next port of call. These come in two flavors – a ‘WYSIWYG’ (What You See Is What You Get) drag-and-drop builder, or actual HTML code.
Most major email service providers (ESPs) will provide a template builder (with varying degrees of success), and all will allow you to input straight HTML. However, HTML requires you to code the email from scratch, or adapt an existing one. Both of these options are time- and resource-intensive, even if you have the skills to do it. However, it does allow you to access more advanced functionality, like dynamic content in emails.
Below are three good examples of email marketing tools that can be used to build emails. And if you’re in the market for a new ESP, here are seven things you mustn’t forget to ask your email marketing vendor.

• Litmus offer a collection of free, high-quality email templates. They even have a tool to help you see how they’ll look in different email clients.
• Benchmark offer a simple drag-and-drop editor and allow you to create branded signup forms.
• Campaign Monitor offer a template builder with the ability to add dynamic content. For each element in the email, there is a drop-down menu labelled ‘who should see this’ from which you can select segments of your audience.

Segmenting and sending emails

Now you’ve built your email template and it’s polished to a high shine, the next step is to work out which part of your audience to send it to – and, of course, to actually send it.
A recent study by Mailchimp found that segmented campaigns delivered an average of 14% higher open rates, a 9% lower bounce and a whopping 101% increase in click-through rate. So it’s worth investing the time into properly segmenting your audience before sending your emails. Tailoring the messaging, subject line and body content of your emails to each segment is a great strategy to improve engagement.
Of course, any time spent segmenting your audience is ultimately wasted if those messages aren’t delivered. So it’s also a good idea to invest in tools that ensure deliverability. Tools like Sendforensics let you test your emails before your campaign goes out, giving you a sense of whether your emails will land in inboxes or junk folders.
When it comes to actually sending your emails, below is a selection of email marketing tools that allow you to do so in bulk:

• Mailchimp is the market leader in terms of number of users, primarily because of the sheer simplicity of its interface. It also has a bunch of free email marketing tools which are great for small businesses – such as an HTML to text email converter that ensures your recipients can always see the content, regardless of their email client.
• Sendpulse offers a range of features like forms, mobile-optimization and a scheduler. It can also handle high volumes of emails (good for large mailing lists).
• Fospha is a ‘Customer Data Platform’, designed to track behaviour and customer profiles, using that data to create smart segments based on specific interests and behaviours. It also uses machine learning for clustering and personalization.

Automating email campaigns

Automation is one of the best email marketing tools available. Simple rules-based automation is offered by most providers, allowing you to set up entire campaigns based on user behavior, demographics and stage in the funnel.
One common application of email marketing automation is sending abandonment emails. This is a simple remarketing strategy used by ecommerce retailers to target customers who either add items to their basket but fail to complete the checkout, or simply browse items before leaving.
On average, 69% of customers leave their order behind before purchase. Using email marketing automation, a simple rule can be set up to trigger an email send to these customers, encouraging them to return to the site and complete their purchase. One shoe retailer was able to recover 24% of abandoned carts and drive an additional 5% revenue per month using this method.
Below are a few email marketing tools that can help automate elements of your campaigns. For more on marketing automation, check out our guide on How to choose the right marketing automation vendor.

• HubSpot is one of the biggest and most versatile players in the market, offering an intuitive interface to set up triggers and responses, along with lead scoring capabilities to help make your automated campaigns more intelligent and targeted.
• GetResponse offer time-based email triggers, which are effective for campaigns that require multiple touchpoints, such as welcome emails. GetResponse call these ‘autoresponders’ and list a few examples here.
• Marketo is another big player in the automation space, with a diverse range of features including automated push notifications, in-app messaging, and real-time location-based marketing.

