#247: 100 Ways to Build Your Mailing List

All right. Hello there. Health coaches, nice to see you all. This week has been a little bit nutso. I'm not going to lie. It's been a little bit crazy because first of all, I'm getting ready to fly out to San Diego where I will be meeting a whole bunch of you at the Health and Wellbeing Coaching Conference. So very, very much looking forward to that. I'm so psyched that so many of you were able to make it to the conference. And of course some of you are not going to the conference even, but just meeting us out on Friday night. So this is groundbreaking stuff. I have not seen you guys in person in so long. I can't wait. But aside from that, I still got the normal things right. This is the last week of little league, so my kids have their playoff games, the windshield, if my car got cracked because a branch fell on it, it's just been a week.

So never a dull moment. But I had to squeak in here for a podcast episode because I've been dying to bring you this topic all about list building. So let's do it. I have some super juicy stuff for you today. If you're here with me live, if you're over on Instagram or if you're in the Facebook group watching as I'm recording, say hello and tell me in the comments what has been your most successful list building activity so far. Or if you don't have your list set up yet and you want to get one set up, just type need mailing list and I will get a free tutorial over to you. That also goes for anyone listening later, just request in our Facebook group or send me a DM on Instagram with "need mailing list" and I will send a tutorial your way. And now as I just realized, my good microphone is not plugged in, I'm going to plug in the good microphone and hopefully the audio is going to improve dramatically on.

Oh my goodness, I told you it's been a week. Alrighty, let's carry on here. This episode is brought to you by practice Better Try any practice better. Plan for free for 14 days at healthcoachpower.com/pb. You're going to save 30% off your first three months with code HCP30 and for a limited time, this is very cool, you're going to get a free kitchen cleanout program built right into the Practice Better platform so you can start earning with it right away. But you got to use this link, it's health coach power.com/p b. Alright, I see Jamie's over here, Katie's here, Antoinette's here, and you guys all need mailing list. Kara and Elizabeth, everybody. Okay, we'll get the link to you after the show. This is me. I'm on a mission to make sure that all health coaches have a mailing list set up, and I should probably say a little bit about that.

It's not just like, because it sounds good, I notice the greatest difference in how my business does based on how I'm using my mailing list or not. Meaning you can make an offer on Instagram, you can put something on your Facebook profile, you know, you could tell people that you're running a group or that you're offering private coaching and you're going to get a meh kind of response. Even if you have a big following, it's the percentage of people who are going to notice it, care, take action, it's going to be kind of meh. But when you send it out via email, you're much more likely to get people's attention. As you know, I'm sure you do this in your own life when you have an email and you're like, Ooh, don't have time for this right now, but you save it for later if it's important to you, it you get much better uptake when you are using an email marketing strategy.

So we want to get people on a mailing list. Before I share my 100 ideas with you, the basic premise is this. Nobody wants more emails in their inbox, right? Does anybody want more emails? No. Nobody actually wants to be on another mailing list. So if you're saying, "Hey, join my mailing list," you're not going to get a whole lot of people jumping to do that. They don't want that. So the classic or the more effective way to get somebody to join your list is to offer them something for free, something valuable and think useful, something that they definitely want in exchange for an email address. And that's it. That's the golden formula that's taken my own mailing list from zero to many, many, many thousands. Offer something for free, get an email address. It sounds very simple, right? Good. Now, if you're over on Instagram and you're asking about a mailing list, please DM that to me because as soon as this broadcast is over, all those comments disappear and I won't be able to see them.

Just DM me, "need mailing list." Got to make sure you guys all get set up with that. Now, there is some nuance, even though it's so simple. Offer something for free. Get an email address a little nuance here. Who do you want on your mailing list if you offer something for free? Something I would do in the early days of my health coaching business. I mean, we are going back now 13, 14 years. I'd be like, I know I love baking cookies. I'm going to put together a healthy cookie recipe book with my 10 favorite healthy cookies. Okay, great. That's the kind of freebie that I was creating back then. And here's what happens. I know from experience, you're going to end up with a whole mishmash of people on your mailing list. The only thing that they have in common is that they like cookies.

