Mailchimp is by far one of the most versatile email marketing tools available today.
Not only can you use Mailchimp to send marketing emails, but you can also use Mailchimp to manage social media, create forms, build websites, and also… you guessed it… create lead magnets.
You can easily create beautifully designed lead magnets that your subscribers will love in only a matter of minutes without ever leaving your Mailchimp dashboard. Better yet you can do so 100% for free!
This post walks you through step by step how to create a lead magnet with Mailchimp.
But first… what defines a lead magnet in the first place?
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet, also known as a freebie, is a free resource that you can offer to your site’s visitors in exchange for their email addresses or other contact information.1
By incentivizing visitors to submit their email addresses with a free resource, you can collect many more email addresses than by using a generic “sign up for our newsletter” email opt-in form. The more valuable the offer is to your target audience, the better your conversion rate will be. You can see how HubSpot captures email addresses with the lead magnet in the image below.
Lead magnet offered by HubSpot
There are numerous types of lead magnet that you can offer. For instance, you can offer a free video lesson, a guide, or an infographic. However, one of the most popular and effective types of lead magnets are ebooks in a PDF format that offer educational content of some sort.
To deliver the lead magnet, typically marketers have an autoresponder set up that will automatically send out the lead magnet via email.
Does Mailchimp have a lead magnet builder feature?
Simply put, Mailchimp doesn’t specifically have a “lead magnet builder” feature. However, Mailchimp DOES have the functionality needed to create excellent lead magnets. You just have to get a little bit creative to do so…
To create a lead magnet with Mailchimp you would simply build a landing page and format that landing page with your lead magnet content. Once you are satisfied with the resource you created, you would save the landing page as a PDF file. Lastly, you would include the PDF in your autoresponder email as a downloadable file.
Some ideas for lead magnets that often come in the PDF format include:
Ebooks: As mentioned, many companies use ebooks as lead magnets. Ebooks tend to be long pieces of content that provide comprehensive information on a particular subject. For instance, if you are a business coach that works with aspiring entrepreneurs perhaps you could create a 3,000-word ebook on “How to Build Your Dream Business in 90 Days”.
Checklists: Checklists are quick and easy for prospects to consume. They tend to lay out everything a reader needs to know about a topic in a list format. For instance, continuing with our business coach example, perhaps you could offer a checklist titled “The Startup Checklist: 11 tasks to complete before launching your business”.
Planners and calendars: Planners or calendars are often printable sheets that you can use to fill out a schedule. Again as a business coach, you could offer a partly filled-in schedule for building a business over 12 months with tasks such as creating a business plan, forming an LLC, investing in accounting software, etc.
Reports: Typically reports are in-depth pieces of content that examine certain topics and offer insights with data. Surveys regarding lead magnets show that reports are particularly good B2B lead magnets. However, they can be intriguing for any audience that values data and research. As a business coach, you could offer a report on the “7 Most Popular Industries for Digital Startups”.
Case studies: You can use case studies to showcase a test, process, success, or technique that you documented over a period of time. For instance, as a business coach, you could offer a case study titled “Case Study: How my client built a landscaping business currently earning $20,000 in revenue per month”.
There is no limit to the number of lead magnets you can create with Mailchimp. You can have multiple lead magnets that you would use for various marketing campaigns.
How to create a lead magnet with Mailchimp step by step
1. Sign up for Mailchimp
If you haven’t done so already, navigate to Mailchimp’s official website and sign up for a free account.
2. Create a landing page
Once you have signed up for Mailchimp you will be taken to the main dashboard.
From here click “Create” and then select “Landing page”.
At this point, you will be prompted to name your landing page. Name your landing page something that you wouldn’t mind your visitors seeing. In other words, naming your landing page “Fire landing page that’s gonna #crushit” would be a bad idea. Instead, you can just name it whatever the title of your lead magnet will be. You will see why this is important in a minute.
For this example, we will be creating a checklist lead magnet for starting a business. We will title it “The Startup Checklist: 11 tasks to complete before launching your business”.
At this point, you will need to select a template. The type of template you select might not matter to you since you may want to delete all the preexisting elements of your landing page when building your lead magnet.
For this example, we will select the “Grow Your List” landing page.
3. Design your lead magnet
Once you select your template, you will be taken to the template editor.
From here you can delete any elements that you don’t want to include in your lead magnet by clicking the little trash icon. For this example, we will be keeping the headline and the text block but we will be deleting the logo and the email opt-in form.
From here you may build out your landing page as you wish.
For this example the title was added, the body text was added, some font was changed, the background color was changed to teal blue, and an image was added.
Once satisfied, click “save and close”.
4. Publish your landing page and save it as a PDF
From here you will have a chance to look over your page title, URL, and content one last time before publishing. Click publish when you want you are all set.
Once published, you should get a success message like this:
Click the link to view your landing page. Here you can see the complete landing page you have created. You can see the example landing page created is below.
At this point, you will want to save the landing page as a PDF. To do so, right-click on the image, click print, and then “Save as PDF”.
Once you have saved your landing page as a PDF you will have successfully created a lead magnet in a file format that your subscribers can download.
How to set up your lead magnet with an autoresponder
Once you have created your lead magnet, you will need to set up an autoresponder in Mailchimp. The purpose of the autoresponder is to deliver your lead magnet through email automatically when your subscribers opt-in to receive your lead magnet.
Note: Before you do so, however, it’s important to already have a landing page or form set up so that your leads can opt-in to receive your lead magnet. For this example, a landing page was created titled “Landing page for lead magnet”.
To get started, go to the main dashboard and create an email. Specifically, create an automated email to welcome new subscribers.
Next, you will be prompted to name your campaign: this name will be for internal use.
Once you name your campaign you will be taken to the page shown below.
By default, the email will be configured to send out whenever ANYONE joins your email list. This is not what we want. Instead, we want to send this email specifically to those who opted in to receive your lead magnet.
To make this change, go to “Use advanced settings”.
From here you will want to click edit “Filter by segment or tag”.
At this point, you will want to configure your segment so that when a subscriber signed up on your landing page, they will receive the automated email. The landing page used in this example is titled “Landing page for lead magnet” as you can see below.
Once this is set up, you may move on to design the email. First, you will be prompted to name your email (which will be for internal use) and also edit the email subject and preview text. The email subject can be something along the lines of “Here is your free checklist!”.
Once completed, you will move on to choose an email template. You don’t need to select any fancy templates. After all, keep in mind the purpose of this email is simply to deliver your lead magnet.
Once you have selected the template of your choice, you will be taken to the email editor. The most important content block to include is the CTA button. By default the button will say “Buy now” but you will want to change it to say “Download resource” or something to that effect. Moreover, you will want to link this button to the PDF lead magnet file rather than a web address.
As you can see, the CTA allows visitors to download the PDF. Additionally, some text is included that reminds users what the purpose of the email is and how they can access their free resource.
Once you have completed your template, you can click through to finalize your automation set up.
Other ways to create lead magnets (aside from Mailchimp)
It’s very convenient to build lead magnets with Mailchimp.
The only downside is that the date and the title of your landing page show up in tiny print at the top of your document, and the URL shows up in tiny print on the bottom of your document. For some, this isn’t a big deal at all. After all, most subscribers wouldn’t even notice. Nevertheless, some marketers would prefer to avoid this minor nuisance.
Fortunately, there are many other ways to create basic PDF lead magnets. One of the most straightforward ways is by creating a document in Word or Google Docs, and then converting that document into a PDF. Additionally, there are various software for creating lead magnets that you can take advantage of.
No matter what platform you choose to use, always remember to keep your target audience’s interests in mind when creating your content.
