How to run a lead generation campaign

A lead generation campaign is the simplest ask you can make of a stranger: give us your email and we'll keep you posted. That simplicity is the point—it's the most common type of campaign that is run on Launch Oracle because an email list is the actual asset your entire pre-launch strategy gets built on.

This guide covers what's specific to running a lead gen campaign well: what to capture, what to offer in exchange, how to drive traffic to it, and what to watch for once it's live. If you're completely new to Launch Oracle, you might want to see the step-by-step guide for How to Create Your First Campaign. If you know you want to create a lead generation campaign and have already set up your organization and property, this is the right guide for you.

This is where the actual work begins. A campaign is a single initiative tied to a property and you can run several at once for the same property. A lead gen campaign is just one of six types Launch Oracle supports. Since you already know you want lead generation, the setup here is quick: create a campaign, select lead generation as the type, and then move onto the page itself, which is where a lead gen campaign is built.

1. Start creating your campaign.

   • From your organization dashboard, click Create Campaign (quick-start wizard), or

   • Go to Campaigns under your property in the left-hand menu, then click Add Campaign in the top right.

2. Assign your campaign to a property. Select an existing property or click Create Property to set one up as part of this flow.

3. Choose a campaign type. Select Lead Generation.

   • Lead Generation: Capture contact information to build your pipeline ahead of a launch.

   • Form: Build custom forms to collect more than just contact info, such as file uploads, receipt photos, and other launch-specific details.

• Poll: Gather direct audience feedback to inform your launch strategy.

  • Quiz: Shareable and engaging. Quizzes help organically expand your campaign's reach.

  • A/B Test: Test different page variants to see which one drives the best results.

  • Reservation: Works like a lead generation campaign, but also lets you build a committed audience by collecting a nominal fee from users who reserve a spot on your waitlist.

4. Enter your campaign basics:

   • Title: Should reflect what you're assessing or gathering info for; often mirrors the campaign type.

• SEO metadata: Controls how your page appears in search results and social media link previews.

• Campaign image: Helps identify the campaign in your list and appears in social embeds.

5. Select your campaign attributes: Categories, Tags, Unique Selling Points (USPs), Genres, and Utilities. These help segment your target audience data and organize the leads and contact info Launch Oracle collects, so you can filter and target accordingly later.

6. Invite your teammates and assign the right level of access. You can always invite teammates or update their access later from Team in the left-hand menu.

A lead gen page has exactly one job: get a visitor to hand over their email. That's it. No custom questions, no file uploads, no extra fields. (If you find yourself wanting to ask for more than an email, that's a sign you actually want to run a form campaign instead or in conjunction with your lead gen campaign.) Because the ask is so minimal, two things do all the work of convincing someone to say yes: what you're offering them and how the page makes them feel while they decide.

Before you begin, have your approved text, images, and branding assets ready so you're not switching contexts mid-build. Only one person can edit a page in the builder at a time. So if a teammate is already in there, you'll need to wait until they're done.

Every campaign has three page variants—pre-launch, launch, and post-launch—and each is a different face your campaign shows at a different point in its life. Pre-launch is what a visitor sees before you've launched; this is the variant you'll spend the most time on for a lead gen campaign, since it's the one doing the work of capturing emails. Launch is what visitors see once you've gone live, often redirecting to your crowdfunding campaign or product website. Post-launch is what's left standing for anyone who finds your campaign late. Know which variant you're editing. Building great content on the wrong one means it won't show up when it's supposed to.

Set your fonts, colors, and button styles before you start adding sections and writing copy. That way every section you add afterward already matches your brand, instead of you going back to restyle ten sections one at a time because you changed your mind about a shade of blue. Five minutes here saves a much longer cleanup later.

Give your visitors a concrete incentive to sign up. Concrete incentives are what turn a visitor into a lead. A few options worth considering:

• A discount code: A percentage or dollar amount off at launch, redeemable once they've signed up.

• Early access: First crack at buying, backing, or downloading before the general public.

• A downloadable asset: An STL, a wallpaper, a preview chapter, or a printable. Something low-cost to produce that still feels like a real gift.

• A bonus for early sign-ups: A free gift or perk exclusive to people who sign up before a cutoff date. (This pairs especially well with a countdown timer, since it gives people a reason to act before time runs out.)

• Behind-the-scenes access: Concept art, updates, or a first look at something not public yet.

Pick whichever incentive makes the most sense for your launch.

The page builder comes with engagement features built directly into it—purpose-suited tools designed with pre-launch campaigns in mind. They let you build a page around tested, proven tactics for driving engagement, rather than having to figure out what works from scratch.

