Hello everyone! My name is Evgeny Borovkov, I am an entrepreneur. As is common nowadays, I have my own Telegram channel, and recently I also created a channel in the Max messenger. Today I want to talk about a method of audience acquisition that I successfully implemented. It's lead magnets.

Experienced marketers don't need an explanation of what a lead magnet is. The tool is used everywhere in various forms by everyone. However, today we will only talk about my experience and how I approached the issue to ensure that subscribers in my channels grow constantly and organically.

But first, let's figure out why chatbots? The answer is obvious: I have a chatbot development company botcreators.ru, so I primarily considered bots, not, say, intermediary websites. I know many people create various web solutions for these purposes, but I went with bots. Or, if I were driving paid traffic to these bots, I would probably also create websites. Maybe I will, we'll see. But for now, let's talk about what already exists:

Lead Magnet for Telegram Channel

Initially, I had an idea not just to create a bot that mechanically invites people to the channel. I wanted to give people something truly useful: an artifact. And here lies a very subtle detail why this worked for me and might not work for someone else.

I thought for a long time about what kind of artifact to offer that people would want. Not just another "guide" like "five ways to do something" that many marketers churn out. I wanted to attract a specific target audience that I want to see on my channel. And it had to be truly useful and needed by people, and something they would want to share. 

And here I need to insert a bit of backstory: 

It so happened that before this, I had already systematically built many processes in my company. For some aspects of my public media work, huge spreadsheets were created. For example, one such spreadsheet became a list of podcasts where I could go as a guest. After all, if you didn't know, I have been a guest on more than 40 podcasts. Some joke that I already have a black belt in podcast appearances. But to go on those 40 podcasts, I had to "respond" and write to hundreds of podcast authors in private messages. In total, I responded to over 400 podcasts. Just think about it! 

The stars aligned. I took my internal database of those four hundred podcasts and heavily reworked it. I assigned them statuses, niches, areas, details, and so on. And I packaged it into a Google spreadsheet, which became the basis for the artifact for the future lead magnet. Of course, I had help from assistants and neural networks, but I'll talk about that another time. 

It's also worth discussing the development of the Telegram bot itself. The mechanics turned out to be not the simplest, and honestly, we struggled with it for a long time. The bot grants access to the spreadsheet via Google email and checks whether the person has actually subscribed to my channel. 

I didn't just throw the spreadsheet into public access. Then no one would subscribe to me. We bothered with the Google API and made it so that the bot actually monitors the subscription and only then grants personal read-only access to that spreadsheet. There are tons of technical details, but again, maybe we'll talk about them another time. In the end, it turned out very powerful. 

Then I shared the bot with a few friends, in several group chats, and it took off beautifully. People started forwarding it to each other, it went viral. Public experts who want to appear on podcasts started recommending this bot to their friends, colleagues, PR people, and so on. By the way, PR people are very viral folks and share finds with each other. That's where we stand. 

Let's get to the numbers. The bot development cost about 10,000 rubles (I don't have the exact figure, sorry, but it was roughly that much). The artifact development is harder to estimate, let's say also within 10,000 rubles and a year of data collection. But in the end, this lead magnet gathered over 500 registrations. In terms of money, that's about 40 rubles per subscriber to the Telegram channel! In 2025, mind you. (Yes, the bot was launched in 2025 and continues to work well in 2026).

Of course, many unsubscribe. Many try to take the spreadsheet for themselves or cheat. But the permission settings work so that the spreadsheet cannot be edited or copied. You can only write to me in private messages, and then maybe I'll give you edit access. So you can fully work with the spreadsheet only when you are subscribed to my channel. Therefore, the unsubscribe rate after viewing the spreadsheet is not that high.

Channel in Max and Repeating the Mechanics

At some point, I created a public channel in the Max messenger and decided to repeat the well-working mechanics for it. Among other things, my company became a partner of the Max messenger, but that's another story. We set up a profile on the Max for Business platform and submitted this bot for moderation, but for a different spreadsheet.

For the second artifact, I took a spreadsheet of events. Many public experts and PR people like to attend events, speak, and so on. I knew this would also be in demand. I myself speak as a speaker and also collect these events in a spreadsheet on an ongoing basis. My assistants regularly update it, monitor it, and add to it. After some tweaking of the spreadsheet format and adding it to the bot's settings, we got a finished product.

The numbers here are a bit worse because the Max messenger is not yet as widely used as Telegram. Nevertheless, development cost less money. I already had everything developed, I just needed to copy it. If we assume that the bot modification cost 5,000 rubles, and the development of the spreadsheet artifact also around 5,000 rubles, then I gathered 50 subscribers this way. Calculate the cost per channel subscriber yourself!

Share your stories! What mechanics do you use to attract subscribers to your channels? What works for you and what doesn't? I'd be interested to read about your experience. Maybe I'll reuse something from it. And subscribe to me and grab these bots!

Links to materials:

Link to the bot in Telegram: t.me/Borovkov_lead_magnit_bot

Link to the bot in Max: max.ru/id7725497079_4_bot

My channel in Telegram: t.me/eaborovkov

My channel in Max: max.ru/ea_borovkov