15: How to Use Lead Magnets to Grow Your Email List (Not Your Mama’s Lead Magnet) featuring Magan Ward

As we’ve been highlighting the beauty of lead magnets on the podcast, it’s important to understand how they convert viewers into actual email subscribers. In today’s episode, Magan Ward joins us to share how she created a unique lead magnet in a Pop-Up Podcast Series that helped grow her email list by 78% during the first event! Listen in as she shares how she planned it and the second iteration of it, along with the specific stats and results of her event!

Master Lead Magnet Idea List

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Meet Megan

An entrepreneur since she charged $0.25 for a single cracker with spreadable cheese from her lunchbox at the Kindergarten lunch table.

Magan is an educator (with a strong southern accent) who knows 150% what the struggle is when creating an email list, opt-ins, welcome sequences, and the millions of other details that we handle while doing all the things as we run this digital biz.

She took her email list that was suffering and grew it by 78% (as mentioned in the show) and she helps others do the same.

Review the Show Notes:

Introducing Megan Ward (2:00)

Pop Up Podcast (3:24)

Industry Standards (5:53)

Pop Up Podcast Conversion Rates & Stats (6:15)

Additional Pop Up Podcast Events (9:28)

Utilizing a Launch Team (10:27)

How Utilizing Pop Up Podcast System Can Be Used for Other Offerings in Your Business (13:58)

Enroll in Magan’s Free Not Your Mama’s Lead Magnet Mini-Course

Set yourself apart and build connectivity with your audience the moment they subscribe + how Magan grew her list by 78% by thinking outside the box when it came to growing her list, delivered to your inbox, instantly!
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Instagram: @themaganward 

Website: www.maganward.com

Connect with Dolly ⬇️

instagram.com/dollydelongeducation

facebook.com/DollyDeLongEducation

pinterest.com/dollydelong

dollydelongphotography.com/lead-magnet-master-list

Review the Transcript:

Dolly DeLong
Welcome to the systems and workflow magic podcast where I help entrepreneurs go from scattered to streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host, Dolly DeLong, a wife, a mom, and a photographer turned systems educator. Join me every week as we have conversations centered around creating tactical workflows, and automation in your business. Now, let’s make some strategic workflow magic. Hey, friends, and welcome back to the systems and workflow magic podcast. I’m your host, Dolly DeLong. And I’m so excited to talk with you and chat with you about systems and workflows and automation. And specifically, today, we are going to be chatting about lead magnets. So if you are not new to this podcast, you probably know that we have been talking a lot about lead magnets for the past several weeks. And I will continue to talk about lead magnets in the next several weeks. And if you’re brand new here, and you’re like, oh my goodness, I am just jumping off of the deep end with lead magnets, that’s totally fine. I would encourage you to listen to today’s podcasts and then rewind back to rewind, I am such a 90s person. Okay, just go back to several episodes. And you can listen to the very beginning of this lead magnet series. But the reason why we’re talking about lead magnets is because it is a way to grow your email list. And you can create a system for yourself and you can automate that as well. So I want to break that down, especially for you creative business owners, all of us. I’m including myself, as a creative business owner, we have a lot on our plates. And I just want to make this as easy as possible. Okay, so before I continue to ramble on, I just wanted to introduce our guest today, I have Megan Ward, and she is an email marketing expert. And she has an amazing strategy when it comes to building out your email list. So I am going to let her take the stage.

Magan Ward
Hey, everyone. So as dolly already shared, my name is Megan Ward, and I am an email marketing strategist and educator. And I teach fellow entrepreneurs the power behind their email list and the strategy that goes along with building connection with your audience, the moment that they hit that subscribe button.

Dolly DeLong
Oh, Megan, I’m so excited about getting into this topic. But I know that we’ve been connected for a while in this digital space. And we actually met as photographers at his styled shoots a few years ago. And I, because I was thinking about that. And I like that you reminded me about that, too. But it’s been really cool to see your business evolve as you’ve entered the space as an email marketing expert. And last year specifically, was a really big year for you and like uncovering a lead magnet that I’ve seen you coin not your mama’s lead magnet. So you share more about this, because I really like that term. And it made me Yeah, absolutely.