• Countdown timer: Turn this on. For lead gen specifically, it's highly recommended. It builds urgency toward your launch date. But it also gives people an actual reason to bookmark your page and come back to watch the number tick down, rather than signing up once and forgetting you exist. (See Setting up a countdown.)

• Audience counter: Recommended. Seeing that hundreds of people already signed up makes a new visitor more likely to as well. Worth waiting until your count looks respectable before switching it on. (See Setting up an audience counter.)

• Timed reveals: Recommended, if applicable. Use these if you actually have staged content to drip out (art, characters, lore). If you don't have anything to reveal yet, skip it rather than forcing it. (See Setting up a timed reveal.)

Make use of whichever engagement features best fit your campaign.

Launch Oracle's page builder lets you configure post-signup actions—that is, what happens the moment someone hands over their email, built specifically with pre-launch campaigns in mind. You're also not limited to picking just one: you can select any combination of the three.

• Asset download: Files are delivered immediately.

• Redirect: To your Discord, your crowdfunding platform, or wherever you want them to go next.

• Custom thank-you message: A simple confirmation, good for setting expectations about what's coming and when.

For most lead gen campaigns, running all three is the easiest way to cover your bases—deliver value, confirm the signup, and point them toward where you want them to go next, all in one motion.

Desktop edits cascade down to tablet and mobile automatically, until you edit tablet or mobile directly, at which point that view stops inheriting changes from above it. Don't stop at desktop: a layout that looks great on a laptop screen often collapses into something cramped on a phone. Since a large share of traffic to a pre-launch page comes from social links people tap on their phones, treat the mobile preview as required, not optional, before you publish.

Save Draft never puts anything in front of a real visitor. It's a private checkpoint, and you can save as many times as you want with zero risk. Publish is the only action that makes your page live, which means you can build, walk away, come back days later, and keep refining without any pressure. Nothing goes public until you decide it does. Use Preview Draft along the way to see exactly what a visitor would see, without ever exposing the page itself.

The standard builder covers the vast majority of what a lead gen page needs—fonts, colors, buttons, layout, spacing. Custom CSS exists for the remaining edge cases the builder doesn't have a toggle for. It's powerful, but it's also the one place a mistake can actually break your page's layout or functionality instead of just looking slightly off. Reach for it last, and only if you're comfortable enough with CSS to know what you're changing.

1. Open the page builder. Click the page builder icon from your campaign's overview.

2. Get familiar with the toolbar before you start building.

   • Variant Selector (top of the builder): Shows the page variants tied to your campaign. Every campaign has three: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. Reservation campaigns include an additional reservation variant. A green light means that variant is published and live — it's what visitors currently see. Decide which variant you want to build or edit first.

   • Page Status: Shows whether you're viewing a draft, a page in progress, or a published page.

   • Sidebar: Holds your editing tools—Page Layout, Global Styles, Media Library, Templates, CRM Sync, Schedule Settings, Signup Settings, and Custom CSS.

5. Add engagement features.

   • Countdown: Build urgency toward your launch date and give visitors a reason to return to your page. (Setting up a countdown)

   • Audience Counter: Show your live signup count, with the option to set a threshold before it appears. (Setting up an audience counter)

   • Timed Reveals: Gradually reveal content (art, characters, etc.) over time to keep visitors checking back. (Setting up a timed reveal)

6. Configure what happens after someone signs up. Choose from:

   • Redirect Link: Send visitors to another page or link, such as your crowdfunding platform or Discord server.

   • Asset Download: Give them immediate access to a digital file, such as an STL file.

   • Custom Thank-You Message: Build a personalized thank-you page, complete with your own image, message, and formatting.

7. Schedule when your pre-launch page transitions to launch by clicking Schedule Settings. (This can also be adjusted from your campaign overview.)

8. (Optional) Fine-tune your page with

9. Click Save Draft. Saving doesn't publish your page. Use the dropdown next to Save Draft to select Preview Draft and see what a visitor would see before you publish.

10. Check the builder's Checklist to confirm your page is ready. It tracks:

    • Lead capture (whether a sign-up flow is set up)

    • CRM sync

    • Post-signup redirect

    • Page content

A lead gen page with no visitors captures zero leads. Traffic is the other half of the equation. Building the page is only step one. The second, equally important step is actually getting people to it.

A "channel" is just marketing shorthand for any place or method you use to get someone to click through to your page. Different channels reach different people in different ways, so most successful lead gen campaigns don't rely on just one. They actually combine a few. Here's where to start:

• Social posts: Post about your campaign—and your signup incentive—on whatever platforms you or your organization already use: Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook, wherever your following actually is. This costs nothing but your time, and it's usually the first channel to try, since you already have an audience there, even if it's small.

