Ever wonder if your lead magnet is attracting the right people onto your list?
Buckle up for a data-packed analysis of what I learned about my lead magnet… From my recent launch of 5-Day Email Sprint.
CONTEXT:
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed I’ve been bullish on my $1 course over the past few months. (I still think it’s an incredible product and am grateful to everyone who grabbed it!)
You see, I had a hypothesis that a $1 course might attract a higher-quality pool of prospects than a free lead magnet.
I figured it would help me build a list of buyers, not freebie-seekers. And that those buyers would more likely repeat-purchase into higher-priced courses than non-buyers.
Spoiler alert: I was wrong!
EXPERIMENT:
This experiment has been ongoing for many, many months (about a year in total). I’ve placed different lead magnets in my Twitter bio over the past year.
At first, I tested some free lead magnets:
1) A free email swipe file, and;
2) A free email case study.
And then I tested my $1 course against those two freebies.
To determine which lead magnet attracted a higher-lifetime value customer… I analyzed some data from my recent product launch – broken down by newsletter entry point.
In case you’re new around here…
- A few weeks ago, I launched this email challenge at an early bird price of $99.
- To do so, I sent out 11 emails over a 5-day period.
- For better or worse, I withheld the link from social media altogether during the launch. I did this to get an accurate signal on which segment of my email subscribers performed the best.
RESULTS:
I converted 2.1% of my total email list during the launch. That is, 2.1% of the folks I sent those 11 emails to bought.
Looking closer at who bought was where things got interesting…
Only 14% of buyers had followed this exact, romanticized journey I’d mapped out:
Social media traffic → Buys $1 product → Buys $99 product
This made me wonder: which initial entry point “develops” the highest-lifetime value customers?
Here’s what I found:
My free email case study tends to attract the most responsive prospects – even more than my $1 product segment (4.2x as much!).
So, I should push as many clicks as possible to my free email case study opt-in page – not my $1 front-end offer.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Testing different lead magnets is just as important as testing other things. (Like subject lines, ads, etc.) Your hypothesis might be wrong. Be humble.
- Don’t project your starry-eyed model of your customer’s journey onto them. Instead, observe the journey your most profitable customers actually go through. Then, re-engineer your acquisition system to replicate what is already working.
- Choose your “bait” wisely. To catch fish, you need good bait. Some lead magnets are better than others, and help you catch “bigger fish”. (This analysis assumes your goal is to monetize your list via digital products and services versus sponsorships.)
So, test and analyze which lead magnet attracts your highest-lifetime value customers… And go all-in on that lead magnet.
Have a great Friday. I’m playing ping-pong with my childhood best friend tonight and I can’t wait! 🏓
Your pal,
Dylan