How to Build Your

Mailing List From

Scratch
By Jenny L. Hamby

(815) 254-4939
www.SeminarMarketingPro.com
 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect
to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken
in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for er-
rors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of
the information contained herein.
How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
3
Introduction
Notes:

I wrote the first draft of How to Successfully Market

Seminars and Workshops in 2003 because I knew that my
knowledge of writing promotional materials for seminars and
workshops would help a lot of people. And there was no way on
earth that I could help every seminar promoter I met or who
wanted my help one of me, thousands of promoters. I knew
that putting my info in a written guide would give them access to
valuable information that isnt really available anywhere else.

The guide was (and still is) great. Got tons of great reviews.
But I soon stumbled over another problem.

Every week heck, every day I talked to someone who was

jumping into the seminar business headfirst, without any real
clue of the very costly risks they were about to face.

You see, marketing seminars and workshops is not a

cakewalk. Your chances of mailing a thousand brochures to
complete strangers and filling a room are microscopic.
Persuading prospects to part with their money is a piece of cake
when you compare it to the obstacle of getting them to commit to
spending one or more days with you. The challenge grows
exponentially when youre marketing to people who dont already
know, like and trust you.

What Youre Really Asking For

Think for a minute about whats involved in attending a
three-day boot camp. First, you have three days out of the office
and away from your family. You could easily have a day of travel
on either side of the event (were up to a five-day commitment
now). And you always end up blowing at least one day trying to
wrap up loose ends before you leave, not to mention a day or two
of playing catch-up once you return from the event. As a seminar
promoter, you may think youre asking prospects to give you a
mere three days. But your three-day boot camp really translates
into a full week out of the office and away from the real world.

When prospects realize how much time theyll have to invest

to attend your event plus how much more time theyll have to
devote to implementing the lessons and skills you teach they

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

4 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

slow down to consciously evaluate whether to attend your

seminar. Heres what that means to you:
Notes:
You have to contact them multiple times.

If youre extremely well known to your target audience

perhaps a bit of a celebrity and youre offering a phenomenal
deal of a seminar, it might not be that difficult to get people to
sign up. But for 99% of seminar promoters, its going to take lots
of contact to even make your audience aware that an event is
taking place and loads of follow up to get them to sign up.

Case in point: I belong to a membership program run by one

of the countrys top direct marketers. When I took a break from
my writing schedule to check todays mail, I found a last chance
type of promotion for an upcoming seminar thats taking place in
Chicago, which is about 40 miles from where I live.

Heres the shocking part. I vaguely knew that there was yet
another event coming up sometime this spring (this company
holds frequent boot camps; I attended one about three months
prior to writing this). But until last week, I had no idea the darn
thing was being held in Chicago. Why? Because every time I read
something about this upcoming conference, I skipped right over
it. I had already decided that I couldnt afford to take another
week out of my life at the moment to attend a seminar. It was
much better to stay put and use that time to implement things I
had learned at past events or to wade through the stacks of
books, audio programs and home-study guides lining my office
walls.

Understand, too, that I had already received several

promotions for this event. Mention of the event had appeared in
the newsletter I receive each month (so, at least three mentions
there). I had also received a few direct-mail promotions and/or
inserts with the newsletter. My best estimate is todays direct
mail promotion was the 7th or 8th time Ive been contacted about
this event and it took until the 7th or 8th promotion before I was
even aware of where it was being held.

Could this minor detail affect my purchasing decision? You

bet! Now I know that I wont be wasting two days of travel time. I
can get to downtown Chicago in 90 minutes on a normal
workday. The boot camp that I had ruled out immediately when I
first heard about it has suddenly become a very big Maybe. Yet

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
5
it will probably take another kick in the pants or two before I sign
up, if I do at all.
Notes:
Heres something else to chew on: I am familiar with this
individual. I invest a fair chunk of change to receive his
newsletter, so you know that I pay attention when I receive
mailings from his company. If its this hard to persuade ME, how
hard would it be to get someone who has never heard of this
individual and who has never asked to receive information
from him to spend a couple of days and more than a thousand
dollars attending this boot camp?

In a nutshell: Darn near impossible.

You need to build a strong relationship with your prospects.

The stronger your relationship with your prospects, the easier it
will be to sell seats and the less youll spend on marketing.

Lets go back to the seminar marketing example above. This

company offers several different levels of membership. The
higher and more prestigious the level of membership, the more
information you receive each month and the more frequent
and personal your contact with the guru. Im willing to bet that
the higher the level of membership, the greater the percentage of
members will be attending this event.

After all, its only logical. If I pay you $100 a year for your
newsletter, Ill pay attention to some of what you say. And Ill
probably take your suggestions and recommendations on a
product or two. But if Im paying you $15,000 a year for advice,
Id look like a fool not to listen to everything you say including
when you tell me to attend a particular seminar, where Ill get a
chance to learn from you again and be recognized for my elite
status within your membership group.

The lesson here is this: As your relationship with clients

grows stronger, their resistance to your sales message decreases.
Ideally, you want to spend the bulk of your resources marketing
to a group who knows, likes and trusts you so much that all you
need to do is deliver bare-bones information about an event to
start generating registrations.

Therefore, if you want to develop a successful seminar

business and make money on your events, you should spend
most of your time, money and effort marketing to a good house
list. To do otherwise is to take an unbelievable risk.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

6 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

I dont mean to rain on your parade. Every once in a while, I

meet a new seminar promoter who gets offended when I suggest
Notes: that spending thousands of dollars on direct mailing to rented
lists is not a sound strategy. They get upset and often tell me that
they intend to prove me wrong. If you are one of these people,
fantastic! Use my negativity as a challenge and motivator to
prove me wrong. I sincerely hope you do.

But for the rest of us mere mortals, the fact is that spending
the bulk of your promotional dollars trying to sell a seminar to a
cold list a huge waste of time and money.

Ive watched clients learn this lesson the hard way. I advised
them that response rates for seminar promotions tend to be low
(even for sensational campaigns), that it takes several contacts to
get someone to sign up, and that the far sounder strategy is to
spend time building a mailing list before promoting events. They,
in turn, assured me that they understood the risk theyre taking,
but that they were willing to gamble because they wanted to
promote their seminars NOW.

What invariably happened was that my predictions would

come true. Our promotional campaigns wouldnt fill rooms. The
client wouldnt get rich and, occasionally, would even lose money
promoting the event.

Thats why Im writing this manual now. Because it isnt

enough to have great copy, a fantastic seminar, a bargain price, a
well-known speaker or any of the other things you need for a
winning marketing campaign if you dont have a solid list.

Dont get me wrong. Improving your copy, your offer or a

myriad other variables will certainly bump up your response rate.
But if your list stinks, it doesnt matter how great your seminar as
a whole is your response rate will stink, too.

Cut Your Promotional Expenses

Getting a better response rate (and, therefore, generating
more revenue) isnt the only reason you want to develop your
own house list. Youll also shave thousands of dollars in
promotional costs from your promotional budget.

When renting a mailing list, you can expect to spend $100 to

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
7
$150+ per thousand names ($0.10 to $0.15+ per name). And you
typically have to rent 3,000 to 5,000 names minimum at a time.
Notes:
Lets say youre renting 5,000 names for a mailing. That
would be about $625 in list rental costs alone more if you
mailed to the list multiple times. With your own list, there are no
list rental costs, leaving more money to invest into other areas of
your promotional budget.

Consider, too, that a rented list will produce a lower response

rate than your own list. Remember, the people on your list have
asked to receive information about your seminars or otherwise
indicated interest in the information you have to offer. Theyre
more likely to notice and read your promotions, more likely to be
interested in the topic, and more likely to respond. With a rented
list, youre taking an educated guess that the people on the list
are truly interested in your seminar topic, and youre hoping that
your marketing materials are compelling enough to seize their
attention. You need to pay close attention to response rates
because a lower response rate translates into a lower return on
investment and less money in your pocket.

EXAMPLE: You mail 5,000 brochures to a rented list and

another 5,000 brochures to people on your mailing list. Tickets
to your one-day event cost $300 each. Finally, lets assume that
you generate a 0.1% response rate to this one-time mailing to the
rented list, but a 0.5% response rate to your house list. Check out
the math.

5,000 x 0.001 = 5 registrations x $300 = $1,500 in

revenue

5,000 x 0.005 = 25 registrations X $300 = $7,500 in

revenue

Your house list has already generated an extra $6,000 in

revenue.

Now lets take a look at your list rental costs.