That's it. Men like cookies, women like cookies, kids like cookies, all ages. Just people who like cookies. They may or may not have a health problem, meaning they may or may not have a reason to hire a health coach at all, and maybe they vaguely want to be healthier who doesn't? And they just like the idea of your Healthy Cookies recipe book. This will build you a list. It will not build you an incredibly helpful list. So instead, if you offered something like a free guide for brides who want to clear up eczema before their wedding day, now you're going to end up with a mailing list of soon to be or newly wed women who struggle with eczema much, much more clearly defined, right? You see the difference there, and we know that this group does have a health problem and we know they want to fix it.

Go ahead. If you're here live, I know a bunch of you are, tell me in the comments, who is your ideal client? What type of person are they brides? Are they women? At least we don't want women, men, kids, every one of all ages. We want to narrow it down and what big problem are they trying to solve? My point is don't just give away free stuff. Trust me, I have played that game. Give away free stuff that is aimed at a very particular target market so that you're able to build a list of ideal clients that then you can effectively market to. If I build a list of these newlywed women with eczema, oh yeah, you better believe the next time they hear from me, I'm going to be talking to them about eczema, maybe around issues surrounding married life because I know they're new to their married lives.

Maybe something about how their husband likes to use dryer sheets and here are some alternatives that won't bother your skin. So I'm really speaking her language. Suddenly she's like, yes, I need to hire this coach. This person gets me. They get what I'm going through. Make sense? It's give me a thumbs up if this makes sense so far. It's a simple concept. It will make or break everything you do with your marketing, including getting the right names onto your mailing list. So we're going to offer free stuff that is strategically created to attract a particular type of person, not just any Joe Schmo, and we're going to collect email addresses into a cohesive mailing list of ideal clients. Now, thank you for the thumbs up, Elizabeth. Appreciated. What free stuff are you going to offer? This is where everybody just hits a brick wall. We're like, yeah, sounds good, Michelle.

I get it, it makes sense, but can't think of anything. So as promised, I have 100 ideas for you. That is a lot. I'm going to go through them as quickly as I can, but there's no need for you to scribble it all down as we go. I have the full list available to you at healthcoachpower.com/freebies because these are 100 freebie ideas for you, and this is going to be so helpful just to help you think of your own ideas or you can take these, I mean you can just run with them. Take any idea I give you and call it your own. You have my full permission to do so because I know it is so much faster than staring at a blank page going, come on brain, think of a fantastic freebie idea. No, no, no, I got you covered. This is going to give you a giant head start.

So again, that's at health coach power.com/freebies. All right, so let's get into it. There's so many different kinds of free things that you can create. Let's start with something that's fairly basic in terms of format. We've all done this. Or you go online, you see something really great, you have to have it, you sign up for it and they send you a PDF download. I'm going to say that's just your most basic freebie. Sometimes it's called a lead magnet, right? That free gift that you're going to give away. But a PDF can be anything, and we'll give you lots of examples today. One of my favorites is to give away a guide. Now, what is a guide? A guide is basically a somewhat comprehensive, I say somewhat because this is not meant to be a 500 page PDF, but a comprehensive guide to helping a certain type of person get help with the problem that they're trying to solve.

I could have offered a comprehensive guide for clearing eczema before your wedding day. There's something about the word guide that sounds more valuable than if you said five tips for clearing eczema on your wedding day, right? Tips sound cheap, guides sound valuable, and guides can be a combination of tips, maybe recipes, maybe a checklist, maybe some exercise that you like to give clients, like the circle of life, if that made sense. Whatever. You can kind of put together several different resources, even a page or two of written material into a guide. So if you have a couple different things you'd like to give away, great, put it all together and call it a guide and it'll be very valuable. So it would sound like this. I love Ultimate Guides. Again, sounds valuable. The ultimate guide to restless Leg syndrome, ultimate Guide, right? Then even you as the person creating it, you're like, boy, I got to make this ultimate, and I like that.
I want you to put together something that's very valuable. Don't worry about giving away your best stuff or giving away your best information. Nobody is going to download a PDF for free. Read it all and implement it and fix their problem. There is like 0.000001% of the population that would ever do that. They're that much of a self-starter. Most people, maybe they won't even open the PDF. That's why we're happy that now they're on your mailing list though. Other people will open it, they'll give it a glance. It's hard. We know this because we're health coaches. It's hard for people to implement. So if I have restless leg syndrome and I download the Ultimate Guide to Restless Leg Syndrome, that doesn't mean that I'm never going to hire you as my coach.
In fact, I'm more likely to hire you because I really like what you had to say here. You really seem to understand my situation and you're the only person I know who's talking about this, where you're the only person that's offered me this level of detail, or you're the only whatever, right? You get my point? They're not going to fix it on their own. Don't be afraid of giving them your best information. So what about a guide to managing diabetes after 50? It's not just diabetes because it could be diabetes for anyone, but diabetes after 50. Now that's more targeted. You could put out Mom's Guide to Solving Picky Eaters or Runner's Guide to Lasting Energy or something like Upgrade Your Dad bod Ultimate Guide. How about something that's location based like Central New Jersey's Guide to Healthy Restaurants? Now that one, not so much targeted at a health problem, but very targeted to a target market.

