Lead magnets pull potential customers into your sales funnel by offering them something valuable in exchange for their contact information. When a prospect shares their contact info, they become a lead, and you have more opportunities to make a sale.
The best lead magnet depends on your business.
For Paul & Joe Beauté, the cosmetics line from French fashion house Paul & Joe, it was free samples. The company offered online shoppers in Japan free trial-size products if they paid for shipping. After ordering a free sample and entering the company’s sales funnel, 20% of these leads went on to purchase full-size products.
In this article, learn about nine different types of lead magnets that real businesses use and how to create them yourself.
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is a perk or incentive that businesses offer customers in exchange for their contact information. Lead magnets can be downloadable assets, like an ebook or template, as well as discount codes and webinars.
Both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies use lead magnets to turn website visitors into leads, though their methods may vary:
- B2B: Might offer business-focused resources like an ebook or webinar in exchange for information like your role and the size of your company to help qualify their leads
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B2C: More likely to offer product-focused leads like a quiz or discount code in exchange for your email address and phone number so they can send you marketing emails and texts.
9 types of lead magnets
The best lead magnet for your business will depend on what your target audience values. Here are nine different options with lead magnet examples from real businesses:
Quizzes
Quizzes help customers find the right product. They can also work as lead capture forms when you ask for an email address or phone number at the end, as makeup brand Ilia does with its Shade Finder quiz.
The quiz tells customers to select the skin tone that matches theirs based on pictures, then asks questions about skin concerns and product preferences. Before delivering the results, Ilia prompts quiz-takers to share their email address, phone number, and birthday.
Ilia then matches them with the perfect product and suggests additional products in their shade. Customers who share their email address with Ilia also receive a welcome email with a discount code.
According to a case study from quiz maker Octane AI, Ilia’s Shade Finder quiz drove 55,000 preorder sign-ups for a new complexion product. The brand’s quiz-takers also have a higher average order value (AOV) than customers who haven’t taken the quiz.
To add a quiz to your Shopify store, you can download an app like Octane AI.
Samples
If your product is relatively affordable or lends itself to a trial size, you might consider giving away free samples like Paul & Joe Beauté does on its Japanese ecommerce site. You can also make samples part of your brand launch strategy, like Australian sustainable packaging company Hero Packaging did.
Before they launched, Hero bought Google Ads targeting keywords related to their business. “Anyone that was typing in ‘sustainable packaging,’ we were hitting them with this landing page, and they would get a free sample,” says cofounder Anaita Sarkar on an episode of Shopify Masters.
“We thought, at that time, ‘We’re going to get 30, 40 sign-ups to get some free samples.’ In a week, we got a thousand people,” Anaita says. This process both validated her business idea and provided Hero with a list of leads. Today, Hero offers $1 samples to bring shoppers into the sales funnel.
Giveaways
Giveaways have been an effective lead magnet for bilingual bookstore and school book fair provider MiJa Books. Cofounder Muammar Reed says if he could provide one piece of tactical advice to new business owners, it would be to give something away for free.
“If you give away something for free, people will give you information,” Muammar says on an episode of Shopify Masters.
MiJa ran monthly giveaways providing a selection of books or a $50 gift card to elementary school teachers or librarians and PTA members. Entrants had to follow MiJa Books on social media and subscribe to their newsletter and share information about their school.
Muammar credits the giveaways with not only increasing newsletter sign-ups and social media followers, but with leading directly to book fair bookings. One common scenario he saw was that a teacher or librarian would enter a giveaway and then receive a marketing email, which they would forward to their principal who would then book a fair.
Discounts
A discount is a good incentive for email sign-ups. According to pop-up form builder OptiMonk, email sign-up pop-ups with a discount have an average conversion rate of 7.65%, compared to 5.1% for pop-ups without any incentive. You can create a discount pop-up for your store for free with Shopify Forms.
Another option is a spin-to-win or lucky wheel, which gamefies the discount experience. Gamified pop-ups have an even higher conversion rate, at 13.23%, according to OptiMonk. There are a number of Shopify apps you can use to add a spin-to-win wheel to your pop-up. Underwear brand OddBalls uses Klaviyo for its lucky wheel, which offers up to 10% off.
Worksheets
A worksheet is a downloadable resource you can create with software like Canva and use to get leads for your service business.
For example, Tori Dunlap, founder of financial education platform Her First $100K, created a debt payoff worksheet that helps users organize their debt by interest rates and set up a debt progress tracker. To download the worksheet, you need to enter your name and email address.
Ebooks
An ebook lead magnet can perform almost as well as a discount code. OptiMonk data found that email sign-up pop-ups with ebook incentives have a 7.49% conversion rate (compared to 7.65% for discounts and 5.1% for incentive-free pop-ups).
Wil Yeung, a cookbook author and the YouTuber behind Yeung Man Cooking, gets visitors to sign up for his newsletter and receive updates on new episodes by offering a free ebook with five recipes. After providing their email address, they receive an email where they confirm their subscription and download the ebook.
Webinars
Since webinars typically require contact information to register, they can be a great way to attract B2B leads. After the live webinar is over, you can continue to use a webinar recording as an evergreen lead magnet.
For example, Shopify hosts live webinars on various ecommerce topics and makes the recordings available to anyone who registers.
If you host a live webinar, you can create a countdown timer announcement on your website to create a sense of urgency. Download a countdown timer app on the Shopify App Store.
Audits
An audit gives potential clients personalized advice based on their situations. For example, eBizTrait Inc., a Shopify Partner that helps brands with web and mobile development, offers a free audit of visitors’ online stores.
The pop-up appears when a visitor shows intent to leave their page. The message reads: “Leaving? Get a free audit for your online store.” This lead magnet gives visitors a taste of what eBizTrait can do for them without committing to the brand’s service.
If the potential client signs up for an audit, it gives you a chance to be in direct communication with your target audience. At the end of the audit, you can explain how your offerings directly tie to the areas where they could improve.
Personalized reports
A personalized report provides data or information that is relevant to a customer. For example, on their home page, filtered showerhead brand Joliehas a Water Report lead magnet that details the quality of water based on customers’ ZIP codes.
As a company whose unique selling proposition is about the importance of clean water for an effective beauty routine, this personalized report directly relates to their product offering. At the end of the report, there’s an explanation on how contaminants affect the skin and proposes a solution: a filtered waterhead you can buy directly without having to navigate to another part of the website.
How to create a lead magnet
- Research your target audience
- Develop the content
- Build your lead capture form
- Promote your lead magnet
- Nurture your leads
- Monitor and optimize
Lead magnets offer several benefits to businesses, including growing email lists and offering more information on customers. If you want to create a lead magnet, follow these steps:
1. Research your target audience
The most effective lead magnet depends on your target audience. To develop a relevant incentive, consider whom you’re marketing to and why they might be interested in your product.
Identifying customer pain points can help you come up with high-quality lead magnet ideas. If your offer addresses a specific pain point, potential customers may be more motivated to share their contact information.
There are different ways you can learn about your audience. For example, you can try social listening tools, which reveal the conversations people are having that are relevant to your niche. They can offer a bigger picture view outside of people’s experiences with your brand or be a useful direction if you’re starting out and haven’t collected any first-party data on your audience yet.
2. Develop the content
How you’ll develop the content for your lead magnet depends on what kind of lead magnet you use.
If you create a quiz like Ilia’s Shade Finder, you’ll need to come up with useful questions and possibly visual assets (like Ilia’s skin tone photographs). An ebook or worksheet will require both writing and graphic design.
Templates can help you get started. For example, Shopify’s PowerPoint template can help you create a slide deck for a webinar.
3. Build your lead capture form
Next, build your lead capture form. This is where you’ll collect contact information.
You can use an app like Shopify Forms to create a pop-up, landing page, or inline form. Shopify Forms connects to Shopify Flow, which you can use to create automations like instantly emailing a discount code or auto-tagging leads so you can track the impact of your lead magnet.
4. Promote your lead magnet
Once your lead magnet is live, consider promoting it on your marketing channels like email and social media.
Tori of Her First $100K links to lead magnets on her Instagram and TikTok profiles. She also promotes her lead magnets through short videos, including one that went viral on Tiktok.
“Something I did on that video is I said, ‘Take the quiz linked in our bio for a free money plan,’” Tori says on Shopify Masters. “In that one week, with an organic TikTok that I filmed in 10 minutes with no makeup and a sweatshirt, we got 100,000 email subscribers. I still market to those people.”
5. Nurture your leads
Develop a plan to convert leads into paying customers. One option is to use Shopify Messaging, a Shopify tool to build SMS and email marketing campaigns, to create a welcome email series.
If you pair it with automation tool Shopify Flow, you can set up an automation to send this series on a specific schedule or based on a trigger. This allows you to keep your leads warm without having to manually send emails.
6. Monitor and optimize
Monitor your lead magnet’s success and identify opportunities for improvement. Keep track of key details such as your lead conversion rate and the conversion path.
Consider using A/B testing tools to try different CTAs, incentives, and placements. Some apps, like Octane AI, let you A/B test different versions and track the results. For example, you can run a test to learn whether a pop-up is more effective than a dedicated landing page. Change one element at a time so you can more accurately pinpoint what is driving more conversions.
Update your lead magnet content as needed to ensure it stays relevant and aligns with your audience’s needs.
Lead magnet FAQ
Are lead magnets worth it?
A great lead magnet that offers a high-value resource can help your business increase sales. While it can take time, offering an incentive in exchange for contact details can help attract leads and build a subscriber base.
What is another name for a lead magnet?
Lead magnets are also referred to as opt-in incentives, sign-up incentives, or gated content. All of these terms describe a similar concept: offering a free resource as part of a lead generation strategy.
What are examples of lead magnets?
Popular lead magnets include educational materials like a free ebook or online course, product discounts, and other perks like free workshops and seminars.
