If you’ve been working on growing your email list, you know you’re doing the smart thing – building an asset you actually own – but you also know it’s not always easy. To make it easier, let’s talk about multiple ways you can differentiate your lead magnets and newsletter and build instant trust with content that’s been proven over and over in industry studies to convert prospects into paying customers.
Yes, I am talking about case studies… and I’ll even give you some examples.
You can watch this in video format or read it below:
Use Case Studies as Your Lead Magnets to Grow Your List
Years ago, when Michael Aagaard wanted to establish himself as a professional CRO, or a conversion rate optimization expert, he provided an ebook to his audience that shared some of his conversion rate optimization case studies.
The ebook was gated – it was the lead magnet – so you had to sign up with your email address to get it, but it was worth it. It was educational, you got to learn a lot as the reader. At the same time, you started thinking, oh yeah, this Michael guy, he gets this CRO thing!
Now, if you don’t want to do an ebook per se, you could turn your case studies into a webinar, a video series, you could do an infographic, whatever works for you.
Grow Your List Without Gating Your Case studies
The second way to use case studies to grow your email list is to use them as ungated content, that builds your authority with an audience that’s not ready to sign up yet.
Basically, it builds your authority with this audience, it builds the trust between your company and your audience, and if you can get them to go, “Oh my Gosh, this is SO good, I got so much out of it, and I’m a better customer success manager thanks to that now, I REALLY want to hear more,” then… you can offer them a reason to sign up to your email list.
That reason could be anything from a free trial to a webinar that goes even deeper or allows the audience to ask questions, or even a cheat sheet that helps them to check things off as they take action on this thing you know they need to be taking action on.
This ungated case study can go in so many places. It can go on your blog or your YouTube channel or your podcast, it can go on a designated case study section on your website, you can share it in other companies’ blogs or channels or podcasts as a guest post or when you get interviewed, you can present it at a conference…
Michael Aagaard, for example, shared a ton of case studies as guest posts on the conversion-focused blog over at Unbounce.com (check this one, this one or this one – to give you a few examples), to help build his authority in the industry and widen his reach. He then ended up working with Unbounce as a CRO, and has become a keynote speaker on the topic as well.
But whatever you do, make your case study so good and so valuable that, even if your readers or listeners don’t sign up, they get something out of it that’s worth their time, so that they actually trust the type of content that you share. This way, they’re going to be left wanting more – and some of them will go to look you up online or come back to your website, and some will even sign up.
Of course, to convert more people, make the lead magnet related to the case study, and make sure they know what they’re getting out of signing up to your list.
Grow Your List by Using Case Studies as Social Proof
Even if your ungated content and your lead magnet are not about a specific case study, what your company pulled off to help your clients succeed still matters, so you can take a testimonial from the case study or some stats from the case study – or a quote talking about stats – and place it around the call to action to sign up to your newsletter.
For example, I have a client that called me one day and told me about all the great engagement we’re getting on content that I wrote for her, including on an article I was really hesitant about saying yes to writing in the first place, because it’s so far from any of the topics I wrote about before. Really far away.
But in any case, I wrote it, it got great feedback from the audience, and if I were to write a lead magnet right now about how to get your articles more engaging, or about the top mistakes you’re making with your blog, I could have something related to this client and this story near the CTA.
Use Case Study Examples as Part of Your List Nurture Campaign
Now, I don’t have a lead magnet like that one – let me know if you want one – but I do have a newsletter where I share both my case studies and what other B2B marketers in doing to help their audiences serve millions of customers better. When you sign up for free, you’ll get one case study or example a week, plus tips and strategies to help you start implementing the same thing in your own marketing today, so you can make a difference for your audience.
