Hey , — It's the last day!

You made it. It's Day 5 of the 1KS Roadmap!

Today we're going to cover one of — if not — the most effective ways to get your newsletter to 1K Subscribers—and beyond.

The Almighty Lead Magnet.

WHAT'S A LEAD MAGNET?

To get a little meta—this very email course is a lead magnet: you gave me your email address in exchange for the learnings I provided you.

More generally: lead magnets are products or services (typically of the digital variety) given away for "free" in exchange for your email address—and sometimes other information like your name, phone number, and industry (in B2B scenarios).

Lead magnets work because they only cost you your inbox. Most people are willing to pay with their email addresses before they'll pay with real money.

This hyper-effective strategy was one of the first Focus Sprints Jay Clouse guided his Creative Companion Club community through this past spring (right after the Landing Page sprint). If you provide a quality digital asset and all you ask in return is an email address, you’re going to find success. A lot of the info in this section is thanks to his guidance and experience with lead magnets :)

Here's some proof of work. This chart below is taken from launch day of this very 1KS Roadmap course:

WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF LEAD MAGNETS?

Lead magnets can come in many forms, but ultimately they are most often seen in these formats:

• Email courses (👋)
• Guides, Playbooks, eBooks
• 'Top XX' lists or Checklists
• Templates
• Quizzes
• Challenges
• Databases
• Communities
• First Chapters of books

GOALS OF AN EFFECTIVE LEAD MAGNET

→ Alignment with your newsletter. This is the most important aspect of a lead magnet, in my oh-so-humble opinion. It needs to be aligned with your newsletter's content, focus, and solutions. Don't create a lead magnet about Cats when your newsletter is about Dogs. Your new subscribers will get confused and unsubscribe. Keep it aligned.
→ Quick & Easy Win. Getting someone to a quick win really builds momentum for the user. I started this email course with a quick & easy win of adding some friends and family to your newsletter list. That's a lot easier than creating a lead magnet to start.
→ Clear outcome. The better you can "paint it done" for people, the more successful your lead magnet will be. Take the name of this email course: "The 1KS Roadmap: Your guide to getting your first 1,000 subscribers." Bonus points if you can add a timeframe. I wasn't comfortable in claiming you'd get 1,000 subscribers in this 5-day course, so I omitted a timeframe.

EXAMPLES FROM FRIENDS!

Here are a few more examples from a few of my friends to give you more ideas.

1) Making Twitter Friends (Email Course) by Kevon Cheung

Kevon built Making Twitter Friends and made it a growth engine. He's used the free course to grow his Public Lab newsletter 10x! All of this gets users acquainted with Kevon and more primed for his paid community offer. He's provided a ton of value up front and built trust with his subscribers—it's no surprise this lead magnet has earned him over 2,000 subscribers alone!

​Follow Kevon on Twitter »​

2) Free Guide Welcome Series by Kjell Vandevyvere

Kjell's subscriber list growth was stagnant—until he offered a 5-day email series with "the best free tools, guides and articles" for new & aspiring freelancers. He used a basic email sequence in ConvertKit (affiliate link) to set it up and tweeted it out... and within a few days got over 50 new subscribers.

​Follow Kjell on Twitter »​

3) Side Hustler's Checklist by Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi

Niharikaa's Side Hustler's Checklist lead magnet got her 2000+ downloads in 3 months because, "its something valuable I gave in return for an email. I used this as a CTA under side hustle related articles, posts, and threads." She used the same strategy with an eBook to build her newsletter which got 1000+ downloads in under 6 weeks.

​Follow Niharikaa on Twitter »​

4) Design Templates by Femke van Schoonhoven

Last but not least, check out Femke. Her femke.design YouTube channel (55k subscribers) posts videos to promote her lead magnets. She covers some key design topics in her videos, then offers a free download of a template in a link in her video description. Femke had plateaued at 2,000 subscribers before she started using this lead generation strategy. Her email list is now over 25,000.

This works so well since she's used her large YouTube channel as her top-of-funnel strategy to get people onto her email list. We don't all have 55k YouTube subscribers, but even if you have a channel you're trying to grow, this could be a great content, top-of-funnel strategy for you, too.

​Check out Femke's YouTube channel »​

TOMORROW...?

Since this is the final day of the email course, I promise to leave you alone tomorrow! Unless it happens to be a Tuesday or Wednesday. Then you'll receive my weekly Growth Currency⚡ newsletter filled with more tips, tools and strategies to start + grow + improve + monetize your newsletter.

If that doesn't sound like something you're into, please hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email.

Otherwise, I'll be making weekly appearances in your inbox with more great content around growing your newsletter :)

If you want this course in the form of a Notion doc and you already deleted that first email with the link, check it out here.

ONE LAST THING? 🙏

I'd be so damn grateful for some constructive feedback on this free email course. Copy the text below, hit reply to this email, and paste the text along with your answers into a reply to me. An infinite number of thanks in advance!

COPY THIS TEXT 👇

The thing I found most valuable was:

The section I thought could be improved was:

Overall, this course was (rating 1-5 — 5 being excellent value):

Additional comments:

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Thank you so much and see you on Twitter and in your inbox!

-Dylan @ Growth Currency⚡