List rental costs (5,000 names @ $125/thousand) = $625

Revenue generated by the rented list: $1,500

The rented list produces $875 in net revenue. Your house

list not only costs you absolutely nothing in rental fees,

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

8 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

but it also produces almost 8 times the revenue as the

rented list.
Notes:
Whether youre a consultant who wants to use seminars to
generate new business, a speaker who envisions seminars as a
new revenue stream, a financial planner who wants to use
seminars to land more consultations, or an information
marketer who is using seminars to deliver content in yet
another format, this manual will help you slash your
promotional expenses and generate better response rates.

Were going to define exactly what a house list is, the type of
information your database should contain, different methods
for enticing people to sign up for your mailing list, how to use
products to build your mailing list, how to turn warm prospects
into seminar attendees and much more.

Ready to get started? Good. Lets go!

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
9
Chapter 1: Taking Stock
Notes:
By its loosest definition, a house list consists of any names
and information you own. Technically, this could include people
youve met at conferences, worked with in the past, names youve
dug up through Internet and other research, and even mailing
lists that youve purchased.

Lets take a look at my business for illustration. I use two

programs to manage my databases. The first is ACT! In this
database, I keep data on people that I meet and have worked with
direct marketers, copywriters, graphic designers and other
colleagues; members of associations that Ive belonged to (more
on this in a bit); consultants, seminar promoters, and
information marketers Ive met at seminars and conferences;
copywriting and consulting clients; customers whove purchased
my information products; and seminar promoters Ive identified
through my own research. This is the database I use to generate
data needed for direct mail campaigns.

My second database is housed in the shopping cart program I

use to sell products online. This database is used primarily for
Internet marketing (the bulk of the list consists of names and
email addresses), although there is some overlap with my ACT!
database. When customers make a purchase or otherwise provide
me with their full contact information, I add their contact
information to my ACT! database. (Its a matter of personal
preference for me you can easily export information from the
shopping cart program for use in direct mail promotions.)

My shopping cart database is 100% opt-in. In other words,

the people who are in the database made the decision and took
action to add their names to my list. Some joined the distribution
list for my email newsletter. Others gave me their name and
email address in exchange for a free digital report. Still others
provided their name, address and email address when making a
purchase on my web site.

My ACT! database, on the other hand, is not an opt-in list per

se. In most cases, the individuals gave me their contact
information so that we could stay in touch, handing me a
business card, for instance, or including data in the signature
section of emails theyve sent me.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

10 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

The smallest subsegment of my database are prospective

customers whose information Ive found on my own for
Notes: instance, by searching online for consultants who offer seminars.
Once I found them, Id go through their web site to find their
mailing addresses and phone numbers to add to my database.

From a marketing perspective, this last segment is hands-

down the weakest portion of my database. The people who are on
the list are qualified, to the extent that they are the type of
customer I could work with. However, these prospects didnt ask
to receive my information. Most likely, they dont know who I am
when I contact them. This segment of my database is the
equivalent of a rented list; the biggest difference is that I dont
pay a rental fee to use the names.

One segment that no longer exists in my database is the

membership lists of associations to which I belong. A decade ago,
you could join an association and do whatever you liked with the
membership list. Although most members would use the lists for
networking only, some members typically the supplier or
vendor members would use the lists for marketing, importing
the data directly into their own databases. Many associations
now prohibit this practice. Instead, if you want to market to
association members, you have to rent the mailing list from the
association.

Two words of warning regarding such lists. First, if you want

to join an association whose members would make ideal
prospects for your business, be sure youre complying with the
associations rules about use of its mailing list.

Second, be aware that any list which you can purchase for
unlimited use will have both pros and cons. On the plus side, you
wont have to pay a rental fee every time you want to mail to the
list, which could save you tens of thousands of dollars each year.
And presumably, the prospects on the list will match your profile
of an ideal attendee.

But theres a major negative to be aware of that these

people have not requested that you contact them. They have not
opted-in to your list and given you permission to market to them.
The bottom line is that youre still marketing to a cold list.

Your goal and what I mean when referring to a house list

throughout this manual is to cultivate a list of people who have
opted-in to your mailing list.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
11
Direct Mail or E-mail?
One key question to consider when building your mailing list Notes:
is the type of information you want to gather. Do you want e-mail
addresses? Postal mailing addresses? Fax numbers? Phone
numbers?

You might be tempted to let your preferences for marketing

media dictate the type of data you gather. For instance, you want
to market online, so you think you need to gather only names and
email addresses. On the flip side, you might want to use direct
mail only, so you dont see the point in collecting email
addresses.

Although this strategy may work well in the short term,

ideally you want to gather as much information as you can about
your prospects. The more ways you can contact a prospect, the
better your chances of breaking through the advertising clutter
thats competing with your promotions for your prospects
attention and the better your chances of finding the marketing
media that works best for contacting a particular individual. Your
best chance of successfully marketing your seminar lies in
building a comprehensive database.

In addition, be forewarned: if you build your entire marketing

program around one type of media only, you are taking a big risk.
There are no guarantees that the one marketing tool you rely on
to fill seats will continue to work as well as it does, if at all. Need
proof? Ask any business owner who relied primarily on
telemarketing or fax broadcasting and then had to scramble to
find new marketing tools once the government drastically limited
the use of these media. By collecting multiple types of contact
information from your prospects, you are keeping all your
options open regarding the types of promotional tools youll be
equipped to use in the future.

Core data that should be gathered for all prospects include:

Name

Company name

Mailing address

Phone number

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

12 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Fax number

Notes: Email address

Additional data that you may want to collect include:

Job title

Type of business

Home mailing address (when the primary address

collected is a business address) and industry SIC code

In addition, think about other data that could help you

segment your list and better target your mailings. Would it
help to know how long an organization has been in business,
its annual sales, or how many employees it has? Do you want
to know an individuals level of education, net worth or
gender? This is all information that can be gathered and
added to your database.

Go for the Shy Yes First

Of course, you dont need to gather all of the information
you want in one interaction with a prospect nor could you
in most situations. Prospects are skeptical and increasingly
wary about sharing information with marketers for fear of
having their privacy violated. So pinpoint the information
that is most critical to have and find a way to get it early in
your relationship. Then create a plan for gathering the rest of
the data you want as your relationship with your prospects
grows.

Lets take a look at a few examples to illustrate how the

shy yes comes into play.

EXAMPLE #1: Jane wants to do most of her marketing

online, using her web site and email
marketing to keep costs under control.
Therefore, gathering prospects names
and email addresses is most important
for her short-term success.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
13
To ethically bribe prospects into sharing their names and
email addresses in other words, getting them to opt-in to her
email list Jane decides to offer a free report. She sets up a short Notes:
landing page on her web site to describe her offer and ask for the
opt-in.

She drives traffic to the opt-in page using a variety of tools,

such as pay-per-click advertising, referrals from affiliates, banner
ads, and mentions in articles that she writes for industry
publications.

Once prospects opt-in to her list, she fulfills on her promise to

deliver the free report. The last page of the free report contains a
pitch for her audio CD program which normally sells for $49
and a coupon that lets readers order a free copy of the program as
a special thank you for requesting her free report. To order the
audio program, prospects need to share more information, such
as their address, phone and fax number. Now Jane has a variety
of ways to contact these individuals about upcoming events and
other products by email, direct mail, telemarketing, and fax.

In the next phase of her database development, Jane might

add another type of contact such as an industry survey thats
sent to leaders in her field (in other words, her subscribers). The
survey could gather data and opinions such as the most pressing
issues her prospects are facing, what associations they belong to,
what magazines they read, how often they attend seminars, what
type of training programs they prefer (such as teleseminars,
seminars, or home-study programs) and so on.

EXAMPLE #2: Dans organization relies primarily on

direct marketing to sell its seminars.
However, he recognizes that Internet
marketing would help generate additional
sales and provide some cost savings, so he
is interested in starting to build a database
of opt-in email addresses.

Dan has written a free booklet of tips that he promotes via

press release, advertisements and direct-mail postcards that are
sent to rented mailing lists. When prospects order the report, he
mails them a printed copy of the booklet. The last page of the
booklet offers readers the chance to receive additional tips via
email. To receive the bonus tips, they have to visit a specific page
on his organizations web site, where theyll provide their name
and email address via an opt-in box. Now Dan also is able to

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

14 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

contact his seminar prospects using a variety of media.

Notes: He also promotes the report via pay-per-click advertising.

Visitors order the report on his web site, where he captures
their email address at the time of order.

