Why your freebie is not growing your list

You made the freebie. You put it on the website. Almost nobody downloads it, and the handful who do never open anything else you send.

It is rarely the design. It is usually one of these five things, and all of them are fixable in an afternoon.

It solves a problem nobody is worried about yet

A twenty page guide to brand strategy is useful. It is not urgent. People download things that fix something annoying them this week.

Look at the questions you get asked before anyone hires you. The freebie should answer one of those, completely, in a way they can act on today.

It is buried on the website

One mention in the footer is not an offer. It needs to be on the home page above the fold, at the end of every blog post, in your Instagram bio, and on the page people land on most.

If you cannot say where the last ten sign ups came from, that is the problem to fix before you rewrite anything.

The page asks for too much

First name, surname, email, business name, phone number, how did you hear about us. Every field costs you sign ups.

Ask for an email address. Ask for a first name if you will genuinely use it. That is it.

Nothing happens after they say yes

This is the big one. The download arrives and then silence for three weeks, and by the time you email again they have forgotten who you are.

Three emails in the first week is not aggressive. It is the minimum required for someone to remember your name.

The tag is not applied

Worth checking before you rewrite a word. In Systeme, if the form on your opt in page does not apply a tag, no automation rule can fire, so the delivery email never sends and the sequence never starts.

Go to the form, check the tag, then send yourself through the funnel with a fresh email address. Two minutes, and it explains a surprising number of dead funnels.

What good looks like

• Sign up rate on the landing page above twenty five per cent from warm traffic.
• Open rate on the delivery email above fifty per cent.
• At least one reply or enquiry for every fifty people who download it.

If you are well under those, the offer is the problem. If you are near them and still not getting enquiries, the follow up is the problem.