If you are a health coach who works with people in central New Jersey, give them something that is extremely useful for them. You could put out a guide to a Healthy Retirement, a step-by-step guide to reducing Lyme disease symptoms, your first 30 days of plant-based Eating guide. How about a Beginner's Guide to Dry January? Save that one for the new year, you guys. How about a budget meal planning guide or your Corporate America survival guide? So again, a guide is one way to go. If you have an idea for a freebie, think what would it look like if I turned it into a guide and this will just help you brainstorm. Oh, maybe I would add this. Maybe I would add that. Here's the next idea for you. You can create a quiz. Quiz does not have to be a fancy thing online. It doesn't have to be interactive.
In fact, I tend to think that those don't work as well because a lot of people are not going to take the time to go through the whole quiz. But if it's just a one sheet that they can just glance down, look at the questions, they may or may not even take the quiz, but they get a sense of what you're all about, that is more useful. Either way, they're on your mailing list, and I do think having them just look over the quiz and not feel like, oh, I got to the end, but now I have to give an email address to get the results. Or I gave an email address and now I have to sit through this tedious one question at a time quiz. It's also going to be easier for you to just turn it into a PDF. So that's my official take on that.

So quizzes would be something like, are you eating enough protein? Are you an emotional eater? Is a vegan diet right for you? Or is the keto diet right for you? Should you try intermittent fasting? Should you try gluten-free diet? What do your period symptoms mean? What kind of hair loss are you experiencing? Or are you drinking too much alcohol? Obviously, none of these would be meant to diagnose a condition, but they can tell someone, Hey, you are more likely to be having this type of problem. Hey, have you thought about this possible issue behind your hair loss? Right? And whenever you do a quiz, typically there's going to be some type of scoring. And if you got a certain score that shows that you're having a big problem or that this thing is definitely an issue for you, there's going to be a call to action to book a call, book a call, click link, whatever.

Get them to take the next step to book a consultation with you, even if they're doing pretty well, they have the middle how a Cosmo quiz usually has three answers. Or if they're like they have the worst results or they have the middle results, again, make sure it's written in such a way that they book a call with you. And even if they score really well on the quiz, you can still write it in such a way that they're encouraged to optimize their health. Take the next sta sure they're already on a vegan diet, whatever. Make sure that they're getting enough protein on that vegan diet, something that's going to help them take that next step for their health. And same book a call with you. So all of these freebies should A) be getting someone on your mailing list and B) directing them to take the next step to work with you.

All right, so those were quizzes. Here's another idea that you can put together. This works really well if you're targeting a group of people who are experiencing a certain health condition. So if you work with women, for example, who have thyroid issues, when I was working with a lot of women for a couple years that didn't know they had a thyroid condition, but almost 99% of the time they did. So maybe I could have put together a symptom checker called could it be a thyroid problem? And this way I would ask them about all the various symptoms that they were experiencing. And that's a really great resource that they can then take to their doctor and say, Hey, I've been having 30 of these symptoms on this list. Can we talk about my thyroid? That's a really useful guide. Sorry, the guide was the first category, but this is a symptom checker category.

