AP 0375: How Do I Handle New Lead Magnets for My Existing Email Subscribers?

AskPat 375 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 375 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me here today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

All right, here's today's question from Melody.

Melody: Hi Pat, my name is Melody Wilding from MelodyWilding.com. I'm a licensed therapist for female entrepreneurs and professional women. And my question has to do with email opt-ins and list management. So in particular, I've been building out a lot of great free opt-ins, workbooks, and worksheets for my audience, which they have just been eating up and it's been going great. My question is, should you set up a new list and ask people to opt-in for each individual new offer? Or do you give your opt-ins a way to your list without asking them to re-opt-in? And I'm sorry if that sounds a little confusing but basically, should you create a new opt-in and ask people to sign up again? Is that a barrier that might prevent people from signing up for your email list to get the new offers? I look forward to your thoughts. Thanks so much, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up Melody? Thank you so much for the question today, I really appreciate it and I'm really happy to help you with this question because this is something that I've had deal with in the past. I know of a lot of other people have as well, especially considering now that this trend of building unique lead magnets for different posts, for different podcast episodes. It's getting much more popular because people are realizing that it's making an incredible difference in their opt-in rates. Instead of one universal site-wide lead magnet, which is what most people had back in the day, and still today actually, they're realizing, you know people who are smart, are realizing that different lead magnets work on different kinds of posts. And some posts, your universal lead magnet might not work so well, while others, it might. So the idea is to create a lead magnet that's specific for the type of content that people are reading on that particular page that they're on on your website. So maybe you have a website or excuse me, a webpage about the top ten things you can do at home to help yourself when, you know, going into the entrepreneurship world. Well, maybe a lead magnet is an extra five of that particular set of tips. So that ends up working very well and I am glad to hear that you're doing that too. You're using worksheets, checklists, quick start guides, bonus videos. Those things all work really well, but it becomes a headache when it comes to getting people to download these because some people have already downloaded other lead magnets.

You don't really want them to have to opt-in again in order to get it. So here, there are two different ways to solve this problem. The first way, is to use a tool called LeadPages. I'm an adviser for this company, just to let everybody know out there. And to be honest about that, it's amazing. They have a tool which is a digital asset delivery mechanism, which allows you to … Even if people are already subscribed, when they opt-in again for a particular form that you have, they will get that lead magnet and you won't have to worry about them opting in twice or worrying about them going through the thank you page and the whole subscriber on-boarding process anymore.

It knows that they are already subscribed to you and it'll just … Boy, that was weird, sorry. It'll just send that opt-in magnet to them and that's it. So that's lead pages you can use AskPat.com/Leadpages to check that out. But if you're using something like AWeber and you don't have LeadPages or any other tool that you have. Here's the solution and I think this could have worked very well for most people out there. So, the idea is as you are creating these different lead magnets for these different pages. Essentially instead of having people opt-in to a different list every time, if you wanted to … I mean, it's pretty beneficial to do that. Especially if you have just three to five buckets of you know who in particular audience. And by you know who, I don't mean Voldemort, what I mean is, your avatars. There might be three or five different types of people depending on who you have in your audience and based on that you have content that's specific for those three to five buckets.

And depending on what bucket you're talking to at that particular time, you have a particular list for that type of bucket or maybe you've used something like Infusionsoft or Ontraport which can tag people based on their interests and what kind of content they're downloading from you. So that you can get to know them even better and also deliver more highly tuned, very targeted content for them. But even if you don't have that highly sophisticated software what you can do is essentially at the end of every blog post, when you give away these lead magnets, you have an opt-in form. You have an opt-in form whether they're going to the same list or different list. And that's fine.

The way to deliver those is you deliver them on the thank you page that they end up on and you as create more lead magnets, you put more lead magnets on to that particular thank you page. So yes, when people are brand new to your site and they subscribe for one particular … When they subscribe for your latest lead magnet for example, your latest worksheet, they're gonna go to that thank you page and they're gonna see all those other ones there. Now you'll have to let them know through the emails that they get to look for that particular post. You can either date them or title them or categorize them if you want.

Again, this is sort of a work around and a little bit of a hack in terms of the delivery of this but it makes it so that you have to do less work. So every time you come out with a new lead magnet, it essentially gets put onto a particular thank you page or a link on a new page that gets put on that thank you page. So maybe the thank you page doesn't have all of them, but you link to a page that does. The idea is you have this one page with all of your lead magnets on it and that's the deal. So … What about your existing subscribers? Well, the deal with that is, you let them know when a post comes out that you have this new post or podcast episode thats come out and you've included a new lead magnet and you just link directly to that tool/research page. That has all those other lead magnets and what that does, it gives a little bit of a heads up to the people who are on your list already.

They already have it in their email and likely they're not going to subscribe because they are already subscribed and they don't need to. Because they can get the lead magnet from the email they just got notifying them that there is that new lead magnet for that new post that you've come out with. Now, hopefully that makes sense. Now what about the people who are brand new who see those other stuff? Well, that's awesome. They're gonna see how many other things you've have to offer, you're going to just blow them away. And so, hopefully those lead magnets do a good job of bringing people back to your website, putting them into your sales funnels or what have you.

But, you know the more content that you show that you've done and the effort that you've put in to help your audience. Particularly, once someone's brand new to your site and they go “Wow, look at all that Melody's done for all of us here! I'm gonna stick around, I can't wait till the new lead magnets come out. I'm gonna dive into these older ones.” And what happens, is people get those other lead magnets and they're gonna be blown away. And hopefully those lead magnets do a good job of bringing people back to your website, to build a relationship, obviously, and also to drop them into your sales funnel. So hopefully there's a call-to-action at the end of each of those books perhaps into a program or coaching thing that you do. Or maybe a product, whatever.

But again, the whole idea here is just to have that one tool or resources page, that your audience is going to be trained to know, is going to be the place to go, which houses all of these things that you create. Brand new subscribers will land on that and they'll find what they need. In particular, to the post that they came from, but your existing subscribers would know to go there once something new comes out. Perhaps, they're dated and the latest things at the top. Which would make it easy for you to facilitate people who are brand new can just sort of tie in the dates or the kind of article to find their lead magnet that they're looking for.

So, that's how I would go about it, if you don't end up getting LeadPages, which just makes it a little bit easier in terms of delivery for people who already exist in your list or not. But I think this idea of a resource page, a tool page that has all of your lead magnets is a great idea. Even if you have LeadPages, it's just a fantastic resource. You can have calls-to-action there, and if people share it, then awesome. That's great you want as many people to see how much value you're providing as possible. And plus, when people download this, there's things like I said and hopefully they are driving people to where they need to go.

So Melody, I hope that answers your question and I hope that makes sense. It can get very, very confusing if you end up building a new list for every new opt-in form. I wouldn't do that. I've tried doing that before, you know, a new list for every lead magnet. I would have just a few lists based on those particular avatars on your website, those particular buckets like I said. But if you do one for every single lead magnet, it's just gonna get too crazy and it's not gonna be worth the effort.

So hopefully that all makes sense Melody, thank you so much for the question. We're gonna send an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page. Thanks to the Speakpipe.com widget, which allows me to collect all these voicemails from you and drop them in the show here. And again, thank you for all your questions because this show wouldn't exist without you.

Thank you guys, appreciate it. I also want to give a big shout out to Josh Shipp and everybody at Rock the Stage. I visited San Jose and we went to a church and we spoke in front of a number youth speakers and youth leaders, who are just making incredible changes in the world for the youth out there. Who need their motivation and need their help. And I just wanna give a shout out to everybody out in San Jose last week who I met. And you guys were all great. I spoke on stage, I got nothing but positive feedback and it just was such a happy time. And I wish you guys all the best. And again you look up Josh Shipp online. That's with two Ps and he is amazing. He's just amazing, he's just wow.

Thank you so much for listening in today, I appreciate it and today's quote comes from Stewart B. Johnson, he said, “Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves. To break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.” Man, that's one of the best quotes I've heard in a while. I'm gonna read that again cause that's a great way to start the week and you know this is the first time kind of reading this out loud. I love it. “Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves. To break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.”

How are you going to outstrip yesterday? Hopefully, you have that in line and I wish you all the best. Cheers and take care and I can't wait to serve you in tomorrow's episode of AskPat, cheers.