Pastor Lead Magnet Playbook
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CMO.Church course research · Lead magnets for organizations that serve churches · October 2026

Pastor lead magnet playbook

What to give a pastor for free so the right churches raise their hand. The six families of lead magnets, the examples worth copying, and the rules that turn a download into a sales conversation.

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Bottom line

  1. 1

    A lead magnet is a small, complete win that sets up the sale. Solve one narrow problem for one church role so well that it shows them the next problem, the one your paid offer solves.

  2. 2

    The best lead magnets do a repeated task for the pastor, or show how their church compares to others. Think guest follow-up templates, Easter and Christmas kits, and salary or giving benchmarks. Broad "learn about X" ebooks rarely get much traction.

  3. 3

    Choose the format by what you sell. Software companies: templates that mirror the product's workflow, then a trial. Agencies and consultants: a score or an audit. Big-ticket projects such as buildings, loans and capital campaigns: readiness assessments, calculators and a board-ready packet. Risk and compliance firms: checklists and policy templates.

  4. 4

    Design for your targeted church size. For example, if you are designing for a 70-person church led by a stretched pastor (the typical U.S. church), keep it short, usable on a phone, and full of examples from churches that size. If you are targeting the 13% of churches over 250 attenders, which hold 78% of all attenders, build a different magnet. One magnet cannot serve both.

  5. 5

    Start the sale right after the opt-in. Reply within minutes, then follow up with an email sequence and a text sequence.

Definition

What a lead magnet must do

Alex Hormozi's $100M Leads (2023) and DigitalMarketer's lead-magnet checklist (2017) agree on the core idea. The church market adds one condition: the free thing has to fit a pastor's week.

A lead magnet is something useful you give a church leader in exchange for permission to follow up. It works when it solves one narrow problem completely, and solving it reveals the next problem: the one you sell.

Job 1 · Reveal the problem

Show them what they did not know

A score, an audit or a comparison with peer churches. The church sees the gap; your offer closes it.

Families: Diagnostics, Insight

Job 2 · Let them sample

Give a taste of the paid thing

A trial, a sample lesson, one free review, a site visit. They experience the result before they pay for it.

Family: Access

Job 3 · Hand them step one

Give away the first step

A template, checklist or calendar that starts a process your product or service finishes.

Families: Done-for-you, Teaching

Then · Pick a delivery

Software, information, service or physical

Any job can be delivered as a tool, a document or video, work your team does, or something mailed. Hormozi's four delivery mechanisms.

Example: a score can be a quiz or a person

The bridge, using a real example

The free thing

Text In Church's Ultimate Guest Follow-Up Plan: a 6-week calendar with 16 message templates for first-time guests.

The problem it reveals

Sending 16 timed messages to every guest, every week, by hand is hard to keep up.

What they sell

Software that sends the sequence automatically. "Now let us send these for you" needs no explaining.

The eight-point test

DigitalMarketer's checklist (Ryan Deiss, 2017). Hormozi adds a ninth: test the name before you build.

  1. Ultra-specific. A narrow problem for a defined role and church size.
  2. One big thing. One clear promise, not a bundle of small ones.
  3. A result they already want. No convincing needed.
  4. Immediate. Value on delivery. Deiss warns against newsletters and multi-day courses as a first magnet.
  5. Shifts the relationship. They see you as the one who understands the problem.
  6. High perceived value. It looks professional.
  7. High actual value. It delivers what the title promises.
  8. Fast to consume. About five minutes to the payoff.
Taxonomy

The six families of lead magnets

Every lead magnet we found answers one of six questions a pastor is asking. Each family holds two to four types; each type has a code for use in the course (A1, B2…). Open a family to see its types, or pick your kind of business to open the families that fit it.

Showing all 20 types.

A

Done-for-you

"Can you just hand me the thing?"

4 types: Templates and scripts, Seasonal and campaign kits, Calendars and planners, Generators and AI tools

Job 3 · Step one
A1

Templates and scripts

Good fit

Fill-in-the-blank documents the church uses as-is: follow-up texts, emails, policies, job offers, volunteer forms.