Tracking, testing and optimizing your emails

As with any high-volume marketing channel, optimization is essential. Small changes to things like send time, subject lines and sender address can have a significant impact on open and click-through rates.
The first step is to track these metrics. Every ESP on the market has analytics in some form or another. Keep an eye on any spikes in bounce rate and other delivery metrics to ensure you aren’t penalized for spam, and on open and click-through rates to assess performance.
Once a baseline is established, it’s time to test the performance of regular emails against experimental ones. Make sure to only test one thing at a time, and for a period of at least a few weeks, to ensure changes cannot be attributed to other factors.
By continuing to test and track results, regular emails will be optimized over time. Here are a few email marketing tools that can help speed up that process:

• Salesforces’ Pardot offers A/B email testing, lets you view test data in real time and automatically selects the best-performing email to send to the rest of your recipients once the test is over.
• Phrasee applies its machine learning tool to every aspect of an emails, including subject lines, body copy and calls to action and triggers.
• The Hemingway App is, honestly, just great fun to use. It analyzes text and grades it based on boldness and clearness, highlighting hard-to-read phrases, clichés and use of the passive voice. For marketers who struggle with copywriting (come on, don’t be shy), this is a great little tool.

For more on making sure that your email marketing technology is ready for the future, don’t miss ClickZ Intelligence’s report, Email and the Age of First-Person Marketing: Is your email technology ready for the future?

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Activate Your Fanbase With User-Generated Content

 In the digital era, everyone is a content creator, and that’s great news for marketers. Brands are boosting awareness by encouraging the public to share their customer experiences on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Just to name a few notable examples, Coca Cola’s “Share a Coke” hashtag marketing campaign asked fans to snap Coke-themed photos of themselves, and Charmin solicits toilet humor from its Twitter followers. But this kind of user-generated content (“UGC”) isn’t limited to social media interactions between a brand its customers. Savvy marketers are starting to mix UGC into their email marketing campaigns — and it’s working. Recent studies have shown that UGC delivers a 73 percent increase in email click-through rates.

UGC is simply content about your brand that is created by your business’s customers or fans, whether that content is photos, videos, product reviews, or testimonials. One obvious benefit of incorporating consumer content into your email marketing is that it saves you time. Instead of having to constantly come up with new content ideas on your own, your customers are the driving creative force.

But the real key to the power and popularity of UGC is that it humanizes your sales pitch. You aren’t the one telling your subscribers how wonderful your products or services are; real customers do it for you. UGC is authentic, and when used as a part of an email marketing campaign, it builds trust in your brand.

One of the best forms of advertisement is a satisfied customer. As amazing as your email content-crafting skills may be, consumers are more interested in what their peers say about your business. In fact, 70 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations and reviews over professionally written content. Zulily takes advantage of this statistic with a “Customer Picks” emails that feature some of their best-selling products, along with a few brief but enthusiastic customer endorsements:

So how can you start integrating UGC into your email marketing? You can put out a call in your newsletter for subscribers to email photos or stories of their experiences with your products or services. Or you can come up with a brand-specific hashtag, ask customers to submit to you via social media, and feature your favorite responses in your next email. You might consider a theme for the submissions that is tied to an upcoming promotion or event.

To celebrate Star Wars Day and promote a Star Wars merchandise sale, Hot Topic asked its customers to submit photos of themselves in Star Wars gear. The best submissions were included in an email photo collage:

Of course a theme isn’t necessary. TeeFury’s emails showcase photos of happy customers wearing the company’s apparel:

To give your subscribers an extra push to submit, you can hold a contest, with a gift certificate or other prize going to the most creative submission. However you go about incorporating customer content into your emails, make sure that you’ve obtained permission from the original creator to use their content and that you’ve articulated exactly how that content will be used.

Once you get the go-ahead, don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of UGC. Photos might work well for one brand, while testimonials work better for another. But if content development is one of your email marketing pain points, then UGC could be the solution.

Read more about email content development here. 

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5 Simple Email Opt-In Strategies

EMAIL is the secret weapon of many successful businesses and internet entrepreneurs.  While social media marketing has received a great deal of (deserved) attention for elevating brand identity; it isn’t as powerful as the email when it comes to driving people to take action. 

