Creating Your First Collaboration-Ready Freebie That Grows Your Email List

One of the biggest questions creators face before saying yes to a collaboration is, "What should I share with their audience?" In this episode of Hey, Let's Collab, I walk you through how to create a simple, collaboration ready freebie that helps you grow your email list, nurture new subscribers, and make the most of every partnership opportunity. You'll also learn the essential tech setup, how to avoid overcomplicating the process, and a few simple ways to turn your freebie into future revenue.

Tune in to hear more on:

• Why a collaboration ready freebie helps you grow your email list with every partnership

• How to create a lead magnet that solves one problem and attracts the right audience
• The simple tech setup you need to collect subscribers and automate delivery
• Freebie formats that work, including quizzes, checklists, guides, and PDFs
• How to use AI to create a valuable freebie without spending hours designing it
• Easy next steps to monetize your freebie with welcome emails and thank you offers

Your freebie doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to help one person solve one problem. This episode will help you stop overthinking, get your lead magnet created, and build an email list that's ready to grow alongside your collaborations. Tune in now, then download the free Collab Scripts at heyletscollab.com and start creating more profitable partnerships today.

Links:
Website: https://heyletscollab.com
Instagram: Hey, Let's Collab (@heyletscollab) • Instagram profile
FREE Collab Scripts: Collab Scripts - Hey, Let's Collab
Collab Starter Kit: https://heyletscollab.com/kit
Blog: Blog - Hey, Let's Collab
YouTube: Hey, Let's Collab
Pinterest: Hey Let's Collab

