How to Give Away Free Content and Grow Your Email List
A free guide, preset pack or template can grow your email list instead of just being downloaded. Here are three ways to hand it out on your Keepp page and collect emails while you do it.
By Keepp Team
Most creators give away something free at some point. A guide, a preset pack, a template, a sample chapter, a checklist. The usual way to hand it out is to drop a Drive link in your bio and let people take it.
That works once. The file gets downloaded, the link gets passed around, and you end up with no idea who took it or how to reach them. The free thing was supposed to grow your audience, and instead it just moved a file.
The fix is simple. Ask for an email before you hand it over. Here are three ways to do that on your Keepp page.
Option 1: Make it a free product
Add the file as a product on your page and set the price to free. Attach your download link to it, and Keepp shows that link once someone places their order.
From their side it feels like a normal checkout with nothing to pay. From your side it is a real order in your Purchases list, with their email attached and the date they took it.
There is one more thing this gets you. Because the link is stored on the product rather than sitting in your bio, you can change it later. If your file gets shared around, swap the link once and everyone who claimed it sees the new one. A public Drive link can never be taken back.
Option 2: Use a form
If you want to know more than an email address, use a form instead.
Ask them what they do, what they are working on, or what they hope your free guide will help with. You choose the questions, so you can ask whatever is useful to you. Someone who tells you they run a bakery and want help with wedding orders is a much warmer lead than an email address on its own.
You can do this on the free product too. Products let you add your own questions at checkout, so you can collect the same detail either way. Use a form when the questions are the point, and a free product when the download is.
Option 3: Send it from your email tool
If you already send a newsletter, let your email platform do the delivery.
Collect the emails on your page, export them, and load them into whatever you already use. Then the free download becomes the first email in a sequence instead of a one off. People who join this way get your welcome series, your next post, and everything after that.
This is the option to pick if you have already built the follow up. If you have not, start with one of the first two and come back to this later.
Which one should you use?
Keep it simple:
- You only need an email and you want them to get the file straight away. Use a free product.
- You want to know who they are before you follow up. Use a form.
- You already run an email sequence. Collect on the page and export.
You can also run more than one. A free download for your newsletter and a separate form for enquiries do different jobs and can sit on the same page.
Ask for what you actually want to know
The biggest mistake with a free download is asking for an email and nothing else. You get a list of addresses and no idea what any of them want.
Both the form and the free product let you add your own questions. Use them. Ask what they are trying to do, what they sell, what stage they are at, or what brought them to the page. Two or three short questions will not stop people claiming a free thing, and the answers turn a list of emails into a list of people you can actually write to properly.
Keepp also checks that the email address is real before the entry counts. That keeps typos and throwaway addresses out, so the list you export is one you can actually send to.
Turn the free thing into a paid one
This is the part a Drive link cannot do.
Someone who just claimed your free guide is standing on your page. Right next to the free download are your paid products, your services, and your booking times. They are as interested in you as they are ever going to be, and the next step is already in front of them.
Put your paid product beside the free one. If you sell your time, add a booking block so they can pick a slot for a consultation without messaging you first. The free download brought them in, and the rest of the page is what they do next.
Watch what happens
Your analytics show how many people visited the page and how many claimed the free thing, so you can see whether the offer is landing or the page is losing them.
Forms and free products are part of the Pro plan. If you are joining our Influencer Program, that is covered for a year, so you can build the whole thing and see how it performs before you pay for anything.
Start with one free thing and one way to hand it out. You can always add the rest once you see who turns up.