• Paid ads: Running ads on Meta (Facebook/Instagram) or Google means paying to put your page in front of people who don't already follow you. This is how you reach beyond your existing audience, but it does cost money. (Launch Oracle's advanced reporting lets you track what each lead costs you. See Advanced reporting.)

• Community and forums: Go where your specific audience already hangs out and talk about your campaign there: Discord servers, subreddits, tabletop-specific forums, and Facebook groups. This works especially well for niche products, since these are people already interested in the category, just not yet aware of you.

• Your existing email list: If you've run a campaign before and already have a list from it, email them directly. This is usually your highest-converting channel by far. These are people who've already shown interest and trust you, unlike a stranger seeing a cold ad for the first time.

You don't need to use every channel above. Pick the ones that make sense for your audience and budget. It's fine to start small (a couple of social posts and a community post) rather than trying to do everything on day one.

Whichever channels you use, give each one its own ref link before you start sending traffic through it. A ref link is just a version of your page URL with a small tag added to it, so Launch Oracle knows which link someone came in through. Set one up for your Instagram post, a different one for your Discord post, another for a paid ad—same page, different links. That's what lets your report break leads out by source later (see How to read and analyze your report), instead of giving you one blended number that hides which channels are actually working and which aren't worth your time and money.

1. Navigate to the campaign you're creating ref links for. From your dashboard, go to Properties, then select Campaigns.

1. Go to the campaign summary and click Links.

2. Name your ref links using a consistent format. You can edit a ref link's title anytime by clicking .

• [Audience or geography]: Who this traffic is aimed at or where it's coming from—a country or region (US, ROW for "Rest of World"), a platform (Instagram, Discord), or a specific audience type (Lookalike, Retargeting).

• [Campaign type]: Which campaign this link supports, especially once you're running more than one at a time (Leads, Reservation, Quiz).

• [Specific detail]: Enough detail to tell two similar links apart—usually the actual targeting you used (an interest category, an ad's creative name, a specific post or email).

• Helpful abbreviations for the [Audience or geography] segment:

  Abbreviation	Stands for
  US	United States
  ROW	Rest of world

3. Add your ref links to groups. Launch Oracle provides default groups and you can also create your own custom groups.

4. Leave Include campaign attributes in links toggled off, unless you have a specific reason to need them. Turning it on produces extremely long links.

5. Your ref links are listed out according to their groups. You'll also see a Default group, which gives you the full and short ref link to your campaign page, along with a QR code to it.

Launch Oracle works even better connected to the rest of your tools. Third-party applications connect at the property level, not per campaign. That means once you link a platform once, every campaign under that property syncs to it automatically. If you're not ready to connect everything right away, that's fine too: your campaign data is still captured within Launch Oracle, and you can connect additional platforms whenever you're ready.

You don't need to connect everything on day one, but two are worth doing before you ever publish a page. Your CRM or email platform (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or similar) matters most. Every hour it's disconnected is an hour of leads sitting in Launch Oracle instead of entering your actual email sequence, and the whole point of a pre-launch campaign is staying in touch with that audience until launch day.

If you're running paid traffic, connect Meta or Google next. It's what lets your reporting tell you not just how many leads you got, but what each one actually cost you. Without it, you're flying blind on ad spend the moment your campaign goes live.

1. From the left-hand menu, navigate to your property and click Applications.

2. Choose the platform you'd like to connect and click Connect Property. Launch Oracle currently supports:

3. Locate your API key from the third-party platform. Each platform generates and manages its own API keys, so you'll need to retrieve yours from their dashboard. If you're not sure where to find it, click Where to find your API key for platform-specific instructions.

4. Copy and paste your API key into Launch Oracle and click Connect. Launch Oracle will authenticate the connection and confirm once it's active.

5. Confirm the connection is live. A connected platform shows a green status indicator next to its name under Applications.

A lead gen campaign lets you build an email list—the single most important thing to have in place when you're gearing up for a launch. It's what helps you avoid launching a product with no one there to see it: no warm group of people already interested, no one to tell the moment you go live. Instead, by the time you launch, you've already got that list and Launch Oracle's reporting has already told you where those people came from and what got them to sign up.

Once your lead gen campaign is live and bringing in leads, a few places to go from here:

• Learn How to read and analyze your report to dig deeper into your campaign's performance analytics.

• If you're running Meta or Google ads, use Advanced reporting to see what each lead actually cost you.

• Create a launch page so you're ready for a seamless transition from pre-launch to launch when the time comes.