Transcript

Nadalie Bardo 0:00

Hey, it's Nadalie and welcome to the Hey Let's Collab Podcast. This is a podcast about how successful creators grow through collaboration. Every episode, we unpack one specific partnership from the first pitch to the final result. This gives you the full blueprint on how to collaborate with confidence and grow your business through aligned connections. Ready to get started? You'll love this week's collaboration. So you're thinking about collaborations, and one thing has you stressed creating that collaboration ready freebie. Because here's the thing when you say yes to that first collaboration opportunity, usually one question follows, right? It's what do you have to share? Or where should we send people? You don't want to just say, oh, they can connect with me on Instagram or find me on TikTok. Like sure, you can say that, but you don't want to leave anything on the table. You don't want to have a missed opportunity here because this is how you strategically grow with collaborations. You have a freebie. And not just any freebie, a collaboration-ready one. But okay, I know you might be wondering what exactly is a freebie? Okay, so a freebie is also known as an opt-in, a lead magnet. It's something that you offer up for free in exchange for someone's email and most likely their first name. I'm all for the personalization in email communication, so ask for their name too. It's like that sweet little sample you grab at Costco when you're walking the aisles. That's the approach I want you to have when it comes to creating this freebie. Sweet and simple. You don't want to overcomplicate it or overdo it. Okay, I know your next question might be: why do I need an email list anyway? Okay, you need an email list because I hate to be the first person to tell you this. You don't own your social media accounts or your followers. Yes, it could be one algorithm update, a change in, I don't know, how social media platforms are run, maybe it will go under. So many things can happen. You can get shadow banned and lose access to your community. You need to build a place where you are in complete control, where there isn't an algorithm between you and communicating with your audience. That's the power of an email list, and I don't really see it going away. The only competing platform or mode of communication is texting, but I don't know. Personally, I still sometimes get the ick beyond just getting a sweet promo code. So you want this email list because you're in control, you own it, an algorithm owned by some big corporation isn't determining whether or not you can communicate directly with every member of your community. That's the benefit. All right. So you want to start building an email list. You want to have a dedicated place to send all of these incredible people who will be discovering you when you start collaborating. All right, so hopefully that answers your questions. And when it comes to how do I start an email list, you're gonna choose an email marketing service or provider. And no, I'm not talking about Gmail. We wanna use a service like kit, formally convert kit. Other common platforms are MailerLite or Flowdesk. Personally, I'm a fan of Kit. I've been using it for seven, eight years. It's been a long time. I find it to be the platform that connects with the most amount of tools and other services that I want to use. Services that you probably don't need to worry about right now. But I don't know about you, but I like to make choices now that will make my life easier later. You don't want to have to deal with moving platforms down the line. And what's great is that Kit does, at the time that I'm recording this episode, have a newsletter plan that's free, and it allows you to create that one freebie and be able to set it up. So that's what I recommend. I use Kit. You're welcome to explore other alternatives, go to your favorite search engine to find options for that. But that's essentially the setup, right? You need an email marketing service, which is where you're going to host or house the email addresses of your subscribers that you'll build through your collaborations. It's also the service that will deliver your free gift, and it will be where you send those emails, right? We don't want to be doing something like this from a Gmail. The only other requirement is to have an email address. So hopefully you have a domain, which is a website address. If not, you can purchase one. I'm a fan of buying domains through Namecheap because one, they protect my privacy and don't try to charge me for it. And a website will run you around $10 a year, maybe a little more, depending on what's going on in the world or what your currency is. Once you own your domain name, so for example, mine is heyletscollab.com, you're able to create that dedicated email address through an email provider or your hosting plan. So it's likely that if you have a hosting plan for your domain, like you've built your own website, whether we're talking self-hosted WordPress site or Squarespace, whatever, usually an email address is included for free. So this isn't something you need to go pay extra for if you already have some type of hosting. Okay, that's the end of all the tech talk, I promise. I don't want to get super deep into setting up your email platform. It's not that complicated. I want us to focus instead on creating that collaboration ready freebie. And if that was a little bit too complex for you, you want to go check out the official blog post for this episode where I've written out those steps in more detail so you can follow along and get your email address created if you don't have one as yet. Because you don't want to be in that situation where someone asks for your freebie and you're in your email trying to send this to everyone. Let's automate. That's the power of using an email marketing service like Kit, which is the one I recommend. Go check that blog post for the step-by-step guides, all right? So let's get back on track here and talk about creating your first collab ready freebie. So I say collab ready freebie because the goal here is to connect specifically to your area of expertise and who you're trying to help. So the first thing we want to do here is brainstorm like what possible freebies could you create? You could create a PDF, a printable, a checklist of some sort, it could be a summary of steps, it could be a guide, it could be a workbook, it could be a quiz, quiz, quiz. Did you hear me say quiz? That's my favorite type. It could be something simple and could it should be something super simple. You're gonna focus on providing one simple solution to one problem. And ideally, it's a big pain point of your audience. So a pain point is that part of their life or that struggle that's really bothering them. It's top of mind. It's maybe the first thing they think about in the morning and the last thing they think about at night, or it's that running thread throughout their life, that thing they want to improve or make better. So, say for example, your ideal audience is millennials looking to buy their first property, right? The