Capturing email addresses and creating an audience of email readers will take you and your business to the next level.  Let’s take a look at why email is so important and the best recipe for building a better audience for your email marketing efforts.

First, Why Email is SO Important

Here’s why: people still guard their email inboxes.  They will not give their addresses to just anyone.  Because of this, they are much more likely to read and engage with the emails that they do get.  In addition, your email is not competing with games, funny memes, or a friend’s new baby.  It’s just your message laid out there for a ready and willing group of subscribers who are actually interested in what you have to say.

By the numbers…

Email has shown to blow other online marketing methods out of the water when it comes to ROI. Litmus reported $40 ROI for every $1 spent on email marketing, while keyword ads only return $17 per dollar, and banner ads a small $2 per dollar. Let’s also talk conversion rates. Email has been reported to offer a 4.16% conversion rate, whereas search results offer 2.64%, and social media converts at less than 1%.  So now that you have an understanding of the reasons to invest in email marketing, here is how to grow your email list.

The Best Strategy

The following ways are tried-and-tested ways to get the coveted email addresses of your potential customers. As we said, people keep their emails more guarded, so you will need to offer incentives and position your request strategically.

1. Prioritize Your Opt-In Form

First, your opt-in form should be a priority when it comes to the design of your site. These little forms allow you access to the golden list which converts higher than any other channel and offers the highest ROI for goodness sakes, make it the first thing visitors see! Here is an example from the 7 for all Mankind website, a company that sells high-end jeans.

Three seconds after arriving at their site, pop! Up comes the email opt-in with a 10% off incentive and a promise of exclusive offers, updates, competitions, and in-store events. Not only that, they help to segment their customers by gathering gender information. Take notes marketers, they’ve got it right. But, how about the customers that aren’t sold right off the bat and don’t opt in?

2. Ask for Subscriptions on the Bottom of Every Page

In order to get the most subscribers from your website or blog, you need to make an offer to subscribe at the bottom of each page. Now, each of these offers should not be like the rest. You want to customize call-to-actions according to the content on the page. For example, if you have a page explaining actionable steps a customer can take to achieve a goal, you might add an opt-in like the one below at the bottom of the page.

Make opting in easy and make the offers relevant to the situation your visitor is in.

3. Site Registration

Of course, one of the easiest way to collect email addresses is when a visitor registers for your website. Juniper reported 77% of marketers report site registration to be effective for building a large, quality email list. Similar to how Facebook requires a registration to sign up, or eBay when you are trying to make a purchase, your site should register users with their email addresses too. In the site registration form, or e-commerce forms for that matter, you want to provide an opt-in option for visitors to receive continuous emails. Be sure to incentivize your opt-in so visitors are more likely to agree.  Here’s an example of this tactic on H&M’s website.

Note how they incentivize their offer by saying “exclusive offers”. Who wouldn’t want exclusive offers, right!? They also collect information to segment their audience, as the 7 for all Mankind opt-in did above, including fields for gender, location, and even an interest in kids wear.

4. Use Social Media

Next up is social media. Social media is a great tool to reach far and wide and attract new customers. It is also a place to build your email list. Opt-in forms can be placed on your social media sites to call followers to action. Here is an example of what that looks like on Facebook from Salesforce’s Facebook page.

When you click on that “Sign up” button, you are taken to this page to complete the email opt-in. Adding email opt-in buttons on your social media profiles can help you move your audience from social media down the buying funnel to a place where they will click through and convert.

Social media is also great for running contests. You can offer a prize and require signing up with email in order to qualify to win. Here’s a great blog about 10 social media contests that generated a total of 10,000 emails for the respective companies.

5. Create a Free Course or Other Downloadable Content

Last but not least, a free course is a great way to engage your audience and earn their email address. What can you teach? Well, what industry are you in? What is your expertise? What do your customers want from you? You can share some of your coveted expertise on a topic people commonly ask about in your industry. Courses can be in written, audio, or video form. Here is an example from a page on Neil Patel’s Quicksprout website.