Be aware that the more information you ask for, the fewer
people will respond to your request. Thats why it makes
sense to ask for information over a series of contacts rather
than trying to get an individuals life history the first time you
meet. Marketing is often compared to romance for good
reason. When you first meet someone youre interested in,
chances are good youll scare the person off if you toss out a
bunch of personal questions and propose marriage at the first
meeting. But your chances are much better if you ask for a
name and phone number the first time you meet and slowly
build up the level of commitment and information you seek
with each additional contact.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
15
Action Planner
How many (postal) mailing addresses are in your database now? Notes:

How many of these addresses are opt in in other words, the

person provided the address to you (e.g., by making a purchase
or requesting information)?

How many email addresses are in your database now?

How many of these email addresses are opt-ins?

Which types of data do you want to collect immediately, during

your first interaction with prospective customers?

Which pieces of data will you collect as you try taking your
relationship with your prospects to the next level? What will you
offer to prospects in exchange for this additional information?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
17
Chapter 2: Using Free Resources to
Grow Your List Notes:
One obvious, yet often overlooked, way to grow your mailing
list is to post a Join Our Mailing List form somewhere on your
website. Some prospects will be so motivated to learn more about
your upcoming seminars that this is all the enticement they need
to join your list.

Other prospects, if not the majority of them, will need a little

more encouragement before theyll willingly give you their email
or mailing address. For this group, there are several types of bait
that you can use to hook prospects interest and get them to bite
at your offer. They include, but arent limited to:

Free reports or white papers. Identify a problem that

many prospects are struggling with, and then present your
solution in a white paper. Or pinpoint many common mistakes
that prospects make, then offer advice regarding what they
should be doing instead.

Here are a few examples (replace the underlined text with

wording that best suits your seminar and promotional situation):

How to Put More Butts in Seats Using Internet Marketing

How to Fill Seminar Seats When Youre Marketing on a

Shoestring Budget

The 10 Biggest Mistakes Most Seminar Promoters Make

and How to Avoid Them

List your topic and title ideas here:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

18 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Tip sheets or booklets. Consolidate several of your best

tips into one document.
Notes:
TIP: Provide your tips in a printed booklet so that it becomes
logical to require a prospects mailing address vs. merely
delivering a digital document in exchange for a name and email
address.

Here are some title ideas:

21 Tips for Filling Your Seminar Seats

The 7 Most Cost-Effective Ways to Promote Seminars

7 Secrets that the Most Successful Seminar Promoters Know

and Dont Want You to Find Out

List your topic and title ideas here:

Free e-books. One value-packed piece of bait is the free e-

book. If youre a prolific writer and have so many information
products that it wont hurt your bottom line to give away a book,
certainly investigate this type of bait. An e-book may be a good
type of bait for your campaign if you find that prospects need a
lot of information about what you do before theyre ready to sign
up for a full-blown seminar. Finally, consider using an e-book if
you really want to maximize the power of viral marketing. Being
able to offer someone a free book makes prospects feel important
making it much easier for them to refer their friends, relatives
and colleagues to your site to download their own copies.

TIP: One easy way to produce an e-book is to compile a large

series of tips and lessons just make easy tip or lesson its own
chapter.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
19
List your topic and title ideas here:

Notes:

Free teleseminars. Offering prospects the opportunity to

participate in one of your teleseminars for free can kill two birds
with one stone. First, you get to add names to your mailing list
when prospects register for the event. Second, you get to give
them a taste of your teaching style and the quality of information
youll deliver when they actually show up and participate in your
seminar.

You have the option of offering teleseminars that are closely

related to your live seminar. You can also offer events that are
only generally related to your topic. Either method will add
names to your mailing list; however, youll probably see that
people who register for the closely related teleseminar are most
likely to register for an event.

For example, I could promote a free teleseminar about

marketing in general or a teleseminar about marketing seminars
specifically. Id expect the greatest response to a live seminar
about seminar marketing from prospects who signed up for the
latter teleseminar.

You may also want to involve other professionals in your free

teleseminar. Here are two ways to do so:

Find someone to serve as the call host and moderator,

interviewing you as the expert (this makes for much more
interesting listening and takes the pressure off of you to keep
enthusiasm and excitement high, a challenging task when youre
talking in a vacuum with all of the listeners muted out of the call).

You play host and interview other experts that your prospects
may want to hear.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

20 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

List your topic and title ideas here:

Notes:

List potential guest experts here:

List potential hosts/interviewers here:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
21
Free audio recordings. Like teleseminars, free audio
recordings are a great way to capture leads while giving prospects
a peek of what it would be like to attend an event where youre Notes:
speaking. Unlike teleseminars, however, free audio recordings
relieve you of having to deliver content at a specific time, as well
as go through the hassle of repeatedly organizing, promoting and
delivering teleseminars. Instead, you deliver the content once,
then reap the benefits indefinitely.

For content, you can offer a recording of a teleseminar youve

conducted in the past. Or choose a selection of audio recordings
from a past event that youll be holding again soon.

How you deliver the recording is a function of time, budget,

and convenience. Personally, I prefer delivering a recording on
CD rather than as a digital file accessible on a website. This
provides a logical reason for requesting a prospects mailing
address. In addition, it buys me some real estate on a prospects
desk and helps make me real to the prospect. (If youre marketing
primarily online, this becomes important. People like to work
with and buy from real people and real companies not
nameless, faceless websites and companies.)

However, there is some cost associated with producing and

mailing CDs, which is why you may want to let prospects
download or play your recording right at your web site. Some
promoters cover their costs by asking prospects to pay shipping
and handling on the CD (for example, $3.95 to $5.95), while
giving the CD itself away for free. Whether this would be an
acceptable proposition to your audience is something to test.

Be advised that asking for any money will likely lower your
response rate, at least slightly. Some prospects will be turned off
by being asked to pay anything for a free product; others simply
wont want to go through the hassle of getting out their credit
card and placing an order of just a few dollars.

List your topic and title ideas here:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

22 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

What pros do you see in delivering a physical product?

Notes:

What cons do you see in delivering a physical product?

What pros do you see in delivering a digital product?

What cons do you see in delivering a digital product?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
23
Which type of recording will you deliver?

Notes:

Free consultations, audits, reviews, etc. Giving

someone a chunk of your time for free can be a good way to get in
front of prospects who are actively seeking solutions to their
problems and an ideal lead-generation tool if you have
coaching or consulting services to sell. Your consultation gives
prospects a chance to see for themselves whether you know what
youre talking about and whether theyd like working with you. It
also gives you a good way to sell prospects on attending an
upcoming seminar or workshop.

To maximize the response to your offer, set boundaries about

what youll cover during your consultation and give the free
consultation a catchy name for example, the 27 Most
Important Elements Your Seminar Promotions Should Contain.
Also, create scarcity by limiting the number of consultations or
audits youre giving away.

List your topic and title ideas here:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

24 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Free newsletters. Offering prospects a free subscription to

your newsletter is a fantastic way to grow your list and continue
Notes: marketing to qualified leads assuming, of course, that you
actually publish your newsletter on a regular basis. Based on my
experience, fewer people will respond to an offer for a free
newsletter (probably because most people are overwhelmed with
information and dont want yet another e-zine clogging their in-
box each week), but those who do subscribe will be very
interested in continuing to learn more about your area of
expertise.

List your title ideas here:

What type of newsletter do you want to produce one tip or

lesson per issue or a full-blown e-zine with several regular
sections in each issue? List your ideas here.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
25
How often do you want to publish your newsletter?
Publishing weekly puts your name in front of prospects more
often; however, it can be strenuous to write that much content Notes:
and may be overwhelming to readers. Publishing monthly puts
your name out there less often; however, readers may pay more
attention precisely because you arent bombarding them with
information.

Free mini-course. If you dont want the responsibility of

publishing a regular newsletter, consider a mini-course. Write a
series of short articles, say five to nine of them, and then deliver
the articles one at a time via autoresponder, a program that
automatically delivers email messages to opt-in subscribers
according to a schedule that you set. The best mini-courses
educate prospects enough to make them want to learn more and
include a link to the sales page where they can learn more about
the product or event that youre promoting.

List your topic ideas here:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

26 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Free seminars. Free seminars tend to take three formats:

Notes: a free educational seminar with a strong sales pitch

involved, designed to sell prospects into signing up for a
free consultation where theyll be persuaded to purchase a
consultants or coachs services

a free preview seminar, where prospects will get a solid

introductory education, as well as a preview of what will
taught at an upcoming full-length paid seminar or
workshop

a free product seminar, where prospects will have a

chance to see a companys product in action and then
make a purchase or sign up for an in-house product
demonstration and sales appointment.

Free seminars are a fantastic way of building the all-

important relationship with a prospect. However, the downside is
that it can be nearly as challenging to get prospects to register for
and attend a free event as it can be to generate registrations for
paid events.

