How to Make Sure Subscribers Actually Download and Use Your Freebie

You’ve done it!

Nope, I’m not talking about figuring out how to look like you still have boobs when wearing a decent sports bra without loads of padding or having enormous boobs to begin with.

I mean you’ve created an awesome freebie.

The kind of freebie that will provide your ideal customer with loads of value.

You’ve created or hired someone to create a well-designed opt-in that grabs your ideal customers attention and converts well.

You’re even getting a super awesome open rate of 57% and click rate of those who open of 63%.

Oh yeah! You’ve earned a virtual high-five and a margarita.

But don’t celebrate prematurely.

There’s still work to do.

What about those who didn’t open the email? What about the people who opened the email but didn’t click your freebie?

And, even worse…but happens ALL THE TIME, what about the people who clicked and downloaded your freebie, but didn’t do anything with it?

Your freebie now lives on their computer in their downloads folder, probably never to be thought of again.

UNLESS…you do something about that.

You’ve already done the hardest work. You’ve gotten someone to trust you enough to give you their email address.

In today’s marketing world, that takes work.

Now, it can end here. Or, you can put in a bit more work and convert more of those semi-leads (or more like probably-lost-forever leads) into solid leads.

To make them solid leads, you need them to use your freebie and get value from it. That’s how they build trust with your brand and become more comfortable with opening more emails from you and with the idea of buying from you.

So, here are the extra steps you need to take to get the most out of every freebie you have:

1. Send reminder emails.

You want to send reminder emails to three groups of people based on their behavior.

You’ll send a reminder “open me” email to those who signed up for your freebie but didn’t open the first email.

You’ll send a reminder “download the out-of-this-freaking-world freebie” email to those who opened the email but didn’t click the link for the freebie.

AND…this one you might not think about but will actually make a big difference…you’ll send a reminder to “use the freebie” to those who opened the email and clicked on the freebie. A good portion of these people downloaded your freebie but didn’t do anything with it. They might’ve even started filling out and stopped. This is their push to keep going. This is their reason why.

Writing the copy for these three emails may seem like a lot of work, but once you do it for one freebie, you’ll have templates to work from and it’ll be much easier the next time. Just customize it some for each freebie so that it doesn’t read the exact same.

2. Use testimonials.

If you get any early testimonials from people who love the freebie, ask if you can use them. Ninety-nine percent of the time they say yes. If you create a freebie that actually creates TONS of value for your ideal customers, you’ll get at least one or two reply emails thanking you. Email them back if they didn’t say much and ask them just one question such as, “What was most helpful about xyz?” or “What did you like best about xyz?”

Use these testimonials in the reminder emails as social proof but also use these testimonials when you’re promoting your freebies on social media.

3. Share full examples and/or case studies.

Show your audience exactly how your freebie or content upgrade can be or should be used. This makes both an amazing follow-up/reminder email and a great promotional tool for social media.

You can either use an actual case study from someone who has used the freebie or you can fill out the freebie as yourself or as if your one of your ideal customers.

This will give your subscribers more motivation and inspiration to use the tool you created for them. Some might not have used it because they still have questions and this might push them over the edge.

4. Promote, promote, promote.

Once you hit the publish button on a blog post or podcast that contains a freebie, you want to take a break and watch the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance. You’ve put in SO MUCH WORK. But, it’s the opposite of what you should do.

You should fire up a Facebook Live and talk about one aspect of your blog post and send people to download your freebie. You should post about it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You should talk about it on Instagram Stories. You should publish a short video about your blog post and freebie on YouTube. You should promote the banana boat out of your freebie.

The reason you created the freebie or content upgrade was to collect new leads. In order to collect new leads, you have to promote it.

Also, people who have already downloaded your freebie and see it promoted on social media will remember to use it when they see you talk about it on your Instagram Stories or run across your Facebook post.

5. Create follow-up emails and/or a sales funnel.

If this freebie is bringing in a lot of new leads, you have to consider whether it’s worth creating two to five more emails to follow up in any others you’ve already created in order to promote one of your products.

If this freebie works perfectly with one of your products, then it makes sense to design a sales funnel.

These are some of the things you might not be doing after you create a freebie that you should at least consider to make sure that your ideal leads actually use it and hopefully buy from you in the future!

These follow-up tasks will absolutely make the time you put into developing freebies more worth it. You can create less while gaining more leads.