On this blog, which targets an audience who is having trouble converting SEO traffic, he has the side banner offering his free course (valued at $300) on increasing traffic. It is free in exchange for a simple email address. Note how the blog and course have the same target audience and the course reinforces the blog. This is a great way to get more email subscribers.

Another note is that these offers don’t have to be limited to courses, you can offer an infographic (as shown below), a downloadable whitepaper or PDF, a report, etc. in exchange for the email address.

If you give visitors a reason to give you their email address, and something in exchange, they are less likely to hesitate.

There you have it, the best recipe for building your email marketing audience comes down to strategically placed opt in’s with incentivized messaging. As shown in these examples, you need to be funneling visitors toward your email list from many angles. The main takeaways to remember are:

• Opt-ins Should be Highly Visible
• Opt-ins Should be Frequent
• Opt-ins Should be Relevant
• Incentives! Incentives! Incentives!

Best of luck on building your golden list!

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Bryan Eisenberg on email marketing: “Do massive Segmentation and opt out your list”

Bryan Eisenberg was one of keynote speakers at the Fusion Marketing Experience. The event had a very impressive line-up with experts from all parts of digital marketing. Bryan shared his email marketing tips:

With a presentation on the second day about one of his favorite topics “Always be testing” (also the name of his book). This time Brian referred to Adwords and Pay per Click testing, see that article here.

Email marketing: Do massive segmentation

I got to speak to Bryan a bit more about e-mail marketing. Bryan has been running his own newsletter for years with over 40.000 subscribers. Bryan: “Do massive segmentation. Once you think you have segmented, segment again. And if possible, segment again. In good e-mail marketing, you segment first, and then personalize within that segment.”

Segmenting is a very effective email marketing tactic

And he is right, several kinds of research have shown Segmenting as one of the most effective email marketing tactics. Even more: Testing with Target Audiences (in other words: segment testing) is also found to be very effective. 91% of marketers find segmentation testing effective. That is huge. Testing segmentation is the number one effective testing tactic according to research by Marketingsherpa.

Brian continues on massive segmentation: “For instance, you can personalize an e-mail to people who are interested in tv’s versus stereo’s. Segment your e-mail campaigns to previous customers versus subscribers and know what you will be sending to them. First segment and after that go a level deeper and do more personalization. Use a RFM (Recency, frequency and monetary value) formula to calculate the right TV or bundle to offer and what discount percentage to give.”

List hygiene also counts.

Bryan: “One of the things we did on our own newsletter was to opt a large part out. We had 40.000 people on our list and asked everyone that wasn’t active to opt in again. In 7 months the e-mail list was up to the same size, but much better quality. That means higher open rates and click through rates AND better deliverability. Not enough people do this list hygiene thing. At the very least put them [the inactives] on a separate list. There is a technical term for people that aren’t willing to keep their list clean: Pussies.”

He ends with one last tip: “Never forget old content is new content to new people.”


Image by Remy Bergma


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Do You Publish Your Email Subject Line to Twitter & Facebook? Consider Changing It…

 Here’s a quickie! I’ve been looking at a bunch of people who are doing a great job publishing their email marketing campaigns out to the web with a hosted version of the email, then using the subject line as their content for Twitter and Facebook.

For the most part your subject line is a great thing to publish, but here is something to think about when you do this. Think about all of the people who see your Tweet but don’t know who you are, what it’s about and don’t want to click on your link.

I’ve seen some of the following Tweets come through recently:

• March Newsletter
• Check Out Our Sale
• Best Buys for March
• Let’s See Your Collection

These are all fine subject lines for an email campaign, especially if your email From Label is recognizable to the list you’re mailing and they are expecting your message.