The key to successfully promoting free events is ensuring that

you deliver content and accurately communicate the benefits that
prospects will receive by attending even if they do not take the
next step.

You will also need to pay attention to your post-registration

marketing. Its much easier for a registered attendee to back out
of attending a free event because they havent paid anything to
register. Forfeiting a hefty registration fee makes it harder for
attendees to justify not showing up for paid events.

Which type of free seminar would work best for you

educational, preview or product demonstration?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
27
List your topic ideas here:

Notes:

Which Type of Bait Is Best for My Audience

To choose your bait or at least the type(s) of bait you want
to start with consider the following factors:

What types of bait you have already created and sitting on

your bookshelf or in your computer.

What types of bait are easiest for you to create. As a

writer, I find that reports, booklets and the like are a snap
for me to create; audio products are not yet something I
could do in my sleep.

Your budget. Do you need to purchase software or

equipment to create your bait? Do you need to hire other
professionals to help in the creation process? How much
will it cost you to produce and deliver the different forms
of bait and what do you want to spend?

Your timeline. How long will it take you to create the

different forms of bait? And when do you want to start
actively generating leads and growing your mailing list?

What types of bait your prospects are most likely to use.

You may have a sense that your prospects prefer written
products over audio products, or vice versa, based on your
experience working with this audience. If you dont know
or if youd like to have your beliefs about your audiences

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

28 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

preferences confirmed, survey your existing list about

what type of products they prefer. And, of course, dont
Notes: forget to test; offer the same information in two or more
different formats (e.g., a report, a teleseminar, and a free
seminar) and see how many prospects respond to each
offer.

The fastest way to grow your mailing list is to use multiple

forms of bait on a variety of topics. The more choices you offer
your audience, the more likely it is that any single prospect will
find something to say yes to adding yet another name to your
mailing list.

Which types of bait do you already have?

Which types of bait do you want to create?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
29
What is your timeline?

Notes:

What is your budget?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
31
Chapter 3: Using Products to Put More
Butts in Seats Notes:

Another way to add names of qualified seminar prospects to

your house list is to sell information products that are related to
your seminar content.

Although this might depress your response rate a bit when

testing an offer for a free resource head-to-head against an offer
for a resource that someone must pay to receive, the freebie will
typically generate more leads selling information products is a
sound strategy that you should consider using for four primary
reasons:

1. Prospects who are willing to spend money on an

information product are, in my book, better and more
serious prospects than those who have requested free
information. If theyre willing to spend money on an e-
book, lets say, they likely to be willing to part with more
cash to attend a seminar.

2. Selling products not only creates a list of highly qualified

prospects, it also generates much-needed revenue to
sustain your business and marketing efforts while you
promote your seminars and workshops.

3. Information products move customers down your

seminar sales funnel. A low-priced information product
can provide the basic, birds-eye view about what you do,
enticing them to learn more at your higher-priced events.

4. Some prospects that you contact will never, ever attend

one of your seminars no matter how well you market
your event, how much high-quality content you deliver,
how impressive your results and testimonials are, how
good the price is, how many bonuses you give away, etc.
They wont attend because theyll always have a
scheduling conflict, they prefer to invest their education
and training dollars elsewhere, they dont like to travel,
they dont want to see and meet you, or they just plain
dont enjoy attending events. Accept this and use
information products as a way to capture part of their
wallets and hearts.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

32 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Although we will focus on using free information products as

a lead-generation tool throughout this manual, its worth
Notes: mentioning that information products also allow you to generate
back-of-the-room revenue at your events and offer seminar
attendees another way to continue learning about the material
you cover in your event. If youre not comfortable selling from the
stage or worse yet, youre not allowed to sell products and
services during your events thats fine. Understand that youre
leaving money on the table by not selling products and in many
cases, youre missing easy sales (theres no better time to sell
products that allows attendees to continue their studies and
learning at home then when theyre fired up at your event). But
you should at least let prospects know that you do have products
available and then start marketing those products to your
attendees once they return to their homes and offices.

Which Information Products Should You

Create?
The term information product is used to cover any form of
distributed information, such as:

Booklets

E-books

Books

Reports, white papers or studies

Audio programs (on CD or audiocassette)

Video programs (on DVD or VHS)

Workbooks

Manuals

Home-study programs

E-courses (courses taught via email)

Teleseminars

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
33
Software

Seminars Notes:
Workshops

You can also combine two or more forms of information

products to form comprehensive products that appeal to different
learning preferences or to create different levels of products.

For instance, if youre offering an audio program, a popular

strategy is to transcribe the recordings and then offer the
transcriptions as a bonus to purchasers. This allows visual
learners to consume your information in a way they prefer,
without increasing your product-creation time. You record the
program once, and then can develop another form of the product
by simply farming out the transcription. Presto you have two
products created.

Alternatively, you might incorporate your new audio program

into one or more packages of information. For instance, your
basic information package could be the audio program and
transcriptions. Your deluxe package might include a manual
youve written and some reports. The premium package would
include a video and some additional audio recordings. The more
comprehensive the package, the higher the price, the more
revenue you generate and the better qualified the customer
becomes as a prospect for your event.

To quickly and effectively move an individual from suspect to

qualified prospect to customer to seminar attendee, create a
funnel of products. As you move down or through the funnel, the
information products should become higher priced, as well as be
perceived as more comprehensive. As the funnel narrows, more
prospects will be weeded out. In other words, expect more people
to say yes to the lower-priced products at the top of your funnel
and fewer to purchase your highest-priced products and services.

For the most comprehensive funnel, include a few free

products at the very top of your funnel.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

34 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Possible Product Funnel

Notes: Price Product

FREE: ecourse, report, booklet, teleseminar

$19 e-book

$39 teleseminar or printed book

$79 audio program

$150 manual

$200 audio recordings from 1-day seminar

$300 1-day seminar

$400 basic information package

$600 2-day seminar

$800 deluxe information package

$999 3-day boot camp

As with the free lead-generation products we discussed in

the last chapter, the order in which you create products will
depend somewhat on your preferences, as well as what your
customers want. If youre extremely comfortable hosting
teleseminars and duplicating the recordings of such events, start
there. If youre a prolific writer, then create manuals and reports
first. The point is to get one or more information products
created as quickly as possible so that you can start developing a
quality list and generating revenue.

Whether you want to focus on higher- or lower-priced items

first is a matter of preference. Lower-priced items, such as a $19
e-book or $39 teleseminar will net you more names more
quickly. When your goal is to develop a list of highly qualified
prospects for your 3-day boot camp, this might make the most
sense.

However, if your goal is to not only put more people in seats,

but also to maximize your seminar revenue through back-of-the-
room sales, you would be better off to use free information

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
35
products to build a list, while spending the bulk of your product-
development time creating higher-priced products that you can
sell at the event. Notes:

Action Planner
Which products you have and can start promoting today?

Which products will you create and sell?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
37
Chapter 4: Promoting Your Bait
Notes:
To get prospects to opt-in to your email or mailing list, you
need to first get your offer of free or paid resources in their
hands. Here are some of the most common marketing tools you
can use. (Note: for the sake of brevity, this section focuses on the
use of free resources as bait. You can, of course, choose to grow
your list by selling information products; the tools listed below
can also be used to market your paid resources.)

Postcards. Postcards offer a few benefits that make them a

favorite of marketers. First, they are naked mail. You dont have
to waste time and energy trying to figure out how to persuade
prospects to open an envelope. Instead your offer is delivered
smack dab in front of prospects as they read their mail.

Postcards, at least when printed at their regular size (a

maximum size of 6 inches long by 4.25 inches high) are also
cheap to mail just $0.29 for first class mail, less if you mail
third-class. Postcards can be as simple as black text printed in
fluorescent cardstock to full-color printing on both sides of the
card, with the text customized to incorporate details about your
prospects (for example, their first name and the city they live in).
Which size and format will deliver the most bang for your buck is
something to test.

My preferences when designing postcards include:

Putting as much detail about the offer and why youre

writing on the address side of the card. Why? Because
thats the side thats delivered face up. (This is a rule I
extend to all types of direct mail. The mailing panel is
prime marketing real estate. Youre practically guaranteed
that all prospects will at least glance at it. The trick is
getting them to move on from there. Why take the chance
that your return address will be all it takes to convince
prospects that your postcard should be tossed straight in
the trash? Why not give them a teaser or short-and-sweet
version of your offer to convince them to flip that card
over and keep reading?)

Including at least one test of a plain Jane postcard

black text printed on a colored cardstock. What Ive
noticed sorting through my own mail is that these

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

38 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

stripped down, ugly cards actually command more

attention than the glossy, full-color pieces because they
Notes: are so ugly and unusual.

