How To Generate Leads Through Listsand List Management Transcripts

HOW TO GENERATE LEADS THROUGH
LISTS AND LIST MANAGEMENT

MODULE 6
With Craig Simpson and Mike Stodola
www.gkic.com
MODERN TRAFFIC SCHOOL
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CONTENTS
Insider Secrets to Lists and List Management .................................................................................................4
Getting Started in Direct Mail .....................................................................................................................5
Recency, Frequency, Monetary ..................................................................................................................6
Identifying Groups ......................................................................................................................................8
Key Characteristics ....................................................................................................................................11
Finding Lists ..............................................................................................................................................13
List Brokers ...............................................................................................................................................15
Renting Lists ..............................................................................................................................................18
Narrowing Down Your Lists ......................................................................................................................19
Find a Matching Unit of Sale .....................................................................................................................20
Fresh Names and Name Count .................................................................................................................23
Original List Source – Direct Mail ..............................................................................................................26
Continuation and Usage Information .......................................................................................................28
Ask for Sample of Mail Piece ....................................................................................................................30
Congruent Sales Message .........................................................................................................................32

INSIDER SECRETS TO LISTS AND LIST MANAGEMENT
Mike Stodola: Today we've got Craig Simpson on. Craig is the nation's
leading direct mail consultant and coach. His business is Simpson Direct and
he's located in Grants Pass, Oregon. Craig is an absolute expert in the direct
mail business and he specializes in generating prospects and customers
through physical mail.
Get this, Craig is Dan Kennedy's go-to guy for Dan and his private clients
when it comes to mailing lists and direct mail and in just a second you'll see
why. Very few people have reached as many people as Craig has, or tracked
with detail the number of campaigns that he has tracked.
Here are just some of his stats. Craig has mailed over 200 million sales
pieces; he has sold over $100 million in products and services using direct
mail. Craig currently sends out over 250 different mail campaigns per year,
and Craig has strategized and coordinated mailings as small as 250 pieces
to mailings that are in the millions, with his largest single mailing drop to
date being 5,744,922 pieces.
Today Craig's going to reveal the insider secrets to lists and list
management. In the next hour he's going to reveal his 10 steps which will
allow you to find the perfect list for your business and know exactly how to
get them responding to your offers. Craig, welcome and thanks for being on.
Craig Simpson: Wonderful, thanks for the great introduction Mike. That's
outstanding. I'm glad to be here today.
Mike: It's always impressive. I'm just going to tell you this. I've got my
notebook out and a pen ready and I hope everybody on the phone listening

does too, because I know that this is just going to be some incredible
information.
You were nice enough to speak recently on our bonus day at Info-Summit
and I think we could've had two hours of questions from people. They were
just blown away by the information you gave.
I know Brian Kurtz had told me, he's been talking with you over the past
several months. I think there's a life-long connection there, because he said
he's learned a lot from you, and this is a guy who's done direct mailing for
decades.
Craig: Right. I appreciate that.
Mike: We are so fortunate to have you on.
Craig: Thank you. I'm glad to be here and I obviously love talking about direct
mail. I'm passionate about it. There's this thing in the media today where they
think it's old and out of date, but the reality is it's still alive and well. Any chance
I can get to talk about direct mail and promote it, I'm willing and ready.
GETTING STARTED IN DIRECT MAIL

Mike: We appreciate it and the only other thing with Brian Kurtz; he says
he's the nicest guy in direct marketing and direct mail today, except I think
you give him a lot of competition. Once again, thanks for joining us and I
know you've got just a ton of information; you sent me over everything
you're going to go over. I'm going to dive right in if that's okay.
Where should people start? If I'm looking to do direct mail, what the heck do
I start with? I know nothing.

Craig: I think the first step is you need to look at your existing house file and
identify who your best customers are. If we can look at who your best customers
are, it's going to help us find that ideal mailing list for you.
Now, when we talk about house file or a current customer list, there's some
things you should consider which is going to help you narrow down who the
best ones are.
There are times where I've talked to a company and they've come to me and
they said, "Okay, Craig here are all the details. Here are all the characteristics of
who my best customers are."
Customers who
Then after I dissect, and follow-up, and find out more
purchased recently
details, it turns out that it's not just their customers
but prospects and inquiries, and that's not are better than
narrowing it down. What we want is the best of the somebody who
best. purchased a year
ago.
RECENCY, FREQUENCY, MONETARY
Let's assume that you have a house file, and that is
your current customer base, what I would have you do is take a look at who are
the best ones. To do that, the most common and easy way to do it is to score
each customer based on three things. Those three things are recency, frequency,
and monetary.
Now let me explain. RECENCY means how long ago did they purchase? Was it
three months, a year, two years? You want to segment your group down to those
who have recently purchased.
Mike: When you say recently purchased, where do I start with that? Does
that mean the last week, month, six months? I know it depends from
business to business but where should I get started with recency?