Magan Ward
So I’m in May 2021, I hosted my very first pop up podcast event. And I wound up growing my email list by 78% in less than one month just from this event. Now I’m going to pause for like just a minute because I need to define pop up podcast because dolly I know, you know all about pop up podcasts. You’re familiar with it. But your audience might not have heard of this before. So a pop up podcast, or this puppet podcast, it was just a limited time audio only event and I had for bite sized episodes. And those are only available for people to listen into for about six days. And then they went away. So it was just a refreshing alternative to that old school webinar or master class and it met my audience where they were at because they could listen on the go. And that was the biggest thing that everybody loved all the feedback, told me you know, this is great because you allowed me to choose when and how I listen instead of having to listen when you scheduled a webinar showing. And that’s when it hit me. Because that that pop up podcast, which it was a lead magnet in disguise. It was exactly what my audience was craving because they could show up when and how they wanted if their hair was a mess, laying on the couch, dropping the kids off at school, whatever. I met them with my content where they were at. And it was just a lightbulb moment that collectively, us in this digital business world we need to think outside the box of just using PD As downloads, and not that PDFs, don’t convert, because they still do. I just want to encourage everyone that we don’t have to stick with what the marketing gurus have been teaching us for the last two decades for email list growth, because we just might be able to bus through industry standard conversion rates for signups by providing something that our audience is craving just something different and something they haven’t seen before. And that’s where I came up with this whole not your mama’s lead magnet term to describe not only my pop up podcast, but like any lead magnet that’s different and sets you apart.

Dolly DeLong
I’d love that. And just in case anyone here is listening, and they aren’t really sure about what industry standard conversion rates for Signups are. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about that? Sure. So

Magan Ward
industry standard for a landing page, which is the page that somebody lands on to sign up for your lead magnet or your event? That standard is 10%. On a good day, it typically is less per industry statistics.

Dolly DeLong
Okay, so now I’m going to ask you what was your conversion rate for your lead magnet, which was the pop up podcast,

Magan Ward
it was over 60%. So over 60% of people that landed on that landing page signed up for my pop up podcast event. And if you want any, like a few more juicy details, I can share what percentages of signups actually showed up to the event as well. Yeah, let’s let’s do so go in with the knowledge that this pop up podcast event had a little bit of a webinar feel. So if you go in with the webinar conversion data to use as a comparison, typical webinars have around 35 to 45% of the people that signed up actually come show up to the webinar. And the first episode of my pop up podcast had over 90% of signups show up. And to be exact, it was 97 point 62%. So it was that close to 100% of signups that showed up in Listen to me in my event, and it just it completely blew me away. And that’s when I knew I found a golden ticket here. And just in case anybody’s curious for even more detail. About 68% of people that signed up actually made it through all four episodes of that pop up podcast.

Dolly DeLong
Wow, that that is amazing. And I just want to share with everyone I was I was actually included in that number. I remember when you did that pop up podcast

Unknown Speaker
last was it last? Yeah, last May. And I,

Dolly DeLong
I loved listening. It was very easy as like, for those of you who may or may not know I am a mom on the go. Yes, I like own a. I am a educator, workflow systems educator, but I’m also a mom. And so I while driving around, I would listen to your puppet podcast would blaze in the car. And it was very for my mama heart. It was so clean, which I appreciated. Oh,

Magan Ward
yeah, gotta keep it clean for the little ears.

Dolly DeLong
Exactly. And it was so informative and so helpful in their concepts, like I knew, but just like hearing it in an auditory form, through a podcast was just like a new way of learning for me. And it was fun. And you’ve really good like, what what is the word I’m looking for you like really good. Listening voice like, your voice is easy to listen. Oh, yeah. Thank you. So I was like, oh, yeah, I could follow along with that. So yeah, it was awesome. So you’re ready to grow that email list. But you’re a little stuck on ideas for lead magnets. Am I right? I think we’ve all been there. So that’s why I created the perfect idea list with over 20 pages of lead magnet ideas. This list is perfect for entrepreneurs in the creative field all the way to direct sales. So grab the master lead magnet idealist for free at the link in today’s show notes. I I know you haven’t done this just once. Can you tell me about other times you have done a second pop pop up? I do. I just say that really, really fast pop up podcast. It’s a

Magan Ward
mouthful if you’re not used to saying it. Yeah, I did do it again and did it again in November of 2021. So just a few months later. And despite not advertising as big as I did the first time around, there were no Facebook ads. This time I did not utilize a launch team, which I’ll talk about that later. I still was able to grow my email list but 38 by 30% and 70% of those showed up in listen. During that November 2021 pop up podcast which was around Thanksgiving Black Friday. There was a lot of things going on. In the fact that I could still click through some of that noise because this was something that was easy for my audience to consume. Just I think still says a lot about that as a lead magnet.

Dolly DeLong
Yeah. I love that. Congratulations, by the way. That’s, that’s awesome. That’s huge. Okay, so let’s talk more about this, not your mama’s lead magnet. So what are the steps you had to take, in order to see real results for this lead magnet?