In any case, it would be a guide to helping them with their thyroid problem. And you could do the same thing with autoimmune disease. You could do a symptom checker on, could it be PCOS? Could it be endometriosis? Could it be insulin resistance? How about is it adrenal fatigue or are you just tired? Or should you be taking a probiotic? You could put together some sort of symptom, a journal, something like an IBS Detective Poop Journal or something like your cycle your Symptoms. Again, having a woman take note of her symptoms throughout her cycle so that she has this resource that she can then bring to a doctor or to you. That can be the first step she takes is bring it to you and say, Hey, and this has happened to me, you guys where I've put out a freebie like this and I've had someone go, wow, every single thing you asked here I am experiencing.

And it made me realize I need your help. That is a good conversation to have. You've just positioned yourself as the expert. Cause you're the first one to let them know that they might be dealing with X, Y, Z problem. Okay, how about a checklist? Sounds so simple, but it just might work. So some ideas for checklists would be some sort of morning routine checklist. Again, don't just put out a morning routine checklist. Who is it for? What problem are they trying to solve? It's a morning routine checklist for that same for an evening wind down routine checklist for a certain type of person, right? Certain type of person who's trying to fix a certain problem. It's going to be so much more helpful. You could do something like a daily detox task checklist again for what type of person? Or a healthy road trip checklist.

That might be fun if you work with moms and it's summertime and they're going to be road tripping with the family. Or how about healthy vacation packing list for somebody who does a lot of traveling, used to work with a lot of women in corporate jobs who traveled a lot for work, so that could be helpful for them. You could do a pantry makeover, grocery shopping list, a meal plan, grocery shopping list, a lab test checklist or a spring cleanse supply checklist or anything that relates to your target market. A checklist can be a super valuable resource. Okay? One of the ones that I like to use was that lab test checklist because while I was not going to be writing the lab test personally, obviously for my clients who thought they might have a thyroid condition, I could tell them which lab test to talk to their doctors about, because as many of you probably know, they usually just get one test and there's many more that need to be run to get a full picture of somebody's thyroid.

So a checklist for that was really helpful, helpful. So far, you guys, I see Ebony Berg over here on Instagram saying she loves these ideas. All right, I got more for you. Remember, you don't have to be writing all of these down. I already did that for you. You can get this whole list of 100 ideas at healthcoachpower.com/freebies. Now, so far we've been talking about freebies that are probably a PDF download, like the actual thing that you're giving them as a PDF, but it doesn't have to be. You could run a free five day challenge, and that could be done live on specific days. It becomes this whole event. You've probably seen me run five day challenges from time to time. It's one of my most favorite things to do. I love it because it lets people actually engage with you and get a sense of your personality.

They're not just downloading something and it gives you five touchpoints with them. So if on day one they're kind of busy and they don't really pay too much attention, that's okay. You still got days 2, 3, 4, 5. In fact, all of our fast trackers just ran their first five day challenges. So exciting for my fast track group, and many of them now are saying, oh, one of my five day challenge participants just signed on as a client. Oh, I just signed another client. So this is where we start seeing the benefit beyond just this building, but actually turning into signing of new clients. So the five day challenges can be so useful for this. Here are some ideas for you. Five days to build strength without weights. Five day Ayurveda for anxiety challenge five day meditation for mommy's challenge. Five day stretching challenge for runners, five day freezer meal challenge, a five day digital detox, about five days to kickstart weight loss.

Reclaim your energy in just five days or lift the brain fog in just five days. Or how about detox from the holidays in just five days? It's always nice when these events can be timed to a particular point in the year. They can be very timely, but some of these, many of these would work year round as well. And the other thing I want to say about five day challenges is while they can, and I think you should run them live like an actual five day event, they can also be turned into an evergreen freebie that's available year round. You would just have to automate the five emails in your email service so that when I sign up, it triggers the automation and I get one email a day over the next five days. So that's another way to get more mileage out of these things after you've run them live a couple of times.

Now, similar to a five day challenge would be a minicourse. I say similar because a mini course can again be dripped out over a couple of days. This is not like a 30 day class or a 90 day class or anything like this. Maybe it's a three part mini course and you're going to drip out an email once over each day for three days. Maybe it includes a video, maybe it includes some sort of download. It doesn't have to be, it could just be an email. You could use any medium you want. You could have audio files. You can get so creative with these things. But a free mini course, this is good for target markets that like to learn. So if you're targeting highly educated, like let's say PhD level scientists or whoever your target market is, it has to be a group of people who like the idea of learning.