Craig: Great question. I would say start out with the last three months and then
spread out to, maybe the last three to nine months, and then maybe nine months
to a year. You just step back maybe a quarter at a time or six months at a time.
You look at those who've purchased in those different time frames. The ones
that have purchased more recently, you would say
they were better customers than somebody who Someone who has
purchased a year ago. purchased more
The reason why is that somebody who is currently than one time is
and actively buying a product or service, or engaged more qualified than
with you, they're more likely to buy again, versus somebody who has
somebody who bought from you a year ago. They
only bought from
may have lost interest in what you're offering them,
you one time.
so they are less likely to respond.
The next thing to look at is FREQUENCY. Have they purchased from you
frequently? Have they bought from you more than one time? People who are
what we call multi-buyers… someone who's purchased more than one time is a
more qualified customer than somebody who has only bought from you one
time.
Take into account how many times they've purchased. The more they’ve
purchased, the more valuable they are.
The third point is MONETARY. How much money have they spent with you?
Have they spent $10 with you or $1,000?
Somebody who's pulled out a credit card and spent more money with you is a
better customer than somebody who spent less, obviously.
When you look at those three characteristics – recency, frequency and monetary
– you're able to determine who your best customers on your list are.

You'll find that there's a significant difference between those who have
purchased a lot with you recently and spent a lot of money with you, versus
those who've only purchased one time from you a year ago.
If you're going to look for a mailing list, you want to make sure that you identify
who your best customers are; not just who your customers are, but who your
BEST customers are.
That's step 1. Any feedback on questions on that? Does it all make sense on what
you would do?
Mike: Just so we have it. Step 1, you said really look at your house file. That's
going to be the people who bought from you in the past and are on your list.
Then you said, the three things to score them on are the recency, frequency,
and then monetary value. That makes total sense.
You said keep stepping back quarters with recency. It sounds like you can do
that with frequency as well. You could segment the people who bought with
you a dozen times, versus half a dozen, versus twice, versus once, and create
your ideal list, and see how many like prospects there are. Then go to that
secondary and tertiary list from there. That's great advice. I like those three
things.
IDENTIFYING GROUPS
When someone does that, where do they go at that point?
Craig: Then it’s Step 2. Now, let's say you have them in these different
categories. Maybe you break them into five different groups. You have your very
best customers, your next best customers, your good customers, your okay
customers.

You’ve got them segmented based on their recency, frequency, and monetary.
What you want to do now is to identify the characteristics of those best
customers. Those who are in the top ranks, those who have constantly
performed for you in the past. Let's take an inside look of who they are.
What I mean by that is let's find out:
• What their age is

• Their income
• Their hobbies
• Their interests
• Where they live
• What magazines they subscribe to
What are the key characteristics about them that make them different?
You want to survey those customers. There's lots of different survey tools out
there and available. It could be you do some kind of survey where you send out
a survey to them and you give them a bonus if they fill it out and respond to you.
Maybe you do some free call-in session for them, if they're willing to fill out.
Maybe you give them some free service; if you're a retail business, maybe you
provide something for them, just by filling out that survey. The idea is just the
more you know about them, again, the more you'll be able to use to go find those
best customers and prospects on another list. If you don't know who they are,
you're going to miss the mark.

It goes back to what I mentioned early on with that. If you were to look at your
prospects and say, "Here's who my prospects are", and they look different than
your best customers, you're going to get two different types of list, one with
prospects who probably are not going to convert over to buyers, versus the
buyers side where these guys are really good.
There's something different and unique about them that make them buyers of
my product or service. I really want to know who those people are.
Mike: That makes perfect sense. That's something we see people do wrong so
often. Just to use a recent example, a little bit different media, but Facebook
offers lookalike lists.
You can upload a list into Facebook. It matches up people who’ve got the
same email address, and then creates a lookalike
audience.
The more you know
A lot of people we find make the mistake of about best
uploading their entire list and the vast majority of
customers, the more
the list might be people who’ve never bought
you'll be able to find
anything from them, but just got on to their list for
something free. best prospects on
another list.
Then it creates a lookalike audience based on
90% people who just seek something for free,
versus only uploading the 10% who, like you say, are your best buyers.
This doesn't just have to be for direct mail. I love this idea, and applying it to
other media like Facebook with that.

