What is a lead magnet?
A lead magnet is something useful you give away free in return for a person's contact details, usually a work email. The classic B2B forms are a report, a template, a checklist, a short email course, a webinar or a free tool. The thing itself is the bait; the email address is what the business wants, so it can follow up.
It is one of the most common ways B2B companies collect data. In the Content Marketing Institute's 2026 trends survey of 1,015 B2B marketers (fielded 24 June to 14 August 2025, with MarketingProfs, sponsored by Storyblok), asked how they collect first-party data (91% said they collect it), 68% named content-driven collection, which CMI describes as gated assets, webinars and interactive tools. Only direct engagement such as subscriptions and communities ranked higher, at 77%.
Three things are easy to confuse with lead magnets:
- Ungated content. A guide anyone can read without a form builds trust, but collects nothing unless the reader chooses to sign up or get in touch.
- A free trial or demo. This is the product itself, not a free extra. The legal rules for following up are also different, as the last section shows.
- A newsletter sign-up. Here the emails are the product. A lead magnet gives one thing now and asks permission for more.
If you want a long list of formats to choose from, our sibling post has lead magnet ideas for B2B companies. This post covers what real ones look like, whether to gate yours, what it will bring in and the rules for the emails you collect.
What are some examples of lead magnets?
Four B2B companies, checked on 4 November 2026. Three follow the same pattern: publish the headline findings free, and put the full version behind a form. The fourth asks for nothing.
| Company and asset | What is free to read | What the form asks for |
|---|---|---|
| Unbounce, 2024 Conversion Benchmark Report | Headline findings, such as the 6.6% median conversion rate | First name, last name, work email, type of company, company name, number of employees, a comments box, a required privacy policy box and a required Yes or No choice on marketing emails |
| HubSpot, 2026 State of Marketing Report | A summary page with a few statistics | An Access Now form; the page says all fields are required |
| Content Marketing Institute, Insights for 2027 report | A long article on the findings by Robert Rose, published 4 November 2026 | The PDF version; the article says registration is required |
| Close, Startup Sales Resource Bundle | Everything: books, templates and spreadsheets | Nothing. The ZIP of 85 files, about 97 MB, needs no email. A newsletter sign-up sits on the page. |
What the first three ask for tells you what they plan to do with it. Unbounce's fields let it sort a coaching business from a SaaS company before anyone replies, which suits a company with a sales team routing leads. A small team usually needs only an email and, at most, a company name.
Close shows the other direction. Its bundle collects 14 books plus guides, templates and toolkits that the company published over years, and its page says most of it is free to read or download on close.com. If you are weighing that route, our post on ungated content and Drift's no-forms bet has a 30-day test you can run.
Should you gate a lead magnet or give it away?
Gate it when the email is worth more to you than the extra readers, and give it away when you need people to find and share it. This table is our judgement for a team of one to five people; there is no study behind the cut-offs.
| Your situation | Our suggestion | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You have under a few hundred visitors a month | Ungated, with an optional sign-up at the end | A form shrinks a small audience further; you need readers first |
| The asset is a tool or calculator people come back to | Free to use, ask for an email only to send or save the result | The email then has an obvious purpose the visitor wants |
| You have original data no one else has | Headline findings free, full report behind a short form | The pattern Unbounce, HubSpot and CMI use |
| You will follow every lead up personally | Short form: email and company | You can research the rest yourself before you write |
| You have no plan to follow up | Don't gate | A list nobody contacts costs readers and gives nothing back |
Our own free sales and outreach tools follow the second row's spirit more strictly: the page says they are free, with no sign-up.
How do I create a lead magnet?
Pick one problem your buyer has before they buy, solve a small part of it completely, and make the page say exactly what they get. These five steps are our suggestion, sized for a small team.
Start from a question buyers already ask
Look at your last ten sales calls or replies and write down the questions that came up before price. A lead magnet that answers one of them, such as a checklist for choosing a supplier in your category, attracts people near a purchase.
Make it small and finished
One page, one template or one short calculator the reader can use the same day. The r/B2BMarketing poster in the next step kept a 2 to 3 minute assessment because, they wrote, a 1 minute version would give a much weaker report; decide which side of that trade you are on.
Show the result before the form
Put a screenshot or a sample of the output on the page, and say how long it takes. One r/B2BMarketing poster in a September 2026 thread described a free assessment for manufacturing firms that took 2 to 3 minutes and had 6 completions in six months; they wrote that "most people bail right at the welcome screen before even starting". Two replies pointed at the first screen: one asked whether visitors are surprised by what they see after clicking, and another said visitors don't know what they will get at the end.
Ask for as little as you will use
An email, and a company name if you research leads by hand. Add a separate, unticked box for marketing emails if you sell to sole traders or people in the UK or EU (see the rules below).
Write the follow-up before you publish
Send the asset at once, then one personal note a few days later that asks a single question about their situation. A lead that never hears from a person is just a list entry.
How many leads will a lead magnet bring in?
Multiply the visits to the page by a conversion rate of a few per cent. Unbounce's public benchmark page gives a 6.6% median conversion rate across all industries, with medians for nine industries ranging from 3.8% to 12.3%. Its methodology says the data runs from 23 July 2023 to 23 July 2024 and covers 57 million conversions from over 464 million unique visitors on more than 41,000 landing pages; pages with fewer than 50 visitors or no conversions were left out. Two cautions: Unbounce sells landing page software, and its figures are landing page conversions in general, not lead magnet downloads in particular, and they count clicks as well as form fills.