Magan Ward
Yeah, just getting it in front of people. And the magic was leveraging the audience of others. And I think that’s really, that’s the true key to email list growth, just utilizing the audience of others. So the thing that truly launched me into full success with this pop up podcasts event was by using a launch team. And I have an entire lesson on this in the pop up podcast system that I know you’re familiar with Dolly, but this was my golden ticket to getting in front of the audience of others that I might not have been able to get in front of otherwise. And it was much more successful than Facebook ads, to be totally honest. And it didn’t cost me really anything additional. This was it was just purely the definition of ledge leveraging someone else’s audience and what works about this, and I know, you know, this Dolly, but the audience of that person that’s sharing your product, or your event already likes, knows and trust them. And then when they put your name and your event in front of that warm, connected audience, something magical happens. And that’s called an instant, warm audience for you. And that’s what was so wonderful about utilizing a launch team for my pop up podcast. And also, I know you’re the system’s queen, Dolly. So having the system and having the systems and organization in place on the back in was incredibly, incredibly helpful. I heavily used Asana to keep all my things organized and keep myself on track. As I completed tasks Kula put the whole event together. And I made sure to provide my launch team with lots of templates, where tracks, swipe files, anything that I could think of to make their sharing of the event easier. And that’s also something that I help my students with is what systems to put in place to keep everything organized and smooth as they put together their own version of a pop up podcast.

Dolly DeLong
Yeah, and I just want to say, Megan, that I purchased the pop up podcast system from you and listen to it through podcast form, because you also created a podcast version of that mini course and loved it. And so I just want to encourage other people and let you know, it’s not just for if you want to create a pop up podcast, I am intent, I intentionally purchased it because I want to create a system for myself for teaching other students about dubsado. Because I do a lot of dubsado setups for other family photographers, creative business owners. And I want to make it an easier system for them. When they hire me for their VIP days. I’m planning on creating an auditory version too, so that they can pop in their earbuds and listen to me explaining a certain process. Again, just in case that is their learning style. And so perfect. This is yeah, this is incredible. Like this was like a good tool for me to think about. Okay, how else can I be teaching my students to further implement their systems of dubsado and other systems in their? In their in their life? Yeah,

Magan Ward
absolutely. Yeah. That will be perfect for your for your audience. Yeah.

Dolly DeLong
Could you talk a bit about how this pop up podcast system can be used for other types of events? Like I know, I shared, how I’m planning on using it for my VIP day students and my clients. But how have other people used the system for their own business?

Magan Ward
Yeah, absolutely. So. So when you if you someone were to take the pop up podcast system, you don’t have to mimic everything that I did. You can and you but you can take those teachings that I provide and adapt it to fit the needs of your business and your audience. And maybe it’s just an audio workshop. Maybe it’s a challenge. But as my students move through the lessons, their event begins to just kind of fall into place in the way that best suits them. And that’s the beauty of it all.

Dolly DeLong
That’s awesome. And I know that you have a freebie, Megan. And speaking of lead magnets, you have a lead magnet for us. And I want you to share it with my audience. And so do you mind telling us more about that freebie? Yeah, that this amazing resource.

Magan Ward
So I do have a free mini course and it’s called not your moments lead magnet. So if you can’t remember that, just listen back. Dolly mentions it a few times. But it helps you cut through the sea of PDFs in uncover a lead magnet that your audience is craving. And I know Dolly’s gonna have it in the show notes, but you can find it at Meghan Ward comm forward slash Dolly, just to make it super easy.

Dolly DeLong
I love that. And of course, I will have all the links in the show notes because I really want you all to connect with Megan and get to know her. And she’s incredible you all and she’s so funny too. I love watching your Instagram stories so much. I love connecting with you on Instagram too. So speaking of connecting with you, how can someone connect with you and hopefully work with you? Absolutely.

Magan Ward
Well, as Dali said, I’m always on Instagram. So you can find me at the Megan Ward and I do spell my name a little differently. So pay attention in the in the show notes to how I do that. But you can also find me on LinkedIn or making more.com

Dolly DeLong
Oh, Meghan, thank you so much for taking your time out today to chat with us about a different type of lead magnet and just a system of growing your email address in a very not email address email list in a very creative and fun way. And seriously, thank you so much. Yes,

Magan Ward
thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Dolly course. And everyone. As always, I

Dolly DeLong
hope you continue to find the magic and the join systems, strategic workflows and automations for your business, and hopefully your life. And please, if you enjoyed this episode, please DM me on Instagram at dolly DeLong education and let me know what you learned. And as always, don’t forget to leave a review if you enjoy this podcast and share it with another creative business owner who may need help finding more clarity and strategy and systems and workflows. And as always, hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks and bye. Thank you so much for listening to the systems and workflow magic podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at dolly DeLong photography.com forward slash podcast. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it to your stories and tag me at dolly DeLong education over on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic.