A good lead magnet gives readers something useful and builds enough trust for them to take the next step.
Yet quite often, founders rely on long PDFs that get downloaded once and then forgotten.
When you're promising a quick win, a checklist or a template is still the right choice. But when the goal is a booked call, a 5 day email course can be a more effective lead magnet, and there are 4 benefits that make the difference.
1. Readers actually use it
Think about the last PDF you downloaded. Did you read it cover to cover, or did you save it for "later" and forget it existed?
One business owner who offers services to coaches spent months on a 47 page guide. It was downloaded 200 times in 3 months and didn't bring in a single discovery call.
Swapping the guide for a simple 5 day email course changed that, and within about 3 months she was booking 4 to 6 discovery calls a month. Your reader wants a quick result they can use today, from someone they're starting to trust.
2. 5 emails build more trust than 1 PDF download
Once a PDF is downloaded, it's up to the reader to open it, but a 5 day course puts a new email in your reader's inbox each day, and each email brings one quick win that adds a bit more trust.
A few rules keep each of those emails worth opening:
- Tackle one specific problem in each email.
- Make sure a reader can use each one in under 10 minutes.
- Treat the course as the opening step of something bigger, so the last email points naturally to what comes next.
3. Prospects learn your framework before the sales call
For one coach, PDFs, checklists and a video series were tested, and the email course proved to be the most effective, because it taught their signature framework one day at a time.
Each day, readers got something useful and a clearer picture of how the coach thinks and works, which meant serious prospects had qualified themselves before a single sales conversation.
4. Your email course can grow your newsletter
The course arrives in the inbox, so everyone who signs up has 5 days to get used to hearing from you.
One coach attracted 84 signups to her email course within a few months, with no paid ads or cold outreach. Every one of them joined her newsletter as a result.
When readers have also signed up for your newsletter, it simply carries on where the course left off.
Turn your lead magnet into a next step
A 5 day email course gives readers something useful each day, helps them understand how you work and points naturally towards what comes next.
Make it simple. Make it fast. Make it feel like a win.