
Creating irresistible lead magnets: converting visitors into subscribers
What Is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet compels users to your website to share information, like their email address, in return for access. This could be a piece of content like a newsletter, whitepaper, or eBook. Content not only raises awareness but also informs and piques the curiosity of potential customers in your good or service.
Another example of a lead magnet is a free product sample, trial subscription, demo, or other incentive linked to a product or service. Naturally, no one divulges their email address voluntarily. Lead magnets must provide the reader with value in exchange for their consent to receive future communications from the company.
In this article, you’ll learn the art of crafting compelling lead magnets that entice visitors to subscribe and become valuable leads.

1. Developing valuable content offers (eBooks, guides, and templates)
High-value content offers are valuable piece of content that you’d give away in exchange for somebody’s contact details. It’s like a trade (or an ethical bribe) of getting someone’s contact details in exchange for a piece of information. But where do you start? And how do you create this piece of information? What kind of information should you even put together?
They are only effective if they are something that your target persona will find valuable, as well as if they are targeted to each stage of the buyers’ journey. These offers may come in many forms such as ebooks, guides, templates, a report, a demo etc.
What are the benefits of having content offers?
- There are literally countless benefits to having content offers, though they’re time consuming to create in most cases, everyone who uses them would say it’s worth it. For example, The Web Presence Group says it’s great for building awareness for your business through engagement. As the roots to inbounding traffic, the audience’s engagement with your content is what fuels the relationship. Here, quality and relevancy are paramount. Any content you publish is a reflection of your business and its brand. Be creative, but in a respectable context that relates to your target market.
- Hubspot claims it’s best for building trust in your brand. This is because using free content of any form (blogs, ebooks, webinars, videos etc.) can work wonders to boost trust in and credibility for your brand. It basically makes you appear to be an expert in your field as you are now teaching it to others, and to be teaching it to others means they will look at you as someone who has mastered this skill. Quality content shows prospective customers that your business is a thought leader that knows what its talking about, and this can also translate to initial trust in your paid products and services.
- It’s also beneficial in terms of traffic for your site. Creating content is a fantastic way to get found online and increase various types of traffic to your website. If you make sure that your content is optimized (SEO) you can up your chances even more. You can do this using keywords, you’ll increase your chances of getting found in search engines and boost organic traffic. By promoting content in social media, you’ll increase your referral traffic. By using content offers in paid marketing efforts like pay-per-click or in email promotions, you’ll increase traffic from paid search and email marketing, respectively.
- Hubspot also claims that your customers will just be generally happier! When your content is effective at communicating and educating customers about what problems your products/services can help them solve, they’ll have better expectations as customers. Rather than blindly purchasing from you and not fully understanding that your product does, which can lead to misconceptions and false perception, educational content better prepares your customers and makes for a more informed customer base. This can lead to future or repeat purchases and lower churn.

How to create an irresistible content offer
Here are 5 quick tips to help you create the perfect content offer for converting visitors into leads.
- Make it valuable
Provide something the person would truly pay money for when making a content offer.Additionally, if the material you are offering is valuable to your target audience and they want it, you have generated a want for your content that can only be satisfied by engaging in more interactions with your business. - Solve an actual problem
A content offer is frequently generated because it was simple to complete or « made sense » at the time. Stop if you identify with that! Find out what your audience wants by doing some research. - Align the content type to the appropriate step of the customer journey
Offering the incorrect type of content based on where the visitor is in their advancement along the sales funnel is a mistake we frequently observe firms making.As an illustration, suppose someone finds your site after reading your most recent piece shared on LinkedIn. Congratulations, you’ve just gained a valuable visitor who precisely fits your buyer persona. They reach the blog post’s conclusion (a general post about solving a particular problem). The person is then offered a free consultation with a member of your team as the « next step » offer at the end of the post (see point 5 below).Do you see the issue with this? After meeting someone at a party, you immediately invited them to your parents’ house for - Authentic Content
An author or business writing on a subject in which they are manifestly unqualified to do so is another cardinal sin of content offers we encounter. For instance, an IT corporation might write about how economic legislation will alter the industry in their nation. Or a marketing firm writing on how Gen Y’s future aspirations would shift as a result of increased housing costs. - Include A ‘Next Step’
Including a next step, sometimes referred to as a Call-to-Action, is the last stage in developing the ideal content offer. A call-to-action is a button or image that is visually appealing and will catch the reader’s attention. It screams, « Click me, click me! » towards the end of the blog post or in your sidebar.
2. Designing attention grabbing opt-in forms
An opt-in form is one that requests visitors’ email addresses while also offering them a lead magnet or other valuable incentive in exchange. Subscribers grant you permission to send them marketing emails, newsletters, and other types of communications by choosing to join your email list.
Sending unsolicited emails will put you in the spam folder because the majority of email service providers (ESPs) have spam filters in place. Opt-in forms assist make sure your emails aren’t included in the daily average of 122.3 billion spam emails. More crucially, laws governing email marketing mandate the use of an opt-in form.