Use text, text and more text. Whats the point of hogging
up one entire side of your postcard with a picture that
may or may not do a stellar job of supporting your sales
message? Instead, drop the graphic and use all of the
space on your postcard to sell, sell, sell. (This isnt to say
that you cant use pictures on your postcards. Just stay
open to the idea of not doing things the way they are
typically done. Postcards typically have a picture on one
side and room for a short message on the other. You may
find this model works well for generating leads and sales.
However, if you test using an all-text model, you may find
that you generate even better results without a photo.)

Classified ads. Identify the publications that your prospects

read, and then run a short classified ad that drives them to your
website or toll-free number to order a report. Because you usually
will not have enough room to persuade someone to make a
purchase, classified ads are best used for lead-generation.

Display ads. As with classified ads, you should test running

display ads in the publications your prospects read. A few notes
about using display ads:

Go heavy on the copy. Graphic designers trained in

traditional print advertising like to use a large photo, lots
of white space and very little copy. This approach may
work well to build the brands of large corporations; it
does squat to generate action. If you want prospects to
respond to your ad, use copy. Lots of it.

Include a call to action. You also need to tell readers

exactly what you want them to do order a report,
register for a free teleseminar, request a free consultation.
Then give them directions as to how they should respond
by visiting a specific page on your website, calling your
toll-free number, faxing information to you. You may
even want to include a response form in your ad (bonus
tip: add a dotted line around your response form this
has been proven to boost response rates. Dotted lines
signal cut me out and do something with me to the
majority of us guess were well-trained coupon clippers,
eh?)

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
39
Start small, then test up. You can easily spend a fortune
on display advertising. It makes sense to start small and
then split test with the next larger size of ad to see which Notes:
size pulls a better response rate.

Multipurpose your ad. If you spring for a full-page ad (or

one close to it), use your ad in other promotions. Order
reprints of the page your ad appeared on (be sure the
magazine name appears at the top or bottom of the page,
which is standard procedure with most publications).
Then send the tear sheet out with your other promotions,
with a note like See our full-page ad in Time magazine.

Market freebies or paid products. Your best response rate

will typically be generated by an offer for a free
information product. However, you may find that display
ads make sense for promoting your paid products.
Whether you mention the price of your product and try to
win the sale right in the ad or you merely nudge readers to
call you for an information packet about your product will
depend on how much room you have to sell in your ad,
your price point, your product and your audience.
Generating sales of a $9.99 book (discounted from its
usual price of $19.99) would be easier to do in most cases
than generating sales of a $500 home-study guide. In the
latter case, the display ad would be better used to get
people to request information about the home-study
guide or better yet, to promote and generate requests
for a free report that relates to the topic of the home-
study guide (the guide would then be promoted directly
with or after fulfillment of the free report).

Flyers. Flyers can be posted on community bulletin boards,

displayed at retail locations, inserted and sent out with
newspapers, distributed in newsletters published by chambers of
commerce, stuffed under windshields, inserted into plastic bags
and hung on front doors, included in every order that leaves your
office, included with all outgoing mail, included with your
monthly newsletter, displayed at trade shows, and even mailed
out on their own. A few suggestions:

Use both sides of the page. Printing the second side of a

page doesnt cost that much more. And its a smart return
on investment that gives you a significantly larger piece of
marketing real estate to promote your offer. At the very

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

40 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

least, use the second side of your flyer to provide a very

roomy, user-friendly response form.
Notes:
Sell the second side of your flyer. If you really dont want
to use the second side of your flyer, find another business
that would like to buy the other side. This will reduce your
production costs and, if youre smart in selecting your co-
marketer, create a logical combination of offers to present
to readers. (For instance, a carpeting store offering a
report about the 7 questions you should ask when
selecting new carpeting could partner with a carpeting
cleaning company that offers a consumer education
bulletin revealing professional secrets about maximizing
the beauty and life of your new carpeting. Another
example: I could promote a free report containing tips for
increasing the pulling power of your seminar promotions
and offer the flip side of my flyer to an event planner who
wants to market a free report about selecting and
negotiating with hotels.)

Broadcast email. There are two major decisions you need

to make when sending out a broadcast emails to generate leads:

The first decision is the type of list youll use. You can rent
email lists of cold prospects. Some are obviously compiled
lists (1 million names for just $19 is a good sign that
youre dealing with a compiled list). Others are promoted
by the owners or brokers as being opt-in lists (for
example, magazines often rent the email addresses of
their subscribers). The other option is to have affiliates
and joint venture partners send your broadcast email to
their lists on your behalf. You can certainly generate some
type of response using a rented email list. However, I
much prefer having affiliates and joint venture partners
mail on your behalf.

Heres why: even if a list is technically an opt-in list (e.g.,

the magazine subscriber provided her email address and
didnt uncheck the box that said please send me offers
from third-party vendors), the people on that list did not
give YOU express permission to email them. They wont
know you from Adam and, thanks to the tendency of most
list owners to prohibit you from mentioning their names
(because, after all, they know their customers would get
ticked off knowing that the publisher they bought their
magazines from has turned around and sold their

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
41
private information), you cant properly reassure
recipients that you got their name via an opt-in list.
Instead, you are perceived as an unwelcome pest a Notes:
spammer.

If, on the other hand, the list owner (your affiliate or JV

partner) is sending the message (the message, of course,
needs to be written in the affiliates or JV partners voice
becoming an endorsement and recommendation of your
information), the message is not perceived as spam.

The second major decision you need to make regarding

your broadcast email is the format of message youll send,
which in turn affects the style of copy.

When relying on affiliates and JV partners to promote

your offer, youll most often want to use a plain text, very
conversational email. Most of these list owners work very
hard building relationships with their subscribers, and the
messages they send read very much like chatty emails sent
from one friend to another.

If you are renting an email list, on the other hand, youll

want to at least test using an HTML email. These
messages tend to be formatted and written as a traditional
display ad eye-catching graphic, bold headline, a little
bit of copy, and a call to action, complete with link to your
website.

Banner advertising. Find the websites your prospects visit,

then test using banner ads on those sites to drive traffic to your
site. Plan to pay a flat fee per specified number of impressions.
Youll be limited in how much you can say in your banner ad, so
work on developing short headlines that telegraph your offer. For
the best results, take visitors who click on your ad to a special
page on your website that has a message that directly relates to
the ad. Do NOT dump them on your home page and hope that
theyll find their way to the report or other product that you were
advertising.

Pay per click advertising. This is one of my favorite online

marketing tools. As the name suggests, you pay only when
someone clicks on your online ad with this method of online
advertising. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing
(formerly Overture) are the two best-known players in the pay-
per-click advertising world. However, many smaller search

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

42 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

engines also offer PPC advertising. With PPC ads, youll have a
relatively limited amount of space to grab readers attention and
Notes: persuade them to click your link. As with banner ads, youll
convert the most clicks into mailing list opt-ins if you take them
to a special web page with a message that is customized to
whatever ad they clicked on. Visitors who click on your link
should have an instantaneous feeling of recognition that they are
in the right place once they hit your web site.

Articles. Write and submit articles to the publications your

prospects are reading to help generate awareness of and interest
in what you teach. Most publications will allow you to add a short
paragraph at the end of your piece to present your contact
information. Be sure to include an offer for a free resource at the
end of this section. For example, Jenny Hamby is a direct-
response copywriter and Certified Guerilla Marketer who
specializes in promoting seminars. For a free copy for her report,
The 10 Deadliest Mistakes to Avoid When Promoting Seminars
and Workshops, visit .

Publicity. Send press releases announcing the availability of

your free resource to the publications your audience reads (or the
radio stations they listen to and/or the TV stations they watch).
Your press release should identify who the report is for, what it
provides, why the information it contains is so needed (e.g., what
problem it helps to solve), and how to get it.

TV and Radio Appearances. Promote yourself to TV and

radio stations as an exciting, entertaining guest who has valuable
information to share with the stations audience. During
interviews, be sure to mention at least one resource that listeners
or viewers can claim by calling your toll-free number or visiting
your website.

