How to grow your Substack newsletter with a lead magnet
Step by step process to create and set up lead magnet in Substack.
Do you want your Substack newsletter to grow?
The best way to grow your Substack newsletter is with a lead magnet.
But, Substack still doesn’t have an API to sync with email marketing platforms and Zapier. These platforms have the functionality to incentivize email sign-ups by sending a lead magnet to people who sign up. You can achieve this same thing with a few tweaks. To make it easy, I’ve created my own lead magnet for you, and I’ll walk you through how I did it.
You can now watch the full tutorial of this blog post 👇🏽
Read the full article and understand the process.
This article is divided in 2 sections, Creating a Lead magnet and Lead magnet set up in Substack.
Part 1: Creating a Lead magnet
What is a lead magnet?
Why do you need a Lead magnet for Substack Newsletter?
How to Create a Lead Magnet for Substack Newsletter?
The psychology behind the lead magnet.
Where to Host your lead magnet?
Part 2: Lead magnet set up in Substack
How to edit your Substack welcome message?
How to set up lead magnet in about page?
How to set up lead magnet in welcome post?
How to set up lead magnet in home page?
Part 1: Creating a Lead magnet
In this section, we will have a brief look at lead magnets. I believe that some of you already know what a lead magnet is? But if you don’t know about it, please look at this section.
What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is an online incentive offered to prospective customers for their email addresses. Generally, lead magnets offer downloadable digital content, such as an ebook, PDF checklist, whitepaper, or training course. But they can also be an opt-in offer for an email course, coupon, or video.
The overall goal of a lead magnet is to entice and attract website visitors to sign up for whatever your newsletter is offering.
Why do you need a lead magnet for the Substack newsletter?
While writing a newsletter, you can’t just slap a sign-up form on the bottom of an email and expect subscribers to come pouring in.
In fact, many readers are reluctant to give you their personal information. They’re spammed by too many emails every day, and they don’t want to get bombarded with more.
It’s your job as a writer to give readers a compelling reason to share their email addresses with you.
That’s where lead magnets come in! A simple call to action-”Click here to sign up for our newsletter!”-may not be attractive enough. However, if you offer a free gift (aka lead magnet) in exchange for the email address, you’ll be more likely to earn a subscriber and convert them into a paying subscriber down the line.
How to Create a Lead Magnet for Substack newsletter?
I create everything on Canva or Notion. Both are free, and they both have a ton of templates that you can use, so creating something is super easy and fast.
If you want to make it super simple, just use Canva. They have a ton of templates that are already designed in different sizes. You can just take anyone, change the copy, and voila! It’s ready to go!
If you want to write a lot of stuff, you can use Notion. If you don’t know what Notion is, it’s basically like google docs but customizable with all sorts of cool features like checklists, file uploads, and sortable columns. It’s also completely customizable, so if you want to design something from scratch, go ahead and do it!
Do not worry about the fancy stuff, and you don’t need any graphic design skills to create a lead magnet. Simple and straightforward lead magnets work best. In fact, design or shiny stuff in your lead magnet doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the psychology behind the lead magnet.
The psychology behind the lead magnet
Your lead magnet will work if you understand the psychology of the reader. Why is anyone reading your newsletter? or coming to your Substack?
They want to learn something, get updates about their industry, or get information or entertainment.
What is your reader’s big WHY?
Your lead magnet should be one small step towards that WHY.
Example 1 -Graphic design newsletter
Reader’s big WHY? — Wants to learn graphic design
Lead magnet — Colour psychology Checklist {Is a step in learning graphic design}
Example 2 — Keto Diet Newsletter
Reader’s big WHY? — Become fit and healthy
Lead Magnet — Diet Planner {Is a step in getting fit}
Where to Host your lead magnet?
To host your lead magnet on the web, all you need is a free dropbox account or even a free google drive. Simply upload your pdf or checklist on these and get a shareable link.
When people click on this, they will download your lead magnet. Copy the lead magnet link, and then we will use it in Substack emails.
Part 2: Lead magnet set up in Substack
It’s a one-time process where you’re gonna spend few hours. The changes you make in Substack will help to increase your subscriber rate. You have to set up 4 things properly in your Substack, and then everything will work on its own.
1. Edit your Substack welcome message.
Put a link on your Substack in the welcome message so that people can download your lead magnet.
Go to My dashboard > Settings > Welcome email (edit)
2. Edit your Substack about page.
Add details of your lead magnet to your about page to subscribe and download your lead magnet.
Go to My dashboard > Settings > About page (edit)
3. Edit your welcome post and pin it.
Create a welcome post and add your lead magnet info. Pin that post on your Substack timeline.
4. Edit Substack cover on home page
Create a cover photo of your lead magnet and upload it in your Substack.
Go to My dashboard > Settings > Cover photo.
I hope you enjoyed this guide to creating a lead magnet for Substack. In the next post, I’ll cover how you can promote your lead magnet on social media to gain subscribers for your newsletter.
I’ll share what works and what doesn’t work on social media for Substack. If you have not subscribed yet!
Then subscribe today to get my next post.
Further Reads
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And why your email subscribers don’t buy from you? Read this
Ohh, and there are 6 other online income streams you can launch today
👉🏿 Hey Wait! Just one more thing.
Do you want me to create a video tutorial for this lead magnet setup process?
If this post gets more than 1000 claps, I will create a video tutorial with all the steps involved.
Thank you and keep on doing great stuff 😊
Hey, thank you for reading the post.
I hope you like the article. I am Durgesh Pratap and I help small businesses, coaches and creators to grow their email list.
If you want to learn more about email marketing and grow your email list then check out my newsletter List Growth Lab
