13 Tantalizing Incentives that Will Build Your Email List

Need a quick way to entice someone to join your email list or register for your website? Give away something for free.

By giving away something site visitors can download or access instantly, you can break through your readers’ hesitations about handing over their email addresses. And you earn their trust by giving them something useful immediately .

Some call it a “bribe,” some call it an “incentive,” and some call it a “freebie.” Whatever you call it, this technique can bring in big results as a list-building strategy.

But finding the right incentive for your audience — something that really makes people stand up and take notice — can be tricky.

Whether they’re opting in to an email list or registering to become a free member of your site, they’ve got to overcome their initial hesitation.

How to create an irresistible incentive

As with everything in content creation, you need to keep your ideal customer in mind when you're dreaming up your incentive.

What can you create that people will be incredibly excited to receive? You want them to look at your form and say, “Yes, I absolutely must have that!”

Start by generating a list of possibilities — ideas you can create quickly and test out.

To get you started with your own brainstorming, here’s a list of 13 ideas for enticing freebies to give away in exchange for an email address.

1. A cheat sheet

Everyone wants to do things the faster and easier way — sometimes cheat sheets are more popular than longer ebooks or reports.

Is there a shortcut or “cheat” you can give your audience?

2. An interview with you (video or audio)

If you’ve recorded an information-packed audio or video interview, you can use that as an incentive. 

Remember to make the sound high-quality, and it shouldn’t be one big sales pitch.

3. A productivity template

Templates or fill-in-the-blank worksheets can help your audience complete a difficult or confusing task, so that they make progress toward their goals.

4. A case study

Do you have a shareable story about a client or student who has tackled a problem?

Case studies can be inspirational giveaways for your audience and great learning tools, too.

5. Your manifesto

A manifesto is a written, public declaration of your principles and beliefs. You can write up your own manifesto, get a graphic designer to spruce it up a bit, and give it away on your site.

Check out The Writer's Manifesto from Jeff Goins. 

6. An email course that shares information on solving a problem

Lisa Tener gives away a 7-day e-course on how to write a book, and it’s full of helpful bite-sized advice.

7. A checklist describing the steps of a detailed process

People love checklists! A checklist incentive is even easier to use if you can make it editable and printable.

For more information on writing checklists, read Atul Gawande’s marvelous book,The Checklist Manifesto.

8. Access to a webinar or class

If you teach via webinars on a regular basis, giving away a recording of a past training session can work well.

You can also offer free registration to an upcoming live webinar.

9. Access to a monthly live Q&A with you

For many years, Pamela Slim offered free access to a live Q&A session with her — any questions were welcomed.

You can offer this to your new subscribers and send them information about the live session after they sign up for your list.

10. A mind map

Mind maps are visual representations of concepts, ideas, or processes, and they are intriguing incentives when they’re done well.

Try Xmind if you need a free, slick mindmapping tool.

11. A toolkit

If you’ve got a collection of useful resources in your content archive (like cheat sheets, checklists, videos, or ebooks) you can package them together into one super-useful toolkit for your audience.

12. A video series

Videos can be highly enticing incentives. If you feel comfortable on camera, shoot videos of yourself presenting a particular topic. Or if you want to stay off camera, you can do screencasts.

Either way, your sound quality should be top-notch — it can make or break your videos.

13. Templates, stickers, or wallpaper

If your specialty is design, you can bet your audience likes and appreciates your style.

You can give away a WordPress theme, a business card template, stickers, or other graphic gifts that show off your style.

The key to finding a great email incentive …

Keep testing different ideas until you find one people can’t wait to download.

Pick an idea, create it, and advertise it on your site with an opt-in or member registration form. Then, track the results and see how your audience responds.

If they love it, great! If not, move on to the next incentive idea.

Keep trying new freebies until you find one that’s so tantalizing, your prospects can’t resist it.

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How to Turn Freebie-Seekers into Paying Customers

4 Strategies Worth Testing on Your Site

Freebie seekers. The very words send a shudder through both product and service-based businesses alike. The worry is that these potential customers will cause a drain on the system – taking, taking, taking without buying. However, with the right approach, this worst case scenario can be avoided significantly, if not completely.

The problem isn’t with your product or service. It’s with the commitment. Free-turned-paid customers want to know that they’re valued and important, and that they have an “escape hatch” if they need it.

If you’re struggling to convert tire-kickers into brand evangelists, try testing the following strategies on your site to swell the ranks of paying customers while building loyalty and user engagement.

1. Offer a Free Trial of the Paid Product, but Do THIS First…

A free trial is one of the oldest and most reliable ways to convert more customers, but your approach is just as important as your offer. Pandora Radio, for example, has plenty of free listeners. Through its partnerships with electronics and car manufacturers, it’s now on virtually every device and newer model vehicle.