Text In Church, Ultimate Guest Follow-Up Plan (6-week calendar, 16 templates). Aplos, free church accounting templates (chart of accounts, small-church budget), leading to a 15-day trial.

Best for
Software that automates the same workflow; HR, legal and insurance firms
Gate
Name, email and phone
Effort
Low
Watch
A template with no next step is a gift, not a lead magnet. Show where your product makes the job easier.
A2

Seasonal and campaign kits

Good fit

Everything a church needs for one moment: Christmas, Easter, year-end giving, a sermon series, a building campaign launch.

Tithe.ly, End-of-Year Giving Resource Bundle (9 templates; a church-size field routes each lead to a matched demo). Ministry Pass free sermon series kits.

Best for
Giving platforms, agencies, curriculum and media companies
Gate
Email plus church size
Effort
Medium, refreshed yearly
Watch
Launch when planning happens, 6 to 10 weeks before the moment, not the week of.
A3

Calendars and planners

Good fit

A year or quarter mapped out for them: preaching calendar, 52-week social media calendar, budget or maintenance calendar.

ReachRight, Free 2026 Church Social Media Calendar ("2,400+ churches"). Ministry Pass 2026 preaching planner.

Best for
Agencies, content providers, planning software, facilities vendors
Gate
Email and church name
Effort
Medium
Watch
Put the year in the name and ship next year's edition before November.
A4

Generators and AI tools

Good fit

A short wizard that outputs a finished document: an AI-use policy, a job description, a budget draft, a prompt library.

Pushpay, Free AI Policy Generator (outputs a Word document). ReachRight, 77 AI Prompts for Pastors.

Best for
Software and compliance firms
Gate
Email before the download
Effort
Medium to high
Watch
Generic AI prompt packs were crowded by fall 2026 (5 of 28 pastor pages we read). Lead with guardrails or a narrow job.
B

Diagnostics

"Where do we stand?"

3 types: Assessments and scorecards, Calculators and checkers, Free audits and reviews

Job 1 · Reveal the problem
B1

Assessments and scorecards

Good fit

10 to 15 questions that return a score and a short diagnosis, plus a few questions that qualify the lead.

Nucleus, Church Chaos Score (score out of 100 in about 3 minutes, built on data from 2,332 churches). Ziegler Cooper Architects, Building Readiness Scorecard (18 questions, six scored areas, then "schedule a conversation"). MinistrySafe, child-safety self-assessments in 10- to 40-minute versions.

Best for
Consultants, agencies, and any business whose sale starts with "you have a problem"
Gate
Show the score free; gate the full report
Effort
Medium
Watch
Add 3 to 5 qualifying questions (size, role, timeline) and route the next step by fit.
B2

Calculators and checkers

Good fit

Enter a few numbers, get a personal answer: a salary range, campaign potential, grant eligibility, loan capacity, project cost.

ReachRight, Pastor Salary Calculator: the answer is free; the personalized 12-page "2026 Compensation Board Packet" takes an email. America's Christian Credit Union, Financial Strength Assessment: the form fields are the loan underwriting inputs, and the result is a 1-to-5 score against peers. Ziegler Cooper, Church Cost Calculator (itemized PDF estimate from local 2026 construction data).

Best for
Lenders, builders, generosity firms, compensation consultants
Gate
Answer free; gate the document they take to the board
Effort
Medium
Watch
Show the math and stay conservative. A wrong number in front of a finance committee costs you the deal.
B3

Free audits and reviews

Good fit

Someone on your team reviews the church's website, giving setup, safety plan, sound system or building, then walks them through it.

ReachRight, Free Church Marketing Review (score out of 100, 17-page PDF, 20-minute call, capped at 30 a week). Church Growth Services, free Campaign Capacity evaluation: a written estimate of what the church could raise, for early budgeting with the architect.

Best for
Agencies, AV and security integrators, insurers, consultants
Gate
A long form is fine: attendance, budget, timeline
Effort
High per lead
Watch
Cap the supply and qualify hard. It is a sales call with homework attached.
C

Insight

"What are churches like ours doing?"

3 types: Benchmark and research reports, Buyer's guides and "questions to ask", Case studies by church size

Job 1 · Reveal the problem, by comparison
C1

Benchmark and research reports

Good fit

Original data on churches, released on a schedule so each edition is news.

The Unstuck Group, Quarterly Unstuck Church Report (sponsored editions; separate landing pages per channel). Pushpay, State of Church Technology 2026, with Barna. Givelify, Giving in Faith Report 2026 (ungated; 894 church leaders and 1,987 donors surveyed).

Best for
Software with usage data, consultants, firms that can partner with a research group
Gate
Email, role and church size
Effort
High
Watch
In one test a simple template beat a research study by 70%. Pull 2 or 3 striking numbers into the ad, and pair the report with a tool.
C2

Buyer's guides and "questions to ask"

Good fit

How to choose a vendor in your category, including the questions to ask you and your competitors.

BoxCast, How to Choose a Live Streaming Platform: A Guide for Churches (helps a staffer make the case to a committee). Illuminated Integration, Church AVL Kickoff Kit (checklists for choosing a tech partner). BusesForSale.com, Church Bus Buyer's Guide.

Best for
Considered purchases: buildings, AV, software switches, capital campaigns, insurance, loans
Gate
Email; keep a short version open for search and AI
Effort
Medium
Watch
Write it fairly. Boards pass these around, and a sales pitch dressed as a guide gets thrown out.
C3

Case studies by church size

Good fit

Before-and-after stories sorted by size or type, so a reader finds "a church like ours."

Auxano, four church case studies grouped by congregation size. The best case-study pages put a named pastor and a number next to the offer, as ReachRight's grant checker does.

Best for
Big-ticket projects and consultants
Gate
Light or none
Effort
Medium
Watch
Name the pastor, church and city, and give the result as a number.
D

Teaching

"Show me how."

4 types: Checklists and cheat sheets, Guides and playbooks, Webinars and workshops, Short courses and challenges

Job 3 · Step one
D1

Checklists and cheat sheets

Good fit

One page, one task, every step.

Vanderbloemen, Comprehensive Christmas Service Checklist (16 planning areas). Nick Blevins, 16 Gift Ideas for First-Time Families, one ad running 1,332 days. Church Mutual, Cybersecurity Toolkit (ungated checklist and self-assessment, Sept 30, 2026).

Best for
Everyone, and first choice for insurers and safety or compliance vendors
Gate
Name, email and phone
Effort
Low
Watch
Checklists had the cheapest leads in the only church-staff test on record ($1.78 per lead, 2016). Pair them with a strong follow-up.
D3

Webinars and workshops

Good fit

A live or recorded teaching session, often ending with a demo or Q&A.

Church Fuel, Grow Your Church Workshop (60 minutes of strategy, then a 30-minute software demo). MinistrySafe, Journey to a Safer Ministry 2026 webinar series, monthly and sponsored by Tithely.

Best for
Software, consultants, legal and tax firms with yearly updates
Gate
Name, email, mobile, church size
Effort
Medium
Watch
About 4 in 10 registrants never watch (ON24: 57% attend, live or on demand). Send the replay and a one-page summary.
D4

Short courses and challenges

Good fit

A few short lessons, or a 5- to 30-day challenge, by email or video.

Church Boom, Unstoppable Momentum (free 8-part video course). Logos, "God Speaks" 30-day Bible reading challenge for congregations.

Best for
Coaches, consultants, curriculum publishers
Gate
Email
Effort
Medium
Watch
Multi-day formats lose people. DigitalMarketer advises against them as a first magnet; use one as the second step.
E

Access

"Let me try it."

4 types: Trials, samples and free tiers, Free consultation or coaching session, Events, tours and roundtables, Physical items

Job 2 · Sample
E2

Free consultation or coaching session

Good fit

A set amount of expert time, with a named outcome.

PastorServe, Complimentary Coaching Session (by application). Aspen Group, one-day Campus Planning Workshop at no cost for one church network's members: "leave with a concept," cost information and next steps.

