“66 percent of online consumers made a purchase as a result of an email marketing message.” - Casey Hampsey (Data & Marketing Association)
To begin explaining what a lead magnet is, let’s start from the very beginning by discussing the psychology behind just what makes someone want to take action.
When email autoresponder software services launched in the late 1990’s, many online business owners and marketers saw a huge opportunity when it came to building a database of customers.
They knew that in order to build a dedicated fanbase, they would have to collect their information for the purpose of directly contacting them and building the relationship required to start promoting offers and making sales.
So back in the 90’s, collecting emails with web forms was easy. All you had to do was insert a form on your site and people would opt-in. They rarely needed little encouragement and there was limited optimisation required to get subscribers.
Fast forward to now, that doesn't quite work that easily...
Having an email form on a website simply isn’t enough.
As time passed and marketers were monitoring their statistics it became apparent that just adding an email opt-In form to a page requesting visitors enter their email address for a generic “Newsletter” or update wasn’t enough to build an email list.
Customers wanted a reason to give away their contact information.
With the dawn of Internet Banking and the introduction to the GDPR legislation, visitors are more protective than ever to hand out their personal data. We use our email addresses to carry out so many different online activities, like account security, website passwords, user logins. Now our email address is a very protected asset that we will not give out as easily.
This is where a Lead Magnet comes into play.
In short, a Lead Magnet is a resource that’s relevant, valuable and quick to consume, that visitors are motivated enough to want and therefore are willing to share with you their email address to get it.
In the seminal book ‘Influence’ by the renowned Psychologist ‘Robert Cialdini’, one of the most powerful principles highlighted was the concept of ‘Reciprocity.’
Robert discovered that people are much more likely to return a favour when something’s given to them freely.