big issue they could have is saving up enough for their down payment. So maybe, for example, a freebie you could create is saving tips or even rebates on mortgage interest or whatever the opportunities there are for them to save on their deposit and save up their deposit. Like that could be the simple freebie. Maybe your ideal audience is business owners who are looking for grants for their business. And maybe your opt-in is a list of all of the grants available to them in Canada, for example. So you're seeing how these examples are super simple. I'm not suggesting that you create a whole course that is teaching them how to write their grant pitch, how to submit it, or how to film their videos for their applications. Like you are just keeping it super simple. One problem, a simple solution. That's how to create a successful freebie. And to make sure it's actually collaboration ready, it's gonna be directly related to the audience you're showing up for. Right? So make sure it's in alignment. And of course, down the line, you can create multiple freebies, but having this one cornerstone freebie that is a direct path between who you are, that is a direct path between what you offer and your audience, is the best place to start. And you might also want to think ahead to if you already have an idea of a product you want to sell or a service or how you want to monetize your creator business. You just want to make sure that the freebie, if we were thinking about connecting the dots, the freebie is a natural connector to your offer. Okay? So that's the first one. Brainstorm some ideas. And remember when I said the word quiz a whole bunch of times, I am such a fan of creating online quizzes. For one, they're engaging. Everyone loves taking a quiz. Like, who wouldn't want to know like what type of bread they are? Like I personally wouldn't want to know, but I I'm allergic to gluten. But everyone else in the world loves bread. That's just a super simple example of why you want to create a quiz. So, for example, for Hey Let's Collab, a quiz that I have created is what type of collaboration should you focus on? Like what's the best fit for your business? And if you want to go take that quiz, you should head to heyletscollab.com forward slash quiz, and you will be able to take it and figure out what type of collaboration works for you. And for that quiz, I used a platform called the Interact Quiz Builder. I'm a huge fan of it. I've been using it for such a long time. Over on my personal development brand, the quiz that I've created there has been taken over 15,000 times. 15,000 leads from a quiz. And what's great about the Interact Quiz Builder is that they have a whole bunch of pre-made quizzes that you can use right away. They've got an AI quiz builder. So creating a quiz is a great option for you. Okay, so I hope you got lots of ideas for a possible freebie because the next step is to go create one of them. Remember, one simple solution to one problem. Your freebie should not try to solve every single problem out there that your ideal audience has. It should solve one. And it shouldn't take you a million years to create. You should be able to create this freebie. You should be able to make this freebie in honestly an hour or less. I don't want you spending a whole weekend on it. If you're creating it over a whole weekend, that's a paid product. That is not a freebie. Remember, Costco aisle sample size. Sweet little bite, that's all it is. Okay, so you want to satisfy your ideal audience hunger for whatever it is, this issue that you are going to be solving. And what's great about creating a freebie is it's super easy with AI. So I encourage you to, if you're struggling, like yes, you could use something like Canva. There's so many templates in there, especially if you want to make a workbook, a PDF, a printable, something like that. But you can even just get started with AI. So I'm a huge fan of using Claude for things like this. And you can even use a free plan. You literally don't need to pay. So if you haven't signed up for Claude yet, go check it out or try using your favorite AI chatbot to create this. And I'm a fan of just using the mic. It's the fastest way for me to talk with these tools. And you would simply say, Hey, I want to create a freebie for say what your audience is, say what it's going to help them with. Here are my ideas. Like if it's a checklist, make it a checklist. And you can just say like what the items on the checklist is. So, say for example, you're creating something about decluttering, right? You can make a checklist of the 10 first things you should declutter from your house, for example. So you just speak into the mic and you get the AI to create it. So I like using Claude for this. It can design something for you in Google Drive. And even better, you can provide your branding. And it doesn't need to be an official brand kit. It could literally just be like these are the colors that I like, the fonts, make it branded, and it will brand it for you. It will even add your domain name, all those details, copyright, everything. And it'll be in Google Drive for you, so you can just easily share that freebie with your ideal audience, and you're not gonna spend a million years making it pretty because that's something I would do. So don't do that. That's the old me, the pre-AI me. Post-AI, I am all about letting Claude do the heavy clicking for me, okay? I don't need to spend 10 years making it beautiful in Canva, and neither do you. Your freebie does not need to be perfect. So please, please do not spend a million years brainstorming or making it. And remember, the goal is not to spend a million years creating this freebie. It's going to be a great freebie if it just gets results, right? If it helps your ideal audience accomplish something, get them that win that's gonna make them feel amazing about themselves and like they're finally making progress. Okay, so let's switch gears and talk a little bit about the tech setup. Remember, you want to go to the site and follow along if you want to see the steps written out for you, but you're gonna set up your freebie. So you are gonna need your email marketing system for this. The one I recommend is Kit, formally convert kit, get you that free newsletter plan. And when you sign up, what we need to create here is a landing page. So a landing page is simply where you send someone to claim your freebie. They're gonna be able to enter their name and their email, and then it's gonna automatically send it to them or just deliver it directly on the next page. So what's great about Kit is that they've got a whole bunch of templates. So from their dashboard, you are gonna click on Grow and navigate to landing pages and forms. This is where you're gonna see all the templates that they have, choose landing page, and then you can just create a quick little graphic. You can also use AI for this or take a screenshot or export the JPEG of the cover, have that as the image, or find a stock photo that fits the vibe of your freebie, put the name, a little tiny description about it, what it is, literally one