Speaking engagements. When youre speaking at events

sponsored by other experts or organizations, offer your audience
one or more free resources and make them provide their
contact name to get it. Remember, your goal is to build your opt-
in list, not merely generate awareness about your area of
expertise. So dont give away all of your information for free
(youre generating awareness through your speaking; the next
step is getting audience members on your mailing list, which is
why you need to force them to provide their contact information
to get the next level of information your report or other
giveaway). A word about email opt-ins: you can certainly ask
attendees to provide their email addresses on the order form. You

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
43
could even go so far as to say if you provide your email address, I
will sign you up for my email newsletter. And in both cases, you
could add those addresses to your opt-in list. Notes:
Personally, Id play it safe by promoting and providing only
non-digitally delivered resources when speaking. If you want to
build your email opt-in list, Id provide instructions for where to
go and how to sign up for those types of resources (e.g., a mini-
course or e-zine). Why? Because its too easy for someone to
forget that they provided their email address and permission to
add it to your opt-in list. If they go to your website, entering their
data, and then receiving a confirmation, theyll be more likely to
remember. (Plus, youll then have an electronic record of when
and where they signed up.)

Voice Mail and On Hold Messages. Two easy ways to

capture extra leads are to mention your lead-generating offer in
your voice mail message or on-hold message. For example, after
leaving the usual instructions for callers to leave their name,
phone number and message, add a brief pitch for a free report (or
other giveaway) to let callers know its available. If youre calling
to request a copy of my free report, The 10 Deadliest Mistakes to
Avoid When Promoting Seminars and Workshops, please also
leave your full mailing address. If youre able to record an on-
hold message, let callers know the report is available, describe
what the report provides, and tell them to request a copy when
their call is answered.

Outgoing email. Another easy, low-cost way to generate

leads for your opt-in list is to promote a giveaway in all outgoing
email. All you need to do is modify your email signature and add
a short paragraph pitching your giveaway.

For instance, after my full name, company name, phone and

fax numbers, I could include a message like:

Get free seminar marketing tips, tactics and strategies

delivered to your inbox each week. Subscribe to Seminar
Success Secrets at http://www.SeminarMarketingPro.com.

Direct-mail letters. In most cases, letters are used to sell a

product. However, you may find that a letter works better to
generate leads. The primary benefit of using a letter is that you
can provide a full, persuasive argument about why prospects
absolutely must have the information you provide in your free
report, audio program, teleseminar, etc. For greatest response,

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

44 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

include a response mechanism (e.g., order form) with your

direct-mail package for mail and fax responses, as well as offer
Notes: prospects the option of visiting your website and/or calling to
request your giveaway.

Joint Ventures and Affiliate Relationships. An easy

way to sell seminar seats is to get other people to do the hard
work for you. One of the biggest hurdles you must overcome
when marketing to prospects who dont know you is
overwhelming skepticism. People who dont know, like and trust
you will be extremely resistant to your sales efforts. By
recommending your event to the people on their opt-in mailing
lists, your affiliate and joint venture partners help you overcome
the skepticism and sales resistance that you would face if you
marketed directly to the people on their lists.

In addition to selling more seminar seats, you can also enlist

the help of affiliate and joint venture partners to grow your
mailing list by offering their subscribers access to your free
resources. Youll probably find that other professionals are more
likely to promote your bait if, ultimately, the partner will be
rewarded with revenue.

For instance, a joint venture partner will be more likely to

promote a free teleseminar if its a free preview of your 3-day
conference, for which he receives a 50% share of revenue for each
seat he helps sell. In this case, youd ask the joint venture partner
to promote the 3-day conference, with a note that his subscribers
can sign up for a free preview teleconference to get a taste of what
theyll learn at the paid event. When prospects sign up for the
free preview teleseminar, theyll be flagged as coming from your
joint venture partners mailing list. Then, when they sign up,
youll know where the registration came from and who to send
the 50% commission to.

A less common and less financially attractive (to the joint

venture or affiliate partner, at least) strategy is to offer your free
resources merely as a gift to the partners mailing list. In this
case, your affiliate or joint venture partner would promote your
free resource to her list as a way to add value to the relationship
she has with her subscribers. You might also suggest that she
offer your free resources as a bonus gift to people who purchase
one of her products or programs. (Tip: this strategy will work
better with professionals who dont have many products or
bonuses to offer to their customers.)

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
45
Web site. There are a couple of different ways you can
generate leads via your web site:
Notes:
Include a banner ad or button on your home page
promoting one of your free resources. Clicking on the ad
or button would take a visitor to a separate page where
they can read more about the resource and then order it
by opting in to your list.

Include a resources page that lists all of the resources you

offer and/or recommend. You could allow visitors to
claim all of the free resources by opting in once at the
landing page. Alternatively, you could provide links from
the resources page to additional pages (one devoted to
each free resource) where youll describe the offer in
detail and allow visitors to opt-in separately for each
resource.

The first strategy allows you to develop a single opt-in list.

With the second strategy, youd develop a separate opt-in
list for each resource handy if youre offering resources
that appeal to slightly different prospects. For example, I
could offer resources related to marketing events, Internet
marketing, copywriting, and starting a business. By
keeping separate opt-in lists for each type of resource, I
have the ability to closely target promotional materials to
my lists unique interests.

Capturing the leads. The most important work your web

site will do for you is capture leads for you.

Social media. There are three primary ways to use social

media to build your list. The first is to build a community by
encouraging people to join your network (e.g., by friending you,
liking your page, following you, subscribing to your channel,
etc.) Offering good content is one way to achieve this goal. A
second is to ethically bribe visitors by giving them a gift (such as
your bait) when they join your network.

The second way to leverage social media is to offer additional

resources for those who opt-in to your mailing list. Once they
become part of your network, you ask them to join your email list
for even more resources. The final way to use social media is to
encourage people in your network to tell others about your free
resources so that their friends visit your page and join your
community.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
47
Chapter 5: Capturing the Leads
Notes:
Once youve generated interest in your offer, you need to give
prospects instructions for responding. There are five main
methods for capturing leads:

Phone. When having prospects call to order their resource,

you must choose between having the calls answered by a live
person or directing all calls to an automated voice mail system. If
using a live operator (which may be you), be sure that the person
taking the calls knows exactly what information to capture. And
be sure that the person has voice mail so that prospects dont
need to play phone tag with your office to claim their free
resource. One call to your office is all it should take.

To make this persons job easier, you may want to have a

master order form of all free resources a caller could order by
phone. That way, you or your staff member just need to fill in a
callers information and check off the resources he/she wants.

If you dont have a staff person to devote to this job or if

youre the one answering the calls and you dont like to be
interrupted throughout the day, consider setting up a separate
voice mail box to capture orders for your free resources. That
way, youll just need to check messages periodically and fulfill the
requests. If your voice mail system has the room, you can use
different voice mail boxes to track the effectiveness of different
promotions. For instance, if youre testing two versions of an ad,
Ad #1 might direct prospects to call extension 717 while Ad #2
directs prospects to extension 718. The number of messages you
receive in each voice mail box can be tallied and compared.

Taking the voice mail concept one step further, investigate

getting your own toll-free number to use when capturing opt-ins.
Be sure to promote the line as a 24/7 automated recording to
reassure shy prospects that they wont have to speak to a live
person. Some people will want your information but wont call
out of fear of being sold.

Fax. If youre using a printed promotion of some sort say

an ad, postcard or direct-mail letter, you can include an order
form that prospects can fill out and fax back to you.

Direct mail. Again, when using printed promotions, your

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

48 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

response form can include your mailing address, so that

prospects who prefer to address envelopes and find stamps can
Notes: mail their requests to you.

Autoresponder. With some autoresponder services, you

merely need to send an email to a certain email address to be
added to a specified list. For instance, sending an email to
jhamby-82758@autocontactor.com adds you to an opt-in list for
my free seminar-marketing newsletter.

Website. Leads are captured online via what is called an

opt-in box. Basically, this is a form on your site that links to a
database provided by whichever company is providing your
autoresponder service. You specify which fields are required to be
billed in, as well as any additional fields youd like prospects to
fill in if they desire.

You have the choice of putting standalone opt-in boxes on

any page youd like. For instance, I have an opt-in box on the web
page selling my seminar promotion home-study course
(www.HowToMarketSeminars.com). To receive a free copy of
The 10 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Marketing Seminars
and Workshops, you must provide your name and email
address.

You can also include an opt-in box on a name squeeze or

shy yes page. This is a short sales page that is designed to do
one thing only: sell visitors on the idea of opting-in to your
mailing list. I use a name-squeeze page to get people who click on
my Google AdWords ads to opt-in for the free report (see
www.freeseminartips.com).

I like using standalone opt-in boxes on pages where youll get

general, type-in traffic such as visitors who find you through
word of mouth or who hear you speak at an event. I tend to use
name-squeeze pages for direct-response campaigns. This allows
you to tie your message on the name-squeeze page to the message
you used on your lead-generation piece. For instance, if youre
running a display ad in the Chicago Tribune, you could direct
readers to a specific name-squeeze page that talks about Our
Special Offer for Readers of the Chicago Tribune.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
49
Tracking the Source of Each Lead
To know for sure which lead-generation activities are worth Notes:
the time and effort it takes to produce them, you need a system
for tracking the source of each lead. In a nutshell, you need to
assign a unique tracking code to each promotion you send out.

