If you want to drastically grow your email list with highly-qualified leads then you need to be well versed in email marketing, which is one of the most popular ways to grow your business. Most email marketing campaigns have an average return on investment of 4 400% so it’s no surprise that this strategy works for companies across many industries.

One way of growing your lead list is through enhancing your email marketing campaign with content upgrades. You’d be familiar with this concept if you’ve created lead magnets in the past. Many have asked, aren’t content upgrades and lead magnets the same thing? Well, not quite.

Content upgrades vs. lead magnets

Lead magnets and content upgrades are similar in many ways in that both options are designed to help you generate more leads through exclusive content and offers. However, lead magnets are far more generic than your typical content upgrade. 

A business can put up a lead magnet that applies to the majority of their target audience. It doesn’t necessarily matter if the user is on your homepage, blog, or browsing your store as the lead magnet should have a similar impact across the board.

Content upgrades are highly-specific opt-in offers that will turn each and every one of your blog posts into an email list-building machine. The content, or blog piece, acts as targeted pieces of content that extend existing blog posts. The idea is you want to catch the interest of specific users and encourage them to give you their email address in exchange for more of the same content.

For example, if you’re in the gardening business, you should create a regular blog post about the 10 best tips for growing flowers. When a user clicks on the post and reads through it, you should entice them to continue engaging with your brand by signing up for an e-book for people who are interested in growing flowers.

Because the upgrade is specific, you can guarantee that the people signing up for the offer fit into a certain audience segment. The content upgrades allow you to pre-segment your list in a way that’s difficult to do with lead magnets.

Once you understand the difference between these two concepts, then it’s time to create your very first content upgrade. Here’s how you should do it:

Identify your most popular articles

The first step requires you to find the most popular content on your website. While you may write plenty of exciting content, not everything gets the same attention. The tricky nature of blogging means that you need to make sure you’re making upgrades for posts that are getting clicks and engagement.

You won’t be doing anyone any favours by creating content upgrades that only have a handful of views. It’s best to review your Google Analytics account to see what posts on your site get the most traffic.

Once you understand where users spend the most time on your site, then you need to start looking at engagement. For example, if 5 000 people clicked on your article but the page has a bounce rate of 80%, then you should avoid creating an upgrade for this page.

However, if a blog post received a lot of traffic, comments, and social media shares, then it could be an ideal choice for an upgrade. Once you’ve found the most popular content, then you can start thinking of ways to entice users to continue engaging with your brand after they’ve finished reading your articles.

Brainstorm specific customer goals and pain points

On average 80% of new leads never translate to sales. This number sounds alarming at first, but there are ways to gain a competitive edge and increase the number of leads that turn into customers.

This is because business owners are not looking at specific customer pain points and goals when creating new content. This idea is vital for your blog posts as well as your content upgrades.

If your audience doesn’t like the extra content that you’re offering then you’re not going to keep them invested in your brand. However, if you identify their pain points and goals then it will be easy to create effective upgrades for your blog.

Social media is an ideal space for audience research as over 3 billion people use it, which makes it a great way to learn about your target audience. Spend time on Facebook browsing groups in your niche and explore hashtags on Twitter while connecting with fans on your social media profile. The more you know about your customers, the easier it will be to create awe-inspiring content add-ons.

Flesh out an existing blog post

The next step of your content upgrade comes when you create the e-book, checklist, or guide on your website. Spend time reading and researching to add even more value to the upgrade because people want to sign up for businesses that truly enhance their lives. The best way to do this is to extend upon an existing post so the high standard is maintained.

For example, if you wanted to engage people who want to grow vegetables for your fictional gardening site then you wouldn’t just tell people how to grow the same vegetables you covered in the blog post.

Rather, you would deliver new tips and tutorials to help your users to meet their goals of growing vegetables in their garden. The most important part of this process is to make sure that you’re building upon something that you’ve already created instead of rehashing what you’ve already posted.

Deliver highly personalised emails

As a final step, you should continue building up your leads once they sign up for your content upgrade. You have all the information you’ll need to offer personalised emails that will resonate with your customer and their goals, pain points, and personality types.

Research shows that by personalising the subject line of your emails, you can improve your open rate by 26%. If users sign up for your email list through a specific piece of content then they’re interested in seeing similar content and receiving relevant offers in the future.

Take advantage of this opportunity and send the occasional email to let subscribers know about new posts and promotions they will love. If you want to eventually sell a product or service then you must build trust with your audience. Personalised emails help you take your email marketing campaign to the next level and content upgrades make segmenting your leads accessible.

Back to you

Once you start implementing these marketing strategies into your business, you must remember that things take time and it’s a process to know how to properly segment and target your customers. Learn how to fine-tune your content upgrade strategy for maximum effectiveness.