Craig: Yeah. I think that you're right. You can use it across the board. It's not just
for direct mail. It can be used for lots of media. It's surprising how many
companies don't really realize who their best customers are, as far as the
characteristics.
I've consulted with over a hundred companies. I would say the vast majority of
them can't identify exactly who their best customers are.
A lot of times, it boils down to “they're male,” or

The vast majority of
“they're female,” or “I think they're around this age,”
but that's all they know about them. businesses can't
identify exactly who
KEY CHARACTERISTICS
their best customers
Mike: Let's get into the key characteristics just a
are.
little bit deeper, before moving on. If I'm making
this, I know to ask male, female, age, maybe
income. What other things should I be looking for that's very telling?
Craig: Buying habits would be very important. What is it that they purchase?
What kind of magazines do they subscribe to? What are their key hobbies that
they go out and they do on the weekend?
I have a client I used to work with many years ago, the Ken Roberts Company,
which I've talked about in the past. I built this model of trying to find out who
are their best customers.
In the process of building this model, I came back when we surveyed, I think at
the time about 25,000 customers. Obviously most people don't have that kind of
data available, but we did.
In this survey we found out that there was a percentage of them that liked to do
at-home photography development. This was before the time where you could

print out pictures at home. This is back when you actually had to have a
darkroom in order to develop film.
At Ken Roberts, we were selling a financial course on how to trade commodities,

yet we found that the segment of the list was made up of people who like to do
their own photography development at home. You think, "How would that help
us? Why is knowing that detail important?"
The one commonality between that and a commodity course buyer was they
were a do-it-yourselfer. They like to do stuff themselves rather than rely on
somebody else. They were a hands-on kind of person. They wanted to do it
themselves. What I did is I went out and got a mailing list made up of people
who had purchased supplies for at-home use of at-home photography
development.
What it allowed me to do is I mailed these lists and I found a few of them that
received a high enough response rate that it was profitable to mail them.
Because I knew that intricate detail about these customers, I was able to go and
find mailing lists that matched those characteristics and expand the universe of
who it is we would mail to.
Had I not done that survey, not in my wildest years would I ever have guessed
that they would be into developing photography. I'm selling a course on trading
commodities. What does that have to do with photography? You can see the
value of knowing the details of who your customers are.
Mike: It goes way beyond just the demographic details, but more into what
they do, where do they spend their free time, their disposable income, all
that type of stuff.
Craig: Exactly. If you can see something unique, then you can go after them in an
area where they wouldn't expect to see you.

I'm going after these people who are buying supplies to do home development
of photography. They're not used to seeing a financial offer of how to trade
commodities in their mailbox, because they're in a different niche. Because of
that, we stand out a whole lot more, because we're the only guy doing it.
We're the only one that knows enough about our customers to make that jump.
Mike: That is such great advice and I hope everybody listening really caught
what you just said. Instead of going into the magazines or the same places
that everybody is advertising these at-home commodities trading courses,
which you’re probably paying a lot more; you've got a ton of competition,
you’ve got to work a lot harder to differentiate yourself and have a killer
USP and offer – not that you don't need that anyways.
When you're the only one showing up, it's not that hard to show up
differently. That's just great information. So that's very cool.
FINDING LISTS
Now, I've identified my list. I've got that broken down. I’ve surveyed the
customers. I've got a lot of other information about them. How do I go about
expanding that beyond my house list to get the new prospects?
Craig: Now we’re to the part where, okay, let's figure out who it is we're going
to go mail to. To do that, you have to find mailing lists made up of prospects who
look like your customers. How do we do that? There’s this great tool. I've talked
about this a bit before, but I'll expand on it just a little bit.
If you're out there and you're saying, "How do I find a mailing list? I know who
my best customers are. I know what they look like. I know their characteristics.
What do I do now?" My advice is go to a list broker. A list broker is somebody
who has access to every mailing list on the market.

There are over 100,000 mailing lists available. That's a lot to pick from. There's
just about a list for everything. A list broker... the thing is you think, "Well, do I
have to hire him? Does it cost any money?"
The reality is you don't. They're free. They get paid for the rental of a list. They
get paid from the list owners. It's not like you have to pay them for a service to
help you research.
A list broker is
Instead, they'll do the research for free, and then
when you rent a list from them, they get paid a somebody who has
commission from the person who owns the list. It's a access to every
great deal for us out there who want to rent lists and mailing list on the
mail to them. market.
You would go to a list broker, and you would say,
"Here are the characteristics of my best customers. I want to get a list that's
made up of prospects that look just like them." You tell them everything you
know about your customers.
Then they're going to go out and they're going to look in these 100,000 lists
available, and then they're going to return to you something called data cards. A
data card... Don't get confused by this. This is not really hard, it's not brain
surgery. It really is easy… a data card is like a menu. When you sit down at a
restaurant, they hand you a menu and they tell you what's available that you can
eat.
In the list business, they hand you back a data card which is a menu showing
you what is available on specific lists. For every list they recommend to you,
there's going to be a separate data card. It's like sitting down at the food court at
the mall, and you've got 10 different places to choose from, there's 10 different
menus.