Best for
Consultants, coaches, lenders, builders, staffing firms
Gate
Application
Effort
High
Watch
Name what it delivers ("a 30-minute building-readiness review"), not "free consultation."
E3

Events, tours and roundtables

Good fit

In-person or virtual gatherings: site tours of finished projects, regional lunches, peer roundtables, info nights.

ARC Launch Events for prospective church planters. Partner networks are the usual route: Aspen Group offered its planning workshop through one church network.

Best for
Builders, AV and furniture firms, regional service firms, networks
Gate
Registration
Effort
High
Watch
Pastors trust other pastors. Host it at a church you served and let that pastor do the talking.
E4

Physical items

Good fit

Something mailed: a book, a sample kit, a printed planner, a swatch box.

PostcardMania, free church postcard samples and marketing kit, mailed (asks for a mailing address; claims 7,722 churches and religious groups served).

Best for
Publishers, product makers, high-ticket firms
Gate
Mailing address
Effort
Medium to high
Watch
A mailing address is a strong buying signal. Follow up by phone within days of delivery.
F

Belonging

"Keep me sharp."

2 types: Newsletters, Communities and free memberships

Ongoing relationship
F1

Newsletters

Good fit

A weekly or monthly email worth opening.

Carey Nieuwhof, On the Rise ("100,000+ leaders"). Pro Church Tools, The 167 ("62,646+ churches").

Best for
Personality-led brands, media companies, consultants
Gate
Email, plus phone if you will text
Effort
Ongoing
Watch
A newsletter rarely converts a stranger on its own. Use a specific magnet to start the list; the newsletter keeps it.
F2

Communities and free memberships

Good fit

A free group or free tier where leaders learn from each other and from you.

Church Communications (a Facebook group of about 34,000 members). Carey Nieuwhof, free Academy tier leading to $17 and $57 monthly plans.

Best for
Agencies, consultants, coaches
Gate
Join questions
Effort
Ongoing
Watch
Someone has to show up every day. An empty community hurts the brand.
Selection

Match the type to your business

What you sell decides which lead magnet earns a sales conversation. The bigger and riskier the purchase, the more the magnet should diagnose, compare and prepare the church to decide as a group.

Your businessLead withThen offerWorking exampleAvoid
Church software
ChMS, giving, texting, apps, streaming
A1A2
Templates and kits that mirror your product's workflow
D3E1
A demo webinar, then a trial		Text In Church's follow-up plan leads to a workshop and demo. Clearstream runs a live product webinar every few weeks.Generic "church growth" ebooks. A trial as the first offer to cold traffic.
Marketing and web agencies
Websites, ads, social, SEO
B1B2A3
A free score or checker; an annual content calendar
B3
A capped free audit with a walkthrough call		ReachRight's visibility test leads to a free marketing review. Nucleus pairs its Chaos Score with a free makeover.Uncapped free audits.
Consultants and coaches
Strategy, staffing, generosity, leadership
B1C1
An assessment or a dated benchmark report
D3E2
A workshop, then a named strategy session		Unstuck's quarterly report leads to a $49 resource hub, then consulting. Slingshot Group offers hiring guides for churches and for job candidates.A course as the first touch. Content with no point of view.
Big-ticket projects
Buildings, loans, capital campaigns, AV integration
B2B1C2
A cost calculator, a readiness scorecard, a "how to choose" guide
B3E2
A written evaluation or a planning session		Ziegler Cooper's cost calculator and readiness scorecard. America's Christian Credit Union's Financial Strength Assessment. Church Growth Services' free campaign capacity evaluation.Glossy portfolio brochures. Asking for a meeting before giving the church a number.
Risk, legal and compliance
Insurance, child safety, background checks, tax, copyright
D1A1B1
Checklists, policy templates, self-assessments
D3
A recurring training series, then a quote or demo		Church Mutual's ungated cybersecurity toolkit. MinistrySafe's self-assessments and monthly webinars. Clergy Financial Resources: free worksheets, then a $12.95 housing allowance guide.Fear-heavy hooks. Gating basic safety steps a church needs today. Insurers can leave it all open: the policy is the real gate.
Curriculum and content
Sermon, kids, youth, small-group and VBS resources
E1A2
Samples and seasonal kits
D4
A trial or subscription; a congregation-wide challenge		Lifeway's free VBS sample. Ministry Pass's free sermon series kits. Logos's 30-day reading challenge.Kits that end at "check your inbox."
Products and equipment
Furniture, vehicles, print, coffee, signage
C2E4
A buyer's guide or mailed samples		A quote, a sample order or volume pricingPostcardMania mails sample church postcards. BusesForSale.com's church bus buyer's guide. Promised Grounds unlocks wholesale coffee pricing and returns 20% of members' purchases to the church.Price lists dressed up as lead magnets. No follow-up after a sample ships.
Case studies