Pandora has become synonymous with always-on, available-anywhere internet radio

Of course, customers can listen to the free service, but can opt for a 24 hour trial of the premium service. The premium trial is also available for 7 days through trusted third-party services like PayPal. Many users report that after listening to the improved audio quality (sans ads), they’re hooked, and the lack of interruptions (such as skipping, liking or removing a song) is just icing on the internet radio cake.

Key Takeaway: By partnering with well-known brands, Pandora increased its reach exponentially to become a serious contender in a music space where questionable licensing and royalty fights would have chewed up and spat out even the biggest companies. Even if you can’t rub shoulders with household names, working together with trusted, non-competitive companies in your niche will let some of that trust and credibility they’ve built up, rub off onto you as well.

2. Let Users Chart the Course

One of the best ways to persuade potential customers that your product or service is worth paying for is to invite them to help create it. Case in point: Slate Magazine has some truly vocal and vociferous fans. So, in an era when online magazine and newspaper revenues are shrinking, they went against the grain to try a membership model.

Slate Plus tries a radical departure from typical newspaper and magazine ad monetization methods

Slate Plus shifts the monetization model from ad-based revenue to community-based profits. For a monthly fee, members can help guide the direction of Slate authors and publishers – suggesting interviews, chatting with celebrities and otherwise getting what they’d consider “VIP access” in a community where they already feel comfortable and valued.

Key Takeaway: Your users are the lifeblood of your site. If they’re starting to build a community around your product or service, leverage their loyalty by letting them help shape its direction. This is particularly valuable if you have (or can get) access to people, tools, or other resources that others can’t. It makes your customers feel as if their investment pays off many times over.

3. Become Indispensable

Your goal when converting freebie-seekers is to become integral into their lives, to the point where they actually miss you when they leave.  It’s important to remember that people leave for a variety of reasons, no matter how “sticky” your offer is.

Your chance to show your customers the best features of your product shouldn’t wait until they’ve upgraded to a premium version. Right from the start of their free trial, you should be involved – giving them tips on how to make the most of your product or service, as well as providing links to helpful FAQs, customer support and any other tutorials they may need.

When the free trial period is up, spring your best discount on them right away. Don’t wait until the end, as many prospects will be long gone by then. This approach helps you net the majority of buyers who already find your product superior and are just looking for a reason to sign up.

Key Takeaway: For inactive users, always be on the lookout for reasons why they should try your service again. Did you get a phenomenal testimonial from a user? Share it with your list. Mentioned in a prominent media publication? Share it with your list. New feature they’ll love? Share it with your list. Never run out of excuses to stay in touch and remind them on the reasons why your offer is irresistible.

4. Remove the Free Option Completely

This might sound completely counter-intuitive, but in many cases, businesses have seen their paid subscriptions skyrocket as a result of eliminating their free options. Ning is one such example. But how did they fare?

Ning moved from Freemium to a completely paid model

According to Kim Joar Bekkelund, who wrote his master’s thesis on the Freemium model:

Before Ning shut down its freemium offering they had 300,000 free communities, but these only brought in 20% of revenue and 25% of traffic. Ning converted just under 5% of its total user base into paying customers. Skype, on the other hand, have 560 million registered users, of which 124 million use the service each month, and of which 8 million are paying customers. This means that Skype has a 7% conversion rate. Looking at Pandora, Dropbox and Evernote we see conversion rates in the range 0.5% to 4%

When you’re talking about millions of users, that equates to millions of dollars in extra revenue that they may have missed out on if they had stuck to their freemium model.

There are also those users who eventually, at some point in their lifecycle with the company, convert from free to paid, as shown in a presentation by Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote: 

The video highlights a number of additional points to consider if you’re involved in the Freemium revenue model, including the value of long-term users, scalability and shifting your business model to focus on new and active users.

Key Takeaway: Switching from free to paid has the potential to upset a lot of users, but chances are, those users weren’t looking to buy from you anyway. By giving existing customers every reason to see why the premium option is a better value, as well as soliciting their suggestions for upgrade perks, you’ll make them feel important and part of the team — which, in a sense, they are.

The Bottom Line on Converting Customers from Free to Paid

A great product and amazing service will carry you far, but there’s a point at which you’ll need to move beyond that. Whether you’re building a community or making the switch from free to paid, don’t leave your users feeling like you jerked the proverbial rug out from under them. Involve them in the process, kindle their enthusiasm and give them every reason to continue wanting to use your product or service.

Not only will you create a legion of brand enthusiasts, but you’ll also increase the viral spread and adoption of your offer with breakneck speed. Good luck! 

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