It's the same thing when the list broker returns lists to you; you're going to have
10 different data cards or menus, showing you the lists available, and it's going
to give you the details on those lists.
Now, you've taken your customers, you've segmented them down, step 1. Step 2,
you've identified their key characteristics by surveying them. Step 3 now, we're
at the point where you've got some lists to pick from, and you've got these
different menus. The next step is going to be how we start narrowing those
down.
Before I do that, Mike, is there any questions on the menu side, the data card
side?
LIST BROKERS
Mike: I wrote down a couple of things just to clarify. This is a little off topic,
but I think would be very helpful. If I want to find a list broker, how do I do
that? Is it a Yellow Pages thing? Is it online? Are there things to look for in a
good broker versus a bad broker?
Obviously, there's probably both ends of the spectrum out there. Can you
talk a little bit about how I'd find a good list broker for me?
Craig: Great question. There's a couple of things. If you're in a major area like
Chicago, where GKIC is, you could probably look and find a list broker that's in
the Chicago area. There really are hundreds of them. You could go sit down in
their office and you could talk to them and interview them.
It's just like selecting any vendor, whether it's a printer or somebody...
Whatever vendors you use, you've gone through a process in which you've
narrowed down to the one you are most comfortable working with.

It's no different when you pick a list broker. You want to find someone that
you’re comfortable working with. They return your phone calls, they're willing
to email you back, or in Dan's case, they're willing to fax you back. You want to
find someone who's willing to work in the way that your business model
reflects.
Now, having said that, you can look in the Yellow

You want to find a
Pages. You can look at the Direct Marketing
Association, the DMA website. They have a list of list broker who
vendors that you can select from. Let me give you specializes in your
two other inside tips on this, that most people don't niche.
know to look for, that will help you find the right
one.
The first one is you want to find a broker who specializes in your niche. Let's say
you are working in the golf business, and you sell golf videos, putters, drivers,
things like that. You're going to want to find a list broker who deals in those
kinds of lists often.
If you can find a list broker that deals in that often, they're more likely to know
more about those lists than anyone else. Like I said, there are 100,000 lists out
there. If you can find one that deals in that, then you're much better off.
Mike: It's not just access at that point, and it's not just them handing you the
ten menus, to go back to what you said. They can narrow down those 10 and
say, "This is my experience with these 10. Then these three tend to be more
for X, Y, and Z.”
Craig: Exactly.

Mike: That's great. I hope everybody wrote that down about the broker,
someone who specializes in your niche. How do we find that? Is that going to
be in their ad? Is that going to be something they say?
I'm sure a lot of people are honest, but I'm sure there's also people who,
when you say, "Do you specialize in nutraceuticals?" they might just say,
“Yeah.”
Craig: That's true. List brokers do two things. They will help you rent a list, but
they also manage lists for the owners. If they're in nutraceuticals and they're big
in that business, they're going to be managing other nutraceutical lists.
There are a lot of similarities between a list broker and a real estate broker. A
real estate broker, they get paid a commission from the seller of the property.
They’re willing to show you anything out there on the market, while the same is
true with the list broker.
At the same time, if you're looking for a high-end home, and you've got a broker
who is listing some high-end homes, they're going to know more about the
market than the guy who doesn't. It’s the same in the list business.
If you’ve got a guy who manages a lot of nutraceutical lists, he's more likely to
know more and have more inside baseball information on nutraceutical lists
than the other guy. When you ask the question, part B of the question can be… A,
"Do you work with nutraceuticals a lot?" and B, "Can you tell me the lists that
you manage for nutraceuticals?"
Mike: Okay, that's great information there. That's a real highlight. You said
you had two pieces of inside information. The first one, they specialize in
your niche. What's the second piece here?
Craig: The second one is that they don't recommend just the lists that they
manage. What I mean by that is if they're managing nutraceutical lists, there's