Cause otherwise they'll see mini a course and they're going to go, Ooh, I don't want to take a course. So make sure it's the right group. Here are some ideas how to meal prep for the week in one hour. How about a three-part course on breath work for stress relief or a mini detox course, or maybe it's a how to make your own sauerkraut for digestive health or make your own natural skincare or the basics of essential oils you could do going gluten free in 10 days, especially for someone who's been newly diagnosed with celiac, you could do a mini course on autoimmune friendly cooking. The cooking ones are fun because you could set up a camera in your kitchen and do some demos and do videos and have one video per day going out. That's the kind of thing that again, people are going to get to know you instead of just seeing your words now, they're looking at you, they're hearing your voice.

And that's the kind of thing that starts to bridge the digital divide. If you're not going to meet someone in person, it helps for them to get a sense of who you are as a human being. How about a course on balancing your blood sugar naturally for those with insulin resistance or pre-diabetes? How about a course called Build a Baby Ready Body? That's something that I actually created many, many years ago. Oh my gosh, it was so long ago. But hey, long gone. If you want to take that idea and run with it, go right ahead. Build a baby Ready Body. Another idea, a mini course on tracking your fertility, or how about one on get on the meal prep bandwagon. All of these could be broken down into 2, 3, 4, 5 days, and you give a little piece of content each day, and that's the mini course. That's it.

All right. Now, early I talked about the recipe book idea. I talked about putting out the Healthy Cookies recipe book. Again, all of these recipe ideas can work. They can be fun. Everybody likes recipes. They tend to convert rather well, but please tie these two, a particular type of person who has a particular health problem and it will work so much better for you on the backend. Meaning you might get a lot of people to sign up initially when you offer your healthy chocolate Valentine's Day cookbook, but does that mean that any of them are going to become clients later on? Okay, heed my warning because I have put out the Healthy Chocolate Valentine's Day cookbook, and it doesn't really do anything on the other side. It just gets a bunch of people on your list who sit there and want more free recipes. Don't want that.

So recipe books. How about Five Ingredient Dinner Recipes for the Busy Working Mom? How about 10 Quick Keto Breakfasts for Women Over 50 Who Want to Lose Weight? How about 10 Make Ahead Family Dinners or 14 Days of AIP Meals? You could do a book on healthy snacks for kids, or I like this idea. This would've to be for the gluten free crowd or the grain-free crowd. Cauliflower gone crazy recipes. Or you could do something like gluten-free holiday recipes, healthy chocolate recipes. I was just talking about how about cooking healthy for singles? You can't imagine how many single individuals I had worked with through the years who were like, you know what? Every time there's a cookbook or a recipe book, it's always that meals that are meant for a family of four, and it's just me and I don't want to have to eat the same thing every night all week.

So if you offered something cooking healthy for singles, if you were targeting unmarried or people who are living individually, then they'd be like, this person gets me. Then this person understands what it's like to be a single person. You could do a cookbook of paleo brunch recipes. You could do a cookbook of fertility boosting recipes. Just about every target market can have a recipe book because hey, we all got to eat three times a day. Now when it comes to these recipes, just a quick note, you cannot ethically or legally republish recipes from their original source unless you have written permission from the author. So don't do like I did in the early days and just go into a cookbook or go online and copy and paste something and throw it in there. You can't do that and people will get mad. So to avoid this, use your own recipes, and I know you have lots more than you think.