Types of opt-in forms
These are the 5 most popular types of pop-up opt-in forms:
- Pop-up
- Floating bar
- Splash page
- Exit-intent pop-up
- Content form
How To Create An Opt-In Form
When it comes to creating opt-in forms there are many options on the market. Optinmonster is one of the top companies around, but they’re quite pricey, which is why ConvertKit is my top Optinmonster alternative.
The interface is remarkably easy to use; the customer support is top-notch and always gets back to me quickly. Furthermore, the company was founded by a blogger so they know exactly what influencers & bloggers need from an email service.
How to create an opt-in form with convertkit.
Forms are opt-ins you can embed on your site or blog. To get started:
- Locate the Landing Pages & Forms section of your account (Grow > Landing Pages & Forms).
- Next, click on + create new.
- Then choose Form from the next page.Once you’ve chosen to create a form, you’ll need to choose the display format of your new form. You’ll see four options:
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- Inline: A form that fits within the content of your page. This option is most commonly used to add a form to blog posts, footers, and sidebars.
- Modal: A form that pops up based on timing, exit intent, percent of the page scrolled, or even when clicking a link or button.
- Slide in: A form that slides up from the bottom-right or bottom-left of your site after a certain time or scroll percentage.
- Sticky bar: A form that shows up at the top or bottom of the page.
No matter which format you choose, you’ll see a few options for templates. Each option has an example of how it will look, and you can change this form template at any time!
Once you’ve selected your template, you’ll be able to get started on making it look and function the way you like.
Customizing your form
Anything you can click on, you can edit. This includes the name of the form, the button text, colors, headings, and more!
- Your form’s overall style
On the right-hand side of the form editor, in the General styles menu, you can change the background color, border radius, background image, as well as add custom CSS.
To edit the style of your form’s individual content, start by clicking on the text, fields, or button. On the right-hand side, the style menu will switch to allow you to make changes to the content you clicked. You will be able to tweak things like color, size, font, and more. - Your form’s content
To edit the actual content of the form, click anywhere you’d like to edit and select the text (heading, body text, button, etc). Then write whatever text you’d like to add.
- Arranging form fields
With the editor, you can easily add, re-label, and rearrange form fields! You can also select « Tag » rather than « Custom Field » to create a dropdown list or check boxes. Here’s how to add tag dropdowns and checkboxes to your form. To rearrange your fields, hover over each field and you’ll see a grip appear to the left (three parallel lines). You can easily click and drag the fields into whatever order you choose.
That’s all there is to it. Now you can embed your form directly onto your blog or website by clicking Publish.
3. Implementing exit intent pop-ups with enticing offers
A message that appears in front of users when they move their cursor towards shutting the tab is known as an exit-intent popup. These popups are made by marketers to prevent viewers from leaving a website and turn them into subscribers, leads, or buyers.
Why should I set up an exit-intent popup?
Exit-intent popups are crucial because they allow you to recover up to 53% of visitors that want to leave your website. As a result, you can continue building your relationships with the audience. The most popular type of exit-intent popup is a subscription popup with a lead magnet. These messages ask users to share their email address in exchange for something valuable, like helpful or entertaining content, discounts, free e-books with hacks, etc.

Here are some tips to assist you improve the appeal and persuasiveness of your exit pop-up.
- Put your pop-up in front and at the center to be noticed
With exit intent pop-ups, you shouldn’t be too modest make sure yours actually pop and grab attention; otherwise, the user will proceed to another tab without even noticing it. If you’re creating your pop-up with SendPulse, use the overlay mode, which darkens the main content of the page. - Offer something real and valuable
You won’t retain your users by simply asking them to hang out on your website a little longer, and that’d be unfair to distract them without offering anything of value. So, you may want to use one of the following incentives:- a freebie like a eBook, whitepaper, webinar, manual, etc.;
- a discount;
- access to an exclusive offer;
- a free discovery call;
- a free consultation;
- a personalized program.
- Choose relevant engagement elements
When designing an exit intent pop-up, keep in mind user experience and choose elements that make sense for your specific page or user journey. Choose relevant freebies and copy to match user intent. When using a pre-designed template, check if everything makes sense and spend an extra minute customizing it if needed. - Set reasonable display conditions to avoid annoyance
No one likes being bombarded with intrusive messages within seconds, so set appropriate pauses between various pop-ups or notifications. For example, if your customer has just closed another promotional widget, there’s no need to bother them with an exit intent pop-up.
- Optimize your layout from time to time
The goal here is to avoid showing the same exit pop-up to the same people over and over again. You need to either serve them different versions or make sure that it’s only shown once. - Make sure your layout is responsive
You want your pop-up to look good on PC as well as on tablets and mobile devices. The easiest way to achieve that is by using a pop-up builder that offers responsive customizable templates. In SendPulse, there are over 30 mobile-friendly templates and an option to preview your widget on different screen sizes. - Track how your pop-up is performing
It’s imperative that marketing teams track metrics related to their efforts, and pop-ups are no exception. Our platform allows you to get a quick overview of how many clicks, views, and leads your pop-up has gathered, so you won’t have to do any guesswork.
4. A/B testing lead magnet variations for better performance
A/B testing is a technique for contrasting two iterations of an advertisement, ad copy, web page, etc. to see which one works better. A/B testing is essentially an experiment in which visitors are randomly shown two or more variants of advertisements or landing sites, and statistical analysis is utilized to ascertain which variant performs better for a specific conversion objective.

Earlier in this article we learned that a lead magnet is a free item or service you offer website visitors in exchange for their email addresses or other contact information. Examples of lead magnets include trial subscriptions, free consultations, white papers, and samples. There are several
How to use A/B testing to test your lead magnets
Don’t go in with any assumptions. You’re running A/B testing because you want data about your lead, directly from your lead. Your assumptions might cloud your judgment, so listen to the numbers.
Here are the steps for running your A/B testing:
- Create a hypothesis. For example, “Red buttons will perform better than blue buttons.” (Don’t get attached to the outcome of the hypothesis.)
- Define two variations based on the hypothesis. For example, red vs blue.
- Divide incoming traffic. Don’t divide traffic forms, like your Adwords go to red and your social media go to blue, as this could skew the results. Try to split each traffic route in half.
- Run the test for a statistically significant time period. This could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months.
- Find the winner with the higher conversion rate. Send all of your traffic there.
- Replace or delete the losing version.
- Repeat with a new variable.
How long to run an A/B test?
It is recommended that you run a single test for at least two weeks, to make sure you have sufficient data to draw a conclusion. However, this will depend on your typical incoming traffic and the length of time you have to work with.
To sum it all up;
If you want to boost conversions and increase sales, you need to make data-driven decisions. Guesswork puts you at a disadvantage, especially since your competitors are probably conducting their own tests. If you know a specific element on your page contributes heavily to conversions, you can trust it to keep working for you.
Plus, you get to see the results of your test in black-and-white. It’s comforting to know that you’re not just throwing headlines and CTAs at your audience, but that you know what works and how to communicate with your target customers.