no way they manage all of them. There’s no list broker that has any piece of the
market cornered, and that's all they manage.
When you go there and you say, "Here's what I'm looking for" and they give you
10 data cards back, and all 10 of them are lists that they manage, and they
haven't gone outside of their network, that concerns me because they get a
higher commission if they rent out only their lists.
Whereas the commission is split, just like in real estate, the commission is split if
it’s somebody else's managed list. You want to make sure they're willing to give
you lists that are outside of their network, because then they're truly looking
out for you.
RENTING LISTS
Mike: That's great advice. That's some real good information about how to
find a broker and some questions to ask them for that initial interview.
The second question I have, Craig, you've mentioned a couple of times about
renting a list. What are the options with a list, and what does it mean to rent
a list, and what should people expect from that?
Craig: Great question again. Renting a list means that in most cases, you're
allowed to rent a list for a one-time usage. That means you can rent the names,
you can mail them one time and that's it.
Sometimes you can negotiate a two or three time rental and you can mail them
two or three times.
The reason why is if you take a company like, say Cabela's, and they sell outdoor
gear and equipment, they're not going to just sell you their list and say, "Hey, go
ahead and add it to your house file and just mail them as often as you want."
They own that.

The only reason they're putting their names on the market for rent is it's an
income source for them. They have names that are seeded on the file that you
don't know about. If you mail it more than one time, they're going to know, and
they're going to come after you. You get one chance.
Mike: Just be upfront and honest, and do things ethically as in everything we

teach. That's what it means to rent a list. Okay, perfect. Those were my two
questions. I think that will clear some things up for folks.
NARROWING DOWN YOUR LISTS

We've gone through the first three steps. We know the people we want.
We’ve surveyed them, got a better idea of what they do, and then now we've
got a broker that helped us to find a list. Where do
I go from here?
Make sure the type
Craig: When the broker returns these 10 data cards of offer you have is
to you, they can help give you feedback on which
similar to the type
ones to narrow down. Step 4 really is narrow down
the prospects
your mailing list by looking for the type of list that is
responded to.
congruent with your offer.
What I mean by that is, if you're selling a course on how to build your own
greenhouse so you can grow fruits and vegetables year-round – and that's what
you're doing, selling that course – you're going to want to find a list that has
prospects that have responded to a similar type of product or service.
Maybe it's a garden book buyer's list; maybe it's somebody who sells organic
seeds, maybe it's somebody who has a big composter for home use that they've
sold. The thing is, when you're looking at those lists, you want to make sure the
type of offer you have is similar to the type of offer that the prospects responded
to or purchased from on the list that you want to rent.

If you are looking for subscribers to a newsletter, it's better to go after a list
made up of subscribers from a similar newsletter.
If you're doing a seminar offer... I do a lot in the real estate niche, where people
have those big preview days and free real estate seminars… the best lists for
them are people who have already attended a real estate seminar.
When you're narrowing down, and you've got those 10 data cards sitting in
front of you, and you're trying to figure out which list to get, you want to find the
one that's congruent or most similar with your offer.
Mike: Okay, that makes perfect sense.
FIND A MATCHING UNIT OF SALE Make sure the unit of

Craig: Going on to number 5, find a matching unit of sale of the list that
sale. This is the key to finding the right list. You want
you're renting is very
to find a price point on the list that's similar to your
similar to what
price point.
you’re offering.
When you look at the data cards or these menus,
they're going to list the characteristics about that list. One of the characteristics
will say the average unit of sale, meaning how much did the person pay to
subscribe to that magazine, to purchase that course, to attend that seminar?
That is called unit of sale.
When you look at that, you want to make sure that the unit of sale of the list
that you're renting is very similar or close to the unit of sale that you're offering.
If you're offering someone a $97 price to attend a one-day preview event, the
list that you rent, it'd be better if that is a group of people who have paid $97 to
attend a preview event.

If it's $19.95, there's a gap. What you're asking them for is significantly higher
than what these people have paid in the past. The chances of getting them to
respond, they're still decent because they're congruent offers.
If the unit of sale is off, then you might be too far apart and they might not be
willing to take the jump from $19.95 to spending $97 with you.
You want someone who has paid a similar price for a similar offer. Looking at
the unit of sale is key to narrowing down to the best list available.
Mike: If I need to expand my search, are there any rough ideas of... Okay, so
I've got the $97 preview day and the $19 preview day – or the free one,
doesn't seem like it's in the ball part – what kind of percentages am I looking
at? Do I go 20, 30, 40% difference? Obviously the closer the better; but where
would you limit your searches to even try if you can't get someone right
inside your unit of sale?
Craig: I think that's a great question. I would say within 30%. I think if it's less
than that, I would be concerned they are not willing to make the jump.
If they've paid more, that's usually OK. If someone's on the list and they're at
$197 to attend a seminar and you're at $97, you'll probably be okay. Usually it's
easier for the prospect to come down in price than to go up.
If it's higher that's okay, it's actually better. If it's less than 30%, then I would be
a bit concerned about whether or not you're going to get the response you're
looking for.
Mike: It sounds like – just as a general thought there from this – if you see a
bunch of lists where people for a similar product are building big lists
charging significantly more than you, that might be a sign that you can
raise your prices as well if people are willing to do that.