Examples worth studying

Chosen for fit with a church leader's real job, a clear promise, a natural path from the free thing to the paid one, and visible scale or staying power. Scale figures are each company's own claims.

A1Text In Church · Guest follow-up software

The Ultimate Guest Follow-Up Plan

  • A 6-week calendar with 16 message templates for first-time guests. Asks for first name and email; phone is optional.
  • It is the product's workflow as a PDF, so the pitch ("now let us send these for you") needs no explaining.
  • Numbers in the name signal completeness. A follow-on workshop asks for a mobile number and text consent, which starts a text-message nurture that mirrors the product.
  • The company says more than 80,000 church leaders use it every week.

Steal thisTurn your product's core workflow into a free calendar of ready-to-send templates.

B1B3Nucleus · Church website platform

Church Chaos Score, then a free makeover

  • A score out of 100 in about three minutes, built on data from 2,332 churches and 6,996 services. The dataset doubles as press material.
  • The free makeover turns a website build the company values at $10,335 into $0, tied to a $99-a-month subscription. It removes the biggest objection to switching platforms.
  • The company reports more than 1,180 makeovers delivered.

Steal thisPair a self-serve score with a done-for-you offer that removes the main reason not to switch.

C1A4Pushpay · Church management and giving software

State of Church Technology, then an AI Policy Generator

  • The yearly report, run with Barna, surveyed more than 1,300 church leaders. Borrowed authority plus peer comparison.
  • The report found that 64% of leaders say churches need an AI policy and 5% have one. That gap became the hook for a free generator that produces a policy as a Word document.
  • An AI policy is a board-level need in 2026, so the tool reaches decision-makers.

Steal thisUse your research to find a gap, then ship a small tool that closes it.

C1The Unstuck Group · Church consultants

Quarterly Unstuck Church Report

  • New data every quarter gives the team a fresh reason to promote. "How do we compare?" is hard for an executive pastor to ignore.
  • A staffing firm sponsored the Q2 2026 staffing edition, and there are separate landing pages for Facebook traffic and for a co-promotion with Carey Nieuwhof.
  • Clear ladder: free report, then a $49-a-month resource hub, then consulting.

Steal thisTurn your data into a dated series, and let a partner sponsor an edition.

D3Church Fuel · Church growth software and coaching

Grow Your Church Workshop

  • A 90-minute live session: 60 minutes of strategy, then a 30-minute software demo. A bonus mini-course arrives right after registration.
  • The form asks for mobile number and church size in four buckets, so leads arrive sorted.
  • The promise carries a year ("your visitor plan for 2026"), so it renews every fall.

Steal thisPut the demo inside the teaching, say so up front, and date the promise.

D1Nick Blevins · Church consultant and coach

16 Gift Ideas for First-Time Families

  • A list gathered from real churches, opening with the stat that most churches keep only 10–20% of first-time families.
  • One ad has run for 1,332 days, the longest-running pastor-facing offer in our ad sweep.
  • The page breaks most landing-page rules (blog layout, sidebar, full navigation). The specific, peer-sourced promise carries it anyway.

Steal thisA specific list for a recurring task, collected from real churches, beats a polished generic guide.