However it’s a bit different when you put your message out to Twitter and Facebook. There are people that might not be a customer, or be on your list. Heck, they may not know who you are. It’s a perfect opportunity to introduce yourself! You might try this on for those that don’t know you:

• March News from the Hingley Foundation to Cure Ailments
• Check Out Our Jewelry Sale
• Best buys on dog food for March
• Let’s see your collection of antique cocktail shakers

So your subject line is a great START, but make sure when you use your email marketing subject line in your social media campaigns you include your company name or the message you’re trying to get across.

Do you have any good experiences changing your subject line for social media?

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Up for the Challenge? Try This Unusual Method to Help Achieve Your Business Goals

Jadah Sellner and Jen Hansard, two moms who co-founded a business called Simple Green Smoothies, added 28,000 people to their email list in 2013. These days, they have an active, engaged list of more than 385,000 people.

My first reaction when I heard those numbers was, “WOW.”

Want to know what propelled their accelerated list growth?

Four times a year, Jadah and Jen host 30-Day Green Smoothie Challenges. People who are interested sign up for the challenge and pledge to drink one green smoothie every day for 30 days. During the challenge, Jadah and Jen send weekly emails that include inspiration, shopping lists, recipes, and smoothie tips.

Challenges are a popular way to attract email subscribers and get people to spread the word about your business. They’re also a lot of fun for your community members.

Let’s take a look at how challenges work and how to design a challenge that will help you reach your business goals.

What is a challenge, and how will it help your business?

When you host a challenge for your audience, you select and promote an action you’d like your community members to take. It’s usually a short-term commitment.

To join your challenge and play along, your community members register for it either by signing up for your email list or joining a group on a social media site. Then you give the participants support, encouragement, and tips during the challenge itself.

Copyblogger hosted a content challenge in January 2016 that helped people build their cornerstone content.

Challenges are often free, but you can potentially charge for them as part of a larger program or online course.

Throughout the challenge, participants focus on one goal — whether that goal is eating healthier food, daily meditation, or writing a novel.

Challenges draw attention to your business. People get excited about challenges and share them on social media, so their friends and family can see what they’re up to (and play along). Dedicated community members will come back to participate in every challenge.

Let’s take a look at three successful free challenges.

Example #1: National Novel Writing Month

One of the very first virtual challenges that came on my radar was National Novel Writing Month. The annual NaNoWriMo challenge encourages participants to write an entire novel (50,000 words) during the month of November.

Writers sign up to receive inspiring and instructional emails during the challenge and get access to the community forums, where they can buddy up to get additional writing support.

The program started in 1999 and today NaNoWriMo is an official 501(c)(3) organization. More than 400,000 people participated in the fiction-writing challenge in 2015.

Example #2: The EFT Tapping challenge

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a form of acupressure — similar to acupuncture — during which you tap on energy meridians with your fingertips to treat emotional or physical issues.

Claire P. Hayes is an EFT practitioner and author, and she regularly hosts seven-day tapping challenges where people can join live daily calls with Claire and other participants.

Claire uses regular challenges to build her email list, explain what she does in an interactive way, and create trust with her audience members.

Example #3: List-building challenge

For my business (BethHayden.com), I’ve invited my community members to play along with me as I attempt to grow my list to 16,000 subscribers by the end of 2016.

Email subscribers who sign up for the challenge get special updates from me about my progress, including tips on what list-building tactics are working and which ones are flopping.

So far, more than 500 people have signed up, so I know it’s a hot topic for my community members. You can sign up here.

How to design and host your own challenge

You don’t need to already have a huge email list to run a challenge, but you do need to have some type of community already established.

If your list is small and you’re not connected with any influencers who can help you promote your challenge, it might not produce the results you want.

So, first decide whether or not you have a large enough audience for your challenge to be effective. If you do and want to host a challenge, follow the five steps below.

1. Identify your business goals

Before you begin brainstorming challenge ideas, think about what you’re trying to accomplish — and how a challenge might help you achieve your goals.

Are you trying to build your email list? Get media attention? Pre-sell a course you’re building?
Write down your primary goal, plus any secondary goals you might have.

2. Brainstorm challenge ideas and select the best fit for your business goals

Take 15 minutes and write down as many challenge possibilities as you can. Then take a five-minute break and walk around the room or get a cup of coffee. To generate even more ideas, try another 15-minute brainstorming session.

Assess each of your ideas based on whether it will help you meet your business goal, how difficult it will be to implement, and whether it’s likely to be something that catches on with your audience.

Remember to think in terms of benefits to your audience, not features of the challenge.

3. Design your challenge

To create your challenge, outline:

• Complete instructions for your audience, including when it will start and end
• How you’ll entice people to join
• How you’ll promote it to your email list, existing social media audiences, and influencers in your network

4. Host the challenge

Once you’ve set your details and announced the challenge start date, focus your content marketing efforts on promoting it.

Publish content related to the topic of your challenge, host webinars, and talk it up on social media. Encourage your participants to share their challenge results and get other people involved.

5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the challenge

After you wrap up your challenge, write down what went right, what went wrong, and how you can improve your plan next time.

Did you meet your business goals?

If you’d like to do another challenge (or run the same one again), set your next start date.

Engage and entertain your audience while growing your business

Challenges can be a fun and exciting way to generate buzz for your business, engage existing subscribers, and build your email list.

As we’ve seen from the examples above, challenges can work for all different types of businesses — so pick a smart challenge idea and run with it!

Have you hosted (or participated in) a challenge you particularly enjoyed? Tell us about it in the comments below.


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7 Easy Tips to Creating Stellar Email Content

 Once a subscriber opens your email, you’ve got just a few seconds to grab his or her attention. Stellar content can keep them glued to the screen. To help you connect with your readers, we have seven tips to help bolster your email content. 

1. Host a brainstorming session

If you feel like your content is a little drab, host a brainstorming session to help generate some new ideas, says marketer Izabela Socha with Cooking Planit. This company, which is an online site that helps people plan meals, holds bi-weekly brainstorming sessions.

Even if your staff is small, ask everyone – not just marketing – to come to a meeting and toss around ideas. New topic ideas can elevate your writing. And, if you’re a team of one like many small business owners, don’t fret. We’ve got a guide with inspiring ideas and a blog post with even more. 

2. Ask for input

Ideas shouldn’t just come from your staff; they should come from your subscribers, too. Send an email asking recipients what kind of email content they want to see. This gives your customers a voice and gives you more content ideas. Check out the example. This particular online retailer is offering an incentive to participate, which is never a bad idea.

 3. Less is more

With the right design and images, your email doesn’t need a ton of text. A promotional email, for example, may only need the sale details. Take a look at the example below. Notice there’s very little text, but the reader gets the point instantly. 

 

4. Write teaser content

Write short and snappy content, then direct readers to the meat of your content on a blog or a landing page like the folks at Cooking Planit. Tease your readers. Get them to click on your call-to-action button, and lead them to more content, such as specific recipes in the example below.

5. Focus on the reader

When you’re writing, use the word “you” rather than “we.” By doing so, you’ll focus on the customer. Take a look at the example below. Instead of saying, “We offer the following benefits” it says, “As a registered user you can.” The Home Depot focuses on the customer, not the business. 

6. Write with a single goal

As you’re writing, focus your efforts on one goal. Don’t try to cram too many topics into an email. Unless you’re writing a newsletter, the rule of thumb is one topic per email. Keep it simple, like the example below. It’s clear the goal of this email is to introduce recipients to a new pizza.

7. Say it with video

Try adding some video to your next email to mix up your content (you simply include an image of the video and link to where the video is hosted like on YouTube). Whether you record your company’s CEO thanking customers or showing subscribers a new product like the email below does, video is a great way to spice up an email. For a little help creating a video, check out a recent post on this very topic.

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