Craig: Exactly.
Mike: It sounds like there are a lot of benefits of getting these data cards
from that. That's interesting.
Craig: Just to touch in on price too, I have a couple of coaching clients who are in
the survival niche. They sell survival products, things for survival – food and
equipment and solar generated products and things like that.
There's a list in the market that has all these $7.95 information product buyers
for the survival niche. There's hundreds of thousands of names at that $7.95
price point. My clients are selling books and information, free reports and things
that lead them into much higher ascension. Their price point is like $39, $40 for
their product.
The jump from $7.95 to $40 is significant. Maybe in your own business, that
might not be, but when you're going to a cold prospect, there's a huge hurdle to
get over. Even though we're in the same ... If we're looking at data cards and
we're saying, "These are guys in the survival market. They bought an
information product that's similar to mine. The offer is congruent. Boy that
should work.”
But the barrier to entry is the price point. $7.95 guy is not buying the $39.95
product. There's a huge jump.
You really do have to be cautious with that. Even though there's hundreds of
thousands of names available at the $7.95 and it's so tempting to go after them
because there's so many people to mail to, you'll get burned with the difference
in price between the two. It's just not worth it.
Mike: I'm sure we all think we're smart enough that we can bridge that gap
or have a great ascension model on step 2, or step 3, or find ways to
monetize that.

But it sounds like, from experience, that's one of those things that we're
fooling ourselves with a lot of times.
Craig: Exactly, it is. We’ve got to remember, even though they've bought
something similar, they're still a cold prospect.
They don't know who you are, so you've got to make sure that they're the right
fit for the relationship you're asking them to enter with you, and that they're
willing to pull out their credit card and spend money with you.
FRESH NAMES AND NAME COUNT

Mike: Once we have that… so we've got the right list, the right broker,
everything, we've got a similar interest, we've got similar sized sales; you
say that you’ve got to make sure your list has fresh names. What do you
mean by fresh names?
Even though they've
Craig: This goes back similar to our very first step,
when we're identifying who our best customers are. bought something
Our best customers are going to be recent buyers. similar, they're still a
That's one of the key characteristics for us. cold prospect.
That's also key for when you're looking for list

names to rent. It's better for you to rent names that are considered fresh or
somebody who's recently purchased.
They've purchased in the last 30 days, 90 days, and last six months. They're a
recent purchaser; they're more likely to respond than somebody who purchased
from the list a year ago.
If you get this mailing list and you look at it and say, "Oh, these names are from a
year ago.” Well, now they've aged quite a bit and there's a risk that they may not

be interested in what it is you're offering. You want to make sure that the names
are fresh.
The other part of it was that you want to make sure there's also a reasonable
count for your specific offer. Let's say that you're looking for females who are
50+ and they make $75,000 or more a year, and they live in Birmingham,
Alabama. If you're looking for that, you're going to want to go to a list broker
and say, "Give me the count of names that are available with these
characteristics in Birmingham."
If they come back and they say, "We have 20 names", well then the number of
names available is too small and you have to go and find a different list.
Not only do you want the names to be fresh and recent, you want to make sure
that they have counts, or the number of names available to you that you can
rent, once you've narrowed down to the specific segment that you want.
Mike: Dan always talks about the fallacy of the big list. We trick ourselves
and say, “If get just 1%, we're making millions of dollars.” It's tempting, but
going after smaller lists – albeit larger than 20 people, you might as well go
door to door at that point…
Make sure the list is big enough that you can have the people and touch
them in a meaningful way and still make money by selling a small
percentage of the list.
We all say we're going to get 10% of this list and those numbers,
unfortunately, a lot of times, probably aren't realistic.
You also said something else about the fresh names and the older names
and stuff like that.