B2B1Ziegler Cooper Architects · Church design

Church Cost Calculator and Building Readiness Scorecard

  • The calculator emails an itemized PDF estimate within minutes, built on local 2026 construction data.
  • The scorecard takes about five minutes: 18 questions, scored across six areas. The form asks for role (lead pastor, executive pastor, elder or board, building team, staff), then ends with "schedule a conversation."
  • One tool answers "what will it cost?" and the other "are we ready?" Both produce something a building committee can discuss.

Steal thisFor a big purchase, give the church its own number and a readiness score, in a form the champion can share.

B1D3MinistrySafe · Child-abuse prevention

Safety System Self-Assessments and a monthly webinar series

  • Self-assessments come in 10-, 12- and 30- to 40-minute versions, each ending in a customized report. The short ones ask only for name and email.
  • The 2026 webinar series runs monthly, topic by topic, and Tithely sponsors it. Sessions were scheduled for Oct 27 and Nov 17, 2026.
  • Each assessment area maps to a part of the paid safety system: training, screening, policies, background checks, monitoring.

Steal thisOffer the assessment in sizes, and make each section match a part of what you sell.

D1Church Mutual · Church insurance

Cybersecurity Toolkit

  • A "10 Essentials" checklist plus a self-assessment across four areas, published Sept 30, 2026. No form.
  • Insurers give their safety libraries away because the policy is the real gate. Church Mutual's library has 17 checklists and toolkits, from facility inspections to transportation.
  • Every page points to an agent, a quote or a claims contact.

Steal thisWhen the sale needs a quote anyway, leave the checklist open and make the quote request the conversion.

E4PostcardMania · Direct-mail printing

Free church postcard samples, mailed

  • A kit of real church invitation mailers sent to the church, with a marketing guide. The form asks for a mailing address, which signals far more intent than an email does.
  • The follow-up comes from a consultant, plus a $50 voucher by text.
  • The company claims 7,722 churches and religious groups served in 20 years.

Steal thisIf the product is physical, let them hold it. Follow up by phone soon after it arrives.

How to build one

Best practices, in the order you will use them

1

Choose the problem

Start from the sale and work backward.

  • Work backward from your core offer. Ask what a church must discover, or believe, right before it buys from you. Build the magnet that creates that moment.
  • Pick a pain that comes back. Weekly (Sunday prep, guest follow-up), seasonal (Christmas, Easter, year-end giving) or annual (budget, salaries, insurance renewal).
  • Look for a smaller problem that reveals the bigger one. Are there smaller problems that, once they are solved, reveal the bigger problem your core offer solves? A church that fixes its guest follow-up texts soon sees it needs a system to send them every week.
  • Name one role and one church size. "Executive pastors at churches of 250 to 1,000" beats "church leaders." Executive pastors, church administrators, pastors' spouses and Spanish-speaking churches are thinly served today.
  • Use the outcomes pastors already name. Their top needs are developing leaders and volunteers (77%), connecting with unchurched people (76%) and member apathy (75%). Title the magnet in that language, not in product features.
  • Build on something only you have. Your customer data, your method or your track record. You can also repackage content you have already created, like Open Network did with its 24 sermon topics lead magnet.
  • Skip a crowded topic unless you have a new angle. AI prompt packs for pastors were everywhere by fall 2026. A narrower AI angle still fills a gap: 64% of church leaders say churches need an AI policy, and 5% have one.
2

Make it

Small, usable, and good enough to charge for.

  • Usable beats complete. In a Facebook test aimed at nonprofit staff, a donation-page template beat an in-depth research study by 70% and cost about half as much per email.
  • Make it finishable in one sitting, on a phone. 35% of lead pastors are bivocational, and the typical lead pastor works about 47 hours a week across all jobs. Aim for five to ten minutes to the payoff, with the payoff on page one.
  • Make it good enough to sell. Pastors judge your paid work by your free work. Cut the filler and keep the steps.
  • Show churches that look like the reader's. About 70% of U.S. churches have 100 or fewer attenders. Budgets, staffing and stories should match the size you target.
  • Put your method inside it. Name your steps or framework in the asset. The reader learns your way of solving the problem, and that is what they hire.
  • Respect theological range. Clergy rely on sources from their own tradition. Stay out of doctrine that is not your business, and build separate versions if you sell to both evangelical and mainline churches.
3

Name and package it

The name decides whether anyone clicks.

  • Name = number + clear title + audience, if applicable. "16 Guest Follow-Up Texts for Small Churches." "52 Social Media Posts for Church Communicators." Lead with the number; it signals completeness. If the asset renews every year, put the year in the title.
  • Test the name before you build. Run two or three names as small ads or a poll to your list. Hormozi reports that one wording change moved click-through from about 30% to 70%.
  • Show a piece of it. A sample page or three sample items lowers the risk of opting in. A physical-book mockup beat a tablet mockup by 70% on a Catholic ministry's ebook page. Putting the whole ebook on the page cut opt-ins by 13.5%.
  • Match the ad exactly. 12 of the 34 church lead-magnet pages we could read had a copy error or an ad-to-page mismatch, such as a different number of churches in the ad and on the page. In this category, clean execution stands out.
  • Describe the offer, not the viewer's faith. Meta bans ad copy that asserts or implies religion, so "Are you Christian?" is out. "A free Easter follow-up kit for church leaders" is the safer pattern.
4

Decide what to ask for

Every field costs opt-ins. Make each one earn its place.

  • Gate the personal; leave the general open. Put the form in front of a score, an audit, a custom document or a live session. Keep cost explainers, comparisons and how-to articles open so search engines and AI assistants can find you. 51% of software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot.
  • Ask for name, email and phone number. Email response rates have dropped, so a phone number lets you follow up by text and by call. Skip any field you will not use.
  • If applicable, make church size the one extra field. It tells you how to follow up. Tithe.ly sends each size band to its own demo calendar; Church Fuel uses four size buckets.
  • On-platform forms are cheaper but weaker for live steps. Meta's instant forms cut cost per lead from $3.77 to $2.04 in one test, with equal email engagement. For church events, Facebook-form registrants showed up 5.9% of the time, against 45.3% for direct-mail registrants.
5

Deliver it and build the bridge

The magnet earns the conversation. The follow-up has it.

  • Deliver it by email, and by text when possible. Send the asset right away to the email address and phone number they gave you. Authenticate your sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and include one-click unsubscribe. Gmail began rejecting non-compliant bulk mail in November 2025.
  • Follow up in minutes. Firms that answered web leads within an hour were about 7 times as likely to qualify them. The odds of reaching a lead were 100 times higher at 5 minutes than at 30.
  • Put the sale inside the content when you can do it honestly. Church Fuel's workshop ends with a 30-minute demo, and ReachRight walks each church through its audit on a 20-minute call. Say up front that it will happen.
  • Nurture with an email sequence and a text sequence. The follow-up should teach the problem your product solves, then invite the next step. Watch who opens and uses the asset: Gong says about 60% of its pipeline came from reps contacting heavy content readers who fit its customer profile.
6

Measure and refresh

Count booked calls and customers, not downloads.

  • Track three numbers per magnet: cost per lead, number of booked calls, and number of customers. We also recommend finding a way to measure cost per booked conversation.
  • Refresh on the calendar. Ship next year's edition before November. The Unstuck Group and Pushpay turn every release into a reason to promote again.
  • Retire magnets that do not create conversations. An ad that keeps running is a weak signal. Pipeline is the real test.
Course tool

Score your lead magnet idea

Ten questions, 0 to 2 points each. Pick one answer for each question to see your score. To see how scoring works, load the worked example, an insurer's Christmas safety checklist.

1. One role, one problem

Who exactly is it for, and what single problem does it solve?

2. A pain that comes back

Will they feel this problem again next week, next season or next year?

3. Quick win

How long until they get value from it?

4. Bridge to your offer

Does using it reveal the problem your paid offer solves?

5. Only you could make it

What does it contain that a competitor couldn't copy in an afternoon?

6. Fits the typical church

Does it work for the size and staffing of church you target?

7. The name tells the story

Could a pastor tell what they get from the title alone?

8. The right fields

Can you follow up by email, text and phone?

9. Nurture sequence

What follow-up runs after they opt in?

10. Measured on conversations

How will you know it worked?