Youll also need a spreadsheet or master key that tells you

want each code means. For instance, you may want to know:

Which product or event was promoted

What type of offer was made

What type of media was used

When the promotion went out

Who it was sent to

How many people were on the list

How many people actually received the promotion (e.g.,

subtract the number of bad email addresses or returned
pieces of direct mail you received from the total number
of promotions that went out)

Number of sales

The response rate

Here are some choices for how to structure your codes:

Number the promotions. Start with 001 (or some other

number) and work your way up (002, 003, 004, etc.).

Create a multi-part code. Incorporate numbers or letters

that tell you something about the type of promotion that
went out. If you want to see at a glance which event youre
promoting to your house list, work that into your code
(e.g., BC05-HS might signify your 2005 bootcamp being
promoted to your house list, while 1D05-HS might signify
your 2005 1-day event being marketed to the same list.)

By the promoter. If you have a small number of joint

venture or affiliate partners and youre tracking their

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

50 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

results by hand, you could use their initials as a

promotional code for example, JH.
Notes:
To accurately analyze the performance of each promotion,
you must ensure that:

The appropriate promotional code is listed on all outgoing

promotions. For example, list the code in the lower right-
hand corner of printed response forms.

The code is captured for each response you receive. For

instance, callers should be asked for their promotional
code (the person answering the phone should be able to
direct callers to the location of their promotion code, for
instance, Your code is printed in a box in the lower right-
hand corner of the response form).

The data is entered into your spreadsheet. Depending on

the number of responses you receive, you may want to do
this as often as once a day. At a minimum, tally and
review your results at least once a month.

Once you know how well each promotion performs, youll be

able to compare the revenue and profit produced with the
expense involved and then determine which promotions are
worth using again.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
51
Action Planner
Which tools will you use to accept opt-ins to your email list? Notes:

Which tools will you use to accept opt-ins to your direct mail list?

Which type of data do you want to capture and analyze as you

track the source of each lead?

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

52 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Notes:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
53
Chapter 6: Converting Leads into
Customers Notes:
Once youve identified one or more ways to get prospects to
opt-in to your mailing list, your next task is to convert qualified
leads into paying customers.

As when producing a lead-generation campaign, you can use

a variety of marketing media to stay in touch with prospects and
try converting them into customers, such as:

Autoresponders, email messages that are automatically

sent to opt-in subscribers according to a schedule that you
set (for example, on the day they opt in, as well as 2, 5, 7,
10, 14, 17, 21 and 28 days after they opt in)

Broadcast emails, one-time messages that are sent to your

opt-in list on the day you choose

Direct mail brochures, letters, postcards, self-mailers, etc.

Telemarketing

Fax broadcasting

Newsletters or e-zines

Articles of interest that you email or mail

Autoresponder messages are by far the easiest way to keep in

touch with the people on your opt-in list. Once youve set up the
messages and told your autoresponder software program which
messages to deliver on which days, you can relax and forget about
the marketing your computer handles it all for you.

However, as youve no doubt noticed from the way you

interact with the email messages you receive, email is very easy
for recipients to ignore and overlook. Even someone who has
signed up for your list will not read every single message that you
send consumers today are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of
advertising messages theyre exposed to. If a prospect has an
overly full inbox the day your message is sent, she may delete it
without reading just because shes too busy.

Likewise, she may just overlook it as she zips through her

inbox trying to clear out the spam. Sometimes, a prospect is too

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

54 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

quick with the delete key and mistakenly zaps messages she
might otherwise be interested in reading.
Notes:
Finally, at least some of your autoresponder messages will be
caught in spam filters. You might find that some prospects will
never receive any of your follow-up messages. On the other hand,
some prospects might receive most of your messages, while their
spam filters catch other messages.

All of these are reasons that you should consider

incorporating other media into your marketing mix. For instance,
send a direct-mail letter to prospects to promote your higher-
priced products or events. Or mail them a hard copy of articles
youve written. The downside, of course, is that incorporating
these additional media into your mix complicates the
management of your marketing program somewhat. Either you
need to create a system for tracking which prospects need to
receive which promotional piece a task that quickly grows
complicated and daunting or you need to invest in a software
program to keep track of these details for you, an investment that
may be financially out of reach if youre just getting started.

Setting Up Your Multi-Channel Marketing

Campaign
The steps needed to set up a multi-channel marketing
campaign to promote a single event is covered in more detail in
How to Successfully Market Seminars and Workshops. Event-
specific campaigns typically have clear-cut starting and ending
points for example, launching with an email blast to your house
list 14 weeks before the seminar and ending with a final email 1
week after the bootcamp to promote the audio recording from the
event.

However, you may want to set up an automated marketing

program to stay in touch with qualified prospects who have opted
in to your mailing list until your next seminar-marketing
campaign kicks off. If you dont, you risk having the leads you
worked so hard to generate forget who you are and be less
receptive to your message once youre ready to start marketing
your next event. Remember, in marketing, Out of sight, out of
mind applies more than Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
55
Whether you should focus first on an event-specific campaign
or an evergreen, automated marketing campaign depends on:
Notes:
When your event is scheduled. If your seminar is within
the next two or three months, youll probably want to
focus on selling seminar seats; if its a year away or not
even scheduled yet, you may want to promote other
products to generate revenue and continue building
relationships with your prospects and customers, so that
when youre ready to promote an event, they recognize
your name and the quality of information youll deliver at
your event.

What other types of products and services you have and

can sell. Obviously, if you dont have other products and
services to sell, youll opt for promoting your seminar.

What type of business you want to build. Do you want to

promote seminars only? Or do you want to become a full-
blown information marketer who maximizes revenue and
profits by offering a variety of choices and products to
your customers?

Example #1: If your seminar is just one of many products

youre selling, you may want to get prospects to purchase a low-
cost product before pitching your event. This conditions them to
responding to your offers; presumably, if theyve opened their
wallets for you once, getting them to part with more of their cash
to purchase a ticket to your seminar will be easier.

Your promotional funnel might be structured as follows:

Visitors to your web site are offered a free report.

If they say yes and opt-in to your list, you email them an
offer for a $19 e-book.

When they say yes and purchase the e-book, you follow up
with an offer for a $49 audio program.

Customers who say yes and purchase the audio program

next receive an invitation to your $300 1-day workshop
(or, if you havent yet scheduled your event, an offer for
the audio program from your most recent workshop)

Example #2: However, if you dont have other information

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

56 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

products to sell, youre on a tight timeline for promoting your

event, or if youre setting up a marketing campaign for an
Notes: event only, youll probably end up pitching your seminar
immediately to qualified leads.

Your promotional funnel might look like this:

Visitors to your web site are invited to sign up for a free

teleseminar or teleseminar series

When they say yes and opt-in to your list, you email them
details about the free call(s). You also follow-up with
broadcast emails that promote your next event.

In both of these examples, the seminar promotions listed

would be delivered at a set point within your promotional
sequence. For instance, five days after someone opts in to your
email list, they might receive a promotion for your next
upcoming seminar or for the audio program you recorded at
your next event.

Then, once youve identified the dates and locations for your
next workshop, youll promote the event to your list, or perhaps
just segments of it, with a separate marketing campaign. At the
same time new prospects are making their way through the
funnel above, youll also be sending them through a separate
marketing funnel thats strictly for your event.

Maintaining Your List

To maximize your response rates and avoid wasting money,
youll want to ensure that the information in your house database
is as clean, up-to-date and useable as possible. Some steps you
might want to take include:

Updating mailing addresses whenever you receive

returned mail from your direct mail campaigns. If a new
address is listed on the returned mailers you receive,
enter it into your system. If one is not listed, consider
doing some investigation. A simple phone call or visit to
the prospects web site might turn up the new address you
need.

Asking prospects and customers to provide complete and

updated information. You may want to periodically ask

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
57
customers to verify their data. Or, if you dont have
complete information for certain prospects, ask them to
give you the needed information, such as an email Notes:
address, in exchange for a free gift.

Segmenting your list by activity level. If you have the

capability, you may want to sort your list by relationship
for instance, prospects who have not yet made a purchase,
customers who have made a single purchase vs.
customers who have made multiple purchases.

You may be tempted to drop prospects from your mailing list

if they havent purchased within a certain period of time. For
example, if youve been marketing to someone for a full year and
he still hasnt purchased, you may decide that your money is
better invested by marketing more frequently to newer prospects.