If the list is mixed, is there any recourse for that? Can I go to that list owner
or ask the list broker to only get me the names from people who've
purchased in the last six months or three months off of that list? Or does it
come as a packaged deal and it says these are leads from the last two years
and take it or leave it?
Craig: In most cases, they're going to make it so that, what's called recency or
fresh names, recency of the names is available.
It's a very common thing. Anybody who is doing any high volume direct mail or
any direct mail at all, they want the recent names.
List owners have gotten accustomed to that. I would say probably nine times out
of 10; you're going to have access to those recent
It's critical that you
names.
have recent names in
There are a couple of different names. Sometimes
order to have a
they're called hotline names. They could be called
fresh names. They can be called recent names, or
successful campaign.
they could put them up by the most recent month or
quarter.
Recency is a huge part of doing direct mail and renting lists. It's just a critical
thing that you've got to have recent names in order to have a successful
campaign.
If you're going after a list that's a year old, two years old, three years old, the
odds of getting a good response are really slim. I always say recency is king
when coming to look at a list. The recency is the king; it's a key point you have to
have in order to be successful with direct mail in a cold prospect list.
Mike: In real estate, it’s location; in mailing lists, it's recency, it sounds like.

Craig: Exactly. That's a great correlation too. In lists it is recency, and in real
estate it would be location.
Mike: Okay, perfect. Craig, I don't know if you know about me but I was a
real estate broker for 12 years with my own company before that. You've hit
close to home on a lot of your examples here.
Craig: Good.
ORIGINAL LIST SOURCE – DIRECT MAIL

Mike: Step 7. You say you get a better response if the original list source is
direct mail. Why is that, and what should we be looking for with that?
Craig: The reason why is because if somebody has responded to a direct mail
campaign in the past, that is showing that they're willing to pick up the phone or
fill out an envelope or go online.
They're willing to take the next step based on receiving a physical mail piece in
their mailbox. They say people are creatures of habit. So, if they've done it once,
they're more likely to do it again.
We want to go to
If you're mailing to a list that's made up of people
who responded to an online campaign, there's people who have a
nothing in that person's characteristic to show that proven habit of
they're willing to respond to direct mail. responding to mail
They may be willing to respond to online campaigns, pieces.
but there's nothing in what we can see that shows
and says that they'll respond to our direct mail efforts.
If we're looking for the best list and the best chance for us to get a great
response rate, we want to go to people who have a proven habit of responding
to mail pieces that are sent in the mail to them.

When you look at these menus of lists, the data cards, they're going to tell you
how the list was originated.
That original source could say direct mail, it could say radio, it could say TV, it
could say online; it could say all of them, but the key segment that I want is
direct mail.
There are times when I've rented lists where the names are generated from
radio or TV, and those work okay. They don't work as well as direct mail
generated lists, but they still work okay.
Rarely, I'll take a list that's online generated. I have a hard time converting
online generated leads to direct mail. Occasionally I may test and make it work,
but it's rare.
Let's say you come across the list, and they have both direct mail, radio, and TV
buyers on their list. You would want to ask the list broker, "Can I go ahead and
rent just the names that are direct mail generated?" Often times, they'll come
back and say that's totally fine.
What we're doing by going through these lists, I know we've covered a lot of
detail on that, but we want to give everyone the best chance of success of
growing their herd through direct mail.
We need to pull out all the stops to narrow down the list, to find those that are
most likely to respond.
If we can get those that are congruent offers, if we can get the same price point,
if can we can get those that are direct mail sold in the past – they respond to
direct mail – then we're upping our chance with every segment that we're
grabbing and giving you a better chance of getting in front of the right prospects.

Mike: It sounds like you can learn a ton about these people just from the
data cards.
If you're exploring other media and say you've hit the direct mail and done
that hard, you’re through your list, but you find that there's a ton of people
buying it through radio, obviously then, next thing you do is go into radio, or
go online, or whatever.
It sounds like these data cards are a wealth of information in and of

themselves.
Craig: They really are. In fact, we could spend days just talking about data cards
alone. There's so much information on there. It's just how do you use it to your
advantage? We're really covering the key points of, if you can get these things
right, these are the main things that we need to cover in order to get the right
list.
CONTINUATION AND USAGE INFORMATION