line. Like a your essential one-page checklist to get unstuck in your marriage, for example. First name, last name, and that's it. So, what's great about using kit for this is that you don't need to build your own website to have a landing page. The link that they'll create for you is going to be hosted by them. So you just need that email address. So when you create your account, be sure to add that email address to your kit account so that when you email, and don't worry if you're not ready to do things like send newsletters, if that's a little bit too intense for you, all good. Your email marketing service is gonna be collecting these email addresses for you so that when you're ready to do something like that, you can. So set this up, and once you have your freebie ready, you wanna just make sure you grab the link. So if you're hosting it somewhere like in your Google Drive, I just have a folder called shared. And then in that I would create a subfolder with the name of my freebie, and then I would copy the link in view only to the folder named for my freebie, and then that's the link that anyone can access this free resource at. So the quickest way to finish setting this up is to make the folder that has your freebie the confirmation page of your form. So they don't even need to wait for you to send them an email to get their freebie, they can get it right away. That is the fastest and easiest way to create and set up your collaboration ready freebie. But I invite you to take it a little bit further. And it's okay if you can't do that right now, if it feels too much, but I want you to just know so you have this foresight. And when you are more able to take this on, you can. But hey, if you're like, bring it on, Nadalie, I'm ready to set this up all the way right now, then let's keep going. Okay, so two bonus steps. Because yes, it's great to just have a freebie for to have a reason for someone to join our email list. But what if you could also start making some money as well? Why not? So the first way is to have a tripwire or a thank you offer. So maybe you've seen this when you've signed up for a free resource. Like, for example, if you head to heylett's collab.com and you sign up for the free collab scripts, you will see a thank you offer. Go check that out. So it's usually a one-time discount on something closely related. Maybe the next step, a lower ticket product. So typically for these, I see the price range between around seven and twenty-seven dollars. So if that product is priced higher, you're just giving this one-time discount. Okay. So do you have any products created as yet? This is a moment for you to start selling them, right? Tripwire offers have really great conversion rates because people are super engaged and excited to take action. They want to get your freebie. And if your tripwire is closely aligned, they will likely say yes to it as well. I'm a fan of the $9 offer. Okay, if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't have a product as yet, here's a modification to this that you could try. You could create a landing page that says at the top, and this is also key here, thanks, your freebies on your way to your inbox because we want to send them the freebie. But you might also love this. Like, first acknowledge that they signed up for the freebie. And then if there are any affiliate products that you recommend. So maybe you haven't created the product, but there's another creator or business that has, this could be an affiliate opportunity for you to just offer that as well. And of course, you're not in control of discounts unless you do have a special promo code that you. Can share here, but this is also just an opportunity as well. You can be like, here is something I handpicked for you that I know will help you achieve whatever it is that goal of that freebie is as well. So that's a way for you to sidestep and start making some commission if there's something, if there's an affiliate product you can recommend here. Okay, so the next step is to also, this is a bonus step, create an email welcome sequence. You can set this all up in kit, so yay. With this, you will be sending a handful of emails to your new subscriber. That's the person who claimed your freebie, by the way. And you will use these emails to let them know more about you, to remind them to claim your freebie, to connect with you in other places. So, say for example, you have a TikTok account, or maybe you have a YouTube channel, or maybe you are featured in an article and you want to share that with them. You also could let them know what to expect from you. This is your opportunity to start building a relationship with that new subscriber. You want them to know how amazing you are, how you can support them, what other resources you have. Because here's the thing: these first opening emails are probably gonna get the most engagement. They are excited to meet you. It's like making a new friend, right? You want to keep hanging out. So use this as an opportunity for you to introduce them to you. Okay, and I would say the next step of intensity, like if you want to take this a little bit further, is after they go through your welcome sequence, where you can also share affiliate products, you can share your own products or pitch your services to them as well. Let them know how you can support them. It could be as little as something as a coaching call, which is a very easy offer to set up. You just need a booking calendar that accepts payment, and that's it, right? It's not complicated. And another thing is that if you are just getting to know your audience, instead you could offer a free coffee chat. Like, hey, are you struggling with this? I would love to chat. I would love to understand how I can help you better. And this is just a good conversation starter, and it opens up opportunities for you to better understand your target audience and create offers down the line. Whether that's a digital product, a course perhaps, or coaching or service, when you better understand your audience, you are better able to make that cash through your collaborations. But yes, that's a little bit more of the intermediate and advanced level. Do not worry if what you're getting started with is just creating that freebie. That is a huge step. You don't need to do this all at once. So don't get stressed out. Don't feel like it's too much, don't put pressure on yourself. Just create that super simple freebie that solves what? One problem. Give one solution to one problem and don't spend more than an hour or two fine. I'll say, I'll concede two hours creating it. All right, so that's it. Go forth and create your freebie. Promise me you won't overthink it. And be sure to hit that subscribe button. Keep listening. In our next episode, it will be one of my favorite people to collaborate with. So stay tuned and get collaborating. Talk soon. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to Hey Let's Collab. If you're looking to kickstart your collaboration game and land that dream partnership, check out heyletscollab.com and download the free collab scripts to get started.