Everybody knows how to make scrambled eggs. That means that if you write down the way you make it, that's your recipe. You just can't copy and paste words from somebody else. Got it? Of course, there are also tools available, different meal planning tools out there for health coaches and nutritionists. And you can essentially white label the recipes that they give. You can use them as if they were your own for this type of thing. Cool, all right. Just trying to keep you at any legal problems. Now, what about virtual workshops? Workshops obviously can be done in person. That would be like a one-time event somewhere. Also a good way to build your mailing list. But I like the idea of a virtual workshop that can be recorded, and that way it can become an evergreen freebie, something you're giving out year round. So maybe you run it live once or twice, find a venue, get in front of new people, meet them, talk face to face, do your workshop.
It's amazing, a very good way to find clients. And then you have this workshop. You can record it and then you can offer it in this prerecorded version. So something like Three Steps to Beating Migraines. That's for people with migraines. You get where I'm going with this, right? Like it's targeted at somebody. You got it. How about a workshop on how to lose the beer belly without giving up beer? That's a really good formula, by the way, for a title. You don't have to use this, but how to get the thing you want without the thing you hate or without the thing you're afraid of. So how to lose the beer belly without giving up beer could be a very good title for a workshop for the right audience. I bet you can think who that might be. How about five essential steps to reducing anxiety or 12 freezer meals done in one hour?

By the way, that would be very fun to run live with people and actually have everybody chopping vegetables and things and getting 12 freezer meals done in one hour. But you could also do that in your own kitchen, probably be a lot less chaotic if it was just you. How about a workshop on healthy holidays? Stress busting or optimize your fertility or feeding picky eaters without losing your mind or unleash the energy of your twenties or say goodbye to adrenal fatigue in 90 days, or become a fat adapted athlete in four weeks and see what I just did there on those last few. I use a timeframe, and that's another very compelling way to title a workshop. Get this result in this period of time. Now, if you said become fat adapted athlete in 12 years, that's not very compelling. So make sure you're making a promise that somebody can complete in a period of time that feels doable.

Two weeks, six weeks, 90 days, whatever it is. All right. And then let's talk about different formats. So we have the PDFs. We talked about a live event. We talked about using email. How about an audio recording? Pretty easy. You don't have to worry about hair or makeup when you do an audio recording. You just want to make sure to plug in your microphone, kind of like I didn't at the beginning of this episode. Hey. Okay, audio recording. So you could offer something like a guided meditation for teenagers or guided workouts for the gym or affirmations for busy stressed out moms. How about breathing techniques for stress relief? Think about things that lend themselves well to the medium, right? Lend itself. Well, someone could pop it in their earbuds and go for a walk, and they can be listening and doing those breathing techniques while they're walking, or they could take it with them and go sit.

I live by the river, so I'll go down and sit by the river. I could be using your audio recording to do some sort of meditation, and that would just be so lovely. And to have your voice in my ears. I feel like I'm starting to know you. So think about what you could put in an audio. How about the sound of freedom, inspiration for the newly divorced? How about ASMR for relaxation or mantras to overcome autoimmune symptoms? And finally, let's talk about videos. So we talked about doing a virtual workshop. That's one kind of video you can do. But what about more like how videos, this stuff could be done in a PDF format also, but some stuff just lends itself to video more. By the way, who here likes the idea of doing something in audio or video versus writing and designing a PDF?

I mean, just take stock of your natural gifts and talents and strengths because some people are just really, really good at writing and designing, and other people are much better on camera and speaking, and they would rather put a needle in their eye than sit down and write a couple paragraphs. So just know yourself and pick a medium that works well for you. So if we're going to put out some how to type videos, maybe it's how to make almond milk for somebody that needs to be dairy free, or how to make bone broth. How about five Health Coach Kitchen Hacks for people who are brand new to cooking? How about yoga poses for thyroid health or a men's chair workout, or make your own avocado face mask? That's fun. How about Valentine's Day Chocolate's cooking demo? You could literally take any of those recipe books that we talked about earlier, offer that as a freebie, and then take some of those recipes, create videos or demos of creating the recipes, and that could be a different freebie that you offer.

How about a video on tapping to reduce anxiety or shake it out for stress relief, or how to use an instant pot or a grocery store tour? Woo, I think we got through all 100. You guys. Once again, you don't have to write all these down. You don't even have to rewind and try to get them all. This full list of 100 freebie ideas to build your mailing list are available for download, completely free at healthcoachpower.com/freebies. And that's it for today. Everyone. I got to go finish packing for San Diego, and if this episode has been helpful, please leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. It really is how health coaches find us and get the tools that they need to find clients and make the world a healthier place. So in other words, your review can change lives. Thank you so much, and I will see you all next week. Take care, everyone.