This may be true and is certainly a strategy worth considering

if you have limited budget. However, I would not recommend
deleting the names from your mailing list entirely. After all, you
dont know for sure why a certain prospect hasnt yet responded.
Perhaps the timing of your offers hasnt been right, money is
tight, or he is just starting to educate himself about your area of
expertise. Your next promotion might just be the one that arrives
when his interest is peaking and his budget can afford investment
in your seminar or product.

If your budget will not allow you to market to everyone on

your list, be selective in your promotional efforts. Instead of
eliminating the inactive prospects who have been on your list for
many months or even years from your list entirely, contact them
only with free or very low-cost promotional tools, such as email
blasts. Reserve the frequent use of more costly promotional tools,
such as direct mail, for your more recent prospects and past
customers.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

58 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

Notes:

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
59
Chapter 7: Putting It All Together
Notes:
Lets take a look at three scenarios to illustrate how to put all
of these components together.

SCENARIO 1: Your first seminar is 6 weeks away and you

have virtually no house list. You are
promoting the seminar nationally.

BAIT: Because you want to maximize the number of seats

you can sell at the same time you are building your house list, you
decide to offer a free teleseminar as bait to entice prospects into
opting-in to your email list.

DATA TO COLLECT FIRST: Because time is short, you

want to minimize expenses and youre marketing nationally, you
decide to require prospects names and email addresses when
they opt-in to your list. This allows you to follow up with
prospects about the free preview teleseminar via autoresponder,
as well as use broadcast emails to promote your live event to this
list.

However, you know that emails are easily ignored and often
trapped in spam filters. Since you cant ensure that your follow-
up email promotions will ever be received and read by opt-in
subscribers, you decide to ask for their phone numbers, as well,
so that you can follow up by phone with some or all prospects.
Since some prospects will be wary about sharing their phone
numbers with you, you decide to make the collection of this
information optional.

PROMOTIONAL TOOLS: You promote the free

teleseminar on your website. Youve also asked affiliates who are
promoting your live event to promote the free teleseminar to
their lists. Finally, you decide to rent a mailing list and promote
the free teleseminar via a postcard.

RESPONSE MECHANISM: Because you dont want to be

accused of spamming prospects, you decide that the only way
youll let prospects sign up for your email list is via an opt-in box
on your website. The program youre using to capture email
addresses will send you email receipt listing the name and
email address of each prospect who opts in to your list, as well as
the date and time the opt-in occurred.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

60 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

KEEPING IN TOUCH: Once prospects opt in to your list,

they immediately receive a confirmation email from you that
Notes: thanks them for signing up for the free teleseminar and confirms
details of the call.

The next day, prospects receive a second autoresponder

message that promotes your upcoming live seminar and again
reminds them of the free preview teleseminar they are registered
to attend.

The day before your free teleseminar, as well as a few hours

before the call starts, you send a broadcast email to all prospects
who registered for the call to remind them when the teleseminar
begins and what number to call.

An hour before the call begins, you use an automated calling

service to call all prospects who provided a phone number with a
reminder that the teleseminar is about to begin. Your message
also reminds them of the phone number they need to dial to
listen in on the call.

DATA TO COLLECT NEXT: You know that youd

ultimately like to use direct mail to promote future seminars. So
after your first seminar is under your belt (whew!), you send an
email promotion to your opt-in list, offering subscribers a free CD
containing the audio recording of one session from your recent
seminar. The CD is available for sale, but you offer to send
interested subscribers a free copy. People who respond to the
offer are taken to a special order form on your website that
captures their full contact information (the same information
they would need to provide if they were buying a product or
registering for an event), but that lists the price of the CD as $0.

SCENARIO 2: Youre hosting a series of seminars

throughout the next year and have a small
house list. Your event is being marketed
locally.

BAIT: Because you have several weeks before your next

seminar, your primary goal is to maximize the number of names
you add to your mailing list. You decide to offer a free report as
bait to entice prospects into opting-in to your mailing list.

DATA TO COLLECT FIRST: Although you want to use

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
61
both direct mail and Internet marketing to fill seats, you decide
to focus on capturing prospects mailing addresses first.
Notes:
PROMOTIONAL TOOLS: You promote the free report
using a variety of tools, including press releases to local
publications and media outlets, advertisements in local
publications, and postcards mailed to rented list of local
prospects. Youve also offered your report as a free resource that
other local professionals can give away to their customers and
prospects.

RESPONSE MECHANISM: You want to capture as many

mailing addresses as possible, so you tell prospects that they can
order their free copy of your report by calling your office any time
of day or night and leaving a message with their full address.
Alternatively, they can fax their name and address to your office,
complete and mail the coupon youve included in your
advertisements, or complete the order form on your website.

KEEPING IN TOUCH: You mail a printed copy of the

report as soon as you receive a request. Your fulfillment package
also includes a promotion for your upcoming seminar.

DATA TO COLLECT NEXT: You want to capture email

addresses so that you can venture into Internet marketing. All of
your response mechanisms ask for the respondents email
address; however, you include a note that only the mailing
address is required.

Because some prospects will not provide their email

addresses right away, you also include a note in your report that
promotes your free monthly e-zine.

SCENARIO 3: Youre laying the groundwork for your new

seminar business. Because you want to
minimize your risk and expenses, youre
spending six to twelve months building a
mailing list before you start promoting
your first event.

BAIT: You want the flexibility of being able to attract

attendees from across the country to a single location or hosting
multiple, locally marketed events around the country. So you
decide to do lead-generation on a nationwide scale, offering a
free mini-course as bait.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

62 How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch

DATA TO COLLECT FIRST: To minimize marketing

expenses, you decide that youll rely primarily on Internet
Notes: marketing to promote your seminars. Therefore, you require
prospects to provide their names and email addresses when
opting-in for your mini-course. To identify cities in which you
might like to hold a future event, you also ask subscribers to
provide their zip codes.

PROMOTIONAL TOOLS: You promote the mini-course

and solicit opt-ins on your website. Traffic is driven to this
landing page using banner and pay-per-click advertising. You
also write articles for industry publications, including a pitch for
your mini-course in the resource box listed at the end of the
article (for online articles, you include a link to the landing page;
for articles appearing in printed publications, you include your
URL). You also advertise your mini-course in publications your
prospects read and offer the mini-course as a free resource to
other professionals who work with your target audience. Finally,
you test using a postcard to promote the mini-course to a rented
mailing list.

RESPONSE MECHANISM: Again, because you dont want

to be accused of spamming prospects, you decide that the only
way youll let prospects sign up for your email list is via an opt-in
box on your website. The program youre using to capture email
addresses will send you email receipt listing the name and
email address of each prospect who opts in, as well as the date
and time the opt-in occurred.

KEEPING IN TOUCH: As promised, you deliver the mini-

course via email, sending one lesson every few days.

DATA TO COLLECT NEXT: Although you plan to rely on

Internet marketing in promoting your seminars, you recognize
that gathering additional data about your prospects will give you
flexibility to change your mind and use other forms of promotion
in the future.

To capture mailing addresses, you decide to offer prospects a

free audio CD. You approach one of the experts who will be
speaking at one of your future seminars and request an interview.
You then record the interview and offer a free copy of the
interview on CD to your mailing list.

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

How to Build Your Mailing List From Scratch
63
Conclusion
Chances are good that the clock is ticking as you read this: Notes:
your next event is scheduled and drawing uncomfortably close by
the minute. You may be wondering whether you should postpone
your event and work on building a list instead. On the other
hand, you might be tempted to ignore the list building and devote
every resource to spreading the word about your upcoming
seminar.

Heres my take on your situation: Only you know how much

you can comfortably risk in marketing a seminar primarily to
cold prospects. If there is simply no way that you can reschedule
your event, then give the promotion that your upcoming seminar
all you have. Accept that you might not achieve the results you
want this time around. And start laying the groundwork for
success with your next event by creating at least one small lead-
generation campaign ASAP. Do so by:

Choosing one type of bait you want to offer

Picking at least one method for promoting the free

resource to prospects

Identifying how you are going to capture the leads and

keep in touch with them

On the flip side, if youre not willing to risk a zero

response rate (entirely possible if youre promoting solely
to rented lists) and you can afford to delay your event,
start developing a comprehensive lead-generation
campaign. Spend time:

Choosing two or three types of bait you want to offer

Picking several methods you want to use when promoting

the free resource to prospects

Identifying how you are going to capture the leads and

keep in touch with them

Unlike promoting a seminar, list building is not a one-time or

limited-time activity. Its something that you should be engaged
in at all times. And the best time to get started is right now.

Good luck!

2011 Hamby Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved.