It Took Me Six Months to Grow My Email List to 100 Subscribers — Here Is Everything I Did Wrong
By: Karolina Wilde
Tags: Marketing, Digital Marketing Tips, Blogging For Business, Email Marketing, Email Marketing Tips

Mistake 3: Not Having a Strong Lead Magnet That Appeals to My Ideal Audience

I’ve had six lead magnets in total in the last six months.

That’s a lot of hours wasted writing copy, creating designs and graphics, and setting up landing pages.

Because I was confused about my ideal audience, my lead magnets were all over the place:

Perfect morning routine checklist

Perfect nightly routine checklist

30 days of Instagram content (my best performing lead magnet, but the most useless)

Content calendar template

50 IGTV video ideas for online entrepreneurs

Quiz: what type of blogger are you?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think all of those lead magnets were great, and I put in a lot of work and thought into creating them. They were all valuable on their own.

But when you look at this list, do you think that my marketing efforts were consistent? Do you think that I have an email list of people who know exactly what they’re getting from my list?

I sure don’t.

When you’re growing an email list, you have to be specific with it. You have to know who the people you want on your list are, and you want to offer a lead magnet that will provide value and ensure that they’re getting on the list and will continue getting value in the future.

Now, imagine you found my 30-day Instagram content calendar and signed up to my list. You would expect to receive emails about Instagram or at least social media, right? That’s why you were interested in my email list in the first place.

But instead, you’re receiving emails about blogging, making money freelancing, and personal development to add a cherry on top.

Based on the lead magnet that landed you on my email list, you’re not interested in any of that, so why would you interact with me?

To be honest, when I was creating lead magnets for my blog, I knew that the Instagram one would do well. All content on the internet that talks about Instagram does well, because people want the secret to quickly gain a massive following on Instagram.

What I didn’t consider was that just because a lead magnet will attract people to the list, it doesn’t mean they will be valuable leads for my business.

What I’m going to do instead

First, I plan to keep it simple and settle on two high-quality lead magnets that serve my ideal audiences.

This year I started writing the Business Diaries series on my blog, where every few months, I update my readers on my business, income, and freelancing.

I’m making changes, and I decided to turn my Business Diaries into a monthly email newsletter to send out to my writer’s brand list. I’m going to show an honest behind the scenes picture of my freelance writing career and a path to becoming a traditionally published author.

For the second audience segment, I’m going to be creating a personal development related lead magnet that’s relevant to that specific audience and their needs.

I will create two separate landing pages to collect emails, and I’ll be keeping those two lists separately.

This will ensure that I’m attracting only the right people to my list, people who will get the best out of their time reading my emails.