A worked example with sample numbers for Northwind Ltd, a made-up company:
| Step | Lowest industry median (3.8%) | At the median (6.6%) |
|---|---|---|
| Visits to the page a month (assumed) | 400 | 400 |
| Sign-ups: visits x rate | 400 x 0.038 = 15.2, about 15 | 400 x 0.066 = 26.4, about 26 |
| Sign-ups who fit your buyer profile (assumed 1 in 4) | 15 / 4 = 3.75, about 4 | 26 / 4 = 6.5, about 7 |
So 400 visits might give Northwind four to seven people worth a personal email each month. If your page gets 40 visits, divide by ten. That is why the step that matters most is getting the right people to the page: post it where your buyers already read, and send it to people who asked a question it answers. Our guide to where to find free B2B leads covers where those people show up.
Is lead generation legal? The rules for the emails you collect
Yes, collecting leads is legal, but the rules decide what you may send afterwards. This is a summary for small teams, not legal advice.
| Question | UK (ICO guidance on PECR and UK GDPR) | US (FTC on CAN-SPAM) |
|---|---|---|
| Can I send the asset they asked for? | Yes. The ICO says solicited messages need no consent, because the person asked for them | Yes |
| Can I send marketing emails afterwards? | To limited companies and LLPs (corporate subscribers), yes without consent. To sole traders, some partnerships and personal addresses, you need consent or the soft opt-in | The FTC's guide doesn't require consent, but every marketing email needs an opt-out and your postal address |
| Can I make marketing a condition of the download? | The ICO says consent is unlikely to be valid if agreeing to marketing is a necessary condition of buying | Not addressed by the guide |
| Does B2B change anything? | UK GDPR still applies to a named person's business details, and they have an absolute right to object to direct marketing | No: the guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email |
The ICO's guidance on electronic mail marketing (read from an archived copy of 12 October 2026, because the live page blocked automated access) says consent must be freely given, so people can refuse without detriment, and bans pre-ticked boxes. Its soft opt-in only applies to details collected while selling or negotiating a sale; its examples of negotiation are signing up to a free trial, asking for a quote or asking for more details about what you offer. A general guide download isn't on that list, which is why our template uses a separate unticked box. The ICO's business-to-business page says sole traders and some partnerships count as individual subscribers.
In the EU, GDPR Article 7(4) says that when judging whether consent is freely given, utmost account is taken of whether a service is made conditional on consent to processing that isn't necessary for it. In the US, the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide says opt-outs must be honoured within 10 business days and each email in violation can bring penalties of up to $53,088. For cold email rules country by country, see our guide to whether cold email is legal.
Frequently asked questions
What is a lead magnet in marketing?
It is a free, useful item, such as a checklist, template, report or short tool, that a business offers in exchange for contact details. The business uses those details to follow up, so a lead magnet only pays off when someone actually writes to the people who sign up, and when the item attracts people who could buy.
Can you give me an example of a lead magnet?
Unbounce publishes headline findings from its landing page benchmark report on an open page, then asks for name, work email, company type, company name and staff count for the full report. HubSpot does something similar with its State of Marketing report. Both give enough away to prove the full version is worth a form.
Is lead generation illegal?
No. Finding and contacting potential customers is legal, but data and email laws set limits. In the UK, unsolicited marketing emails to sole traders and some partnerships need consent or a soft opt-in, and in the US commercial emails need an opt-out and a postal address. Check the rules where your buyers are, or ask a lawyer.
Should a lead magnet ask for a work email only?
For B2B, a work email usually tells you the company, which saves a field. Some people will still use a personal address, so accept it rather than lose the sign-up. In the UK the ICO says to treat contact details as an individual's if you are unsure, so marketing to a personal address needs consent unless the soft opt-in applies.
How long should a lead magnet be?
As short as it can be while still solving one problem completely. A one-page checklist or a calculator the reader uses in five minutes is easier to finish than a long ebook, and the reader judges you by whether it helped. Say on the page how long it takes so nobody gives up at the first screen.
Sources
- Content Marketing Institute: 9 Takeaways From the 2026 B2B Content and Marketing Trends Report (published 8 Oct 2025, checked 4 Nov 2026)
- Content Marketing Institute (Robert Rose): Faster and Cheaper, But Not Better, the 2027 B2B Content and Marketing Trends report (published 4 Nov 2026)
- HubSpot: The 2026 State of Marketing Report (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- Close: The Startup Sales Resource Bundle (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- Unbounce: 2024 Conversion Benchmark Report (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- Unbounce: Conversion Benchmark Report methodology (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- r/B2BMarketing: B2B lead magnet gets zero conversions (posted 22 Sep 2026, checked 4 Nov 2026)
- ICO: How do we comply with the PECR electronic mail marketing rules? (archived copy) (archived 12 Oct 2026, checked 4 Nov 2026)
- ICO: Business-to-business marketing (archived copy) (archived 11 Oct 2026, checked 4 Nov 2026)
- EUR-Lex: Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Article 7 (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- FTC: CAN-SPAM Act, A Compliance Guide for Business (checked 4 Nov 2026)