Mike: This is great. Moving on to step 8 – continuation and usage
information. What is that?
Craig: When you're looking at these data cards, you want to get the continuation
and usage information.
Sometimes, the list brokers don't put this information with the data card, and
you may have to request it. I'll tell you what it is, and then I'll tell you how you
can request it.
Continuation and usage shows you everyone who has rented that list recently. If
there are other companies who are going after the same list that you are, it's
going to list them by name – here are the last 10, 15, 20 people that have rented

this list that you're interested in. That's people who have used it. That's called
USAGE.
The other part is the CONTINUATION. It's a separate list, which shows the
people who have not only used it once, but have continued on it. They've
ordered the list more than one time.
We want lists that
The continuation portion is more important than
have been proven for
those who have used it.
other people.
If you see a company that's like yours, that's a
competitor or similar to yours, and they've not only used the list but they've
continued on it, that's showing that the list must have performed well for them
for the first time.
Therefore, they're willing to take it a second time. That means that it's
performing for them and it's a good list for you.
If you look at the continuation and usage, and you don't recognize any of the
companies on there, and none of them are similar to yours, or there's not very
many companies on there, then there's a chance that list may not be the right fit
for you.
We want lists that have been proven for other people too. If it works for
someone else, that means it's a good list, and there's a chance it's going to work
for you too, if your offer is similar to those who are using it successfully.
Mike: This is just awesome information, Craig. I wouldn't have ever thought
that you could actually get that information, because that in and of itself
could be a gold mine with that. They’ll just tell you who else has used it, who
else has used it multiple times, and that's standard practice it sounds like.

Craig: Actually it's not. I would say that probably… I would be shocked, Mike, if
one out of 100 direct mailers did this. I'd be shocked.
It used to be, 15 years ago; it was included with every set of data cards. Now,
most of the time, you have to request it. It's extremely rare that's posted on
there.
The thing is that people don't know to ask for this, but you can ask for it. It's
going to make you that much better. Really, if one out of 100 are doing this, I
would be shocked. But it gives you an advantage, because you can go look and
see who else is using that list.
Mike: That's a huge advantage. I would never have thought that you could
even ask for that, and that's something they might provide.
This alone, if that's all they get out of this call, which that would be
impossible, but that's just phenomenal information – getting continuation
and usage information.
ASK FOR SAMPLE OF MAIL PIECE

Step 9 blows me away too. You say you can ask for a sample of the mail piece
that they used to generate the names on the mailing list. Again, is this a
common practice? Is this something most will do? How does this work?
Craig: Again, this is one of those maybe one out of 100, or one out of 1000,
actually do this. You can go to the list broker and say, "I'm interested in renting
this list. I would like to see the sales piece used to generate the names on this
list."
It's an odd question to ask. If you’ve got a good list broker, they're going to go
get it for you. What that means is you can see... Let's say this list is generating

gardening book buyers, and it was an eight-page letter that was mailed in a 6 x 9
envelope that was used to generate those buyers.
They can get you… and they're not going to get you a physical copy… they will
send you a scanned copy of the piece or a PDF copy of the piece.
You'll get a look at the copy used to generate the buyers that are on the list,
which is super rare and most people don't ask for this, but you do have access to
that information.
What can we learn from this? If somebody is mailing an eight-page letter with a
6 x 9 envelope to this list and they've responded and bought because of that,
your best piece that you could mail to them would be something very similar.
If you're going to mail them a postcard or a magalog or a digest, you're probably

not going to do as well as if you were to actually mail the same style of piece.
People are, again, creatures of habit. If they've responded to a certain style of

sales piece, they're more likely to respond to that same style sales piece again
because it resonates with them.
When you're doing list research and you're looking through this information, it's
going to almost paint a path for you of, "Here's what you need to do in order to
get people to respond to your products and offers."
By finding out who's mailing the list, what the price points are, what the sales
piece looks like, how the copy is positioned, you’ve got the Yellow Brick Road
right in front of you here now. You know exactly what to do.
Mike: This is crazy. This could literally save people thousands, tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands, depending on what they're doing with
things.

Like you said, it shows you their exact buying process basically; how they
buy, what media they buy, what they respond to, what they're looking for,
what they're used to. This is just great.
Craig: I know we're short on time, but I want to mention one other thing on this.
This is an extra tip in there.
You get that sales piece, the PDF of it, and you're looking at it. Call the number,
go online, whatever it is and buy the product. Now, if it's an offer that's similar
to yours, you're going to get on their mailing list, and you're going to see what
they offer their clients.
You can use that to your advantage by saying, "What should I do for my follow
up sequence? What other kinds of pieces or offers should I make to my
customers?"
Now that you're on their list, you can see what else they're doing. That's just one
extra tip you can take from that.
Mike: You're a lot nicer than I am. My tip would be just don't be cheap, go
invest in the competition to see what they're doing.
That's great advice there. Rounding it out, now that you've got all that done,
let's move on to step 10, which you touched on here.
CONGRUENT SALES MESSAGE

Craig: Yes, which is make sure your sales message is congruent with the list
you're mailing. If you're mailing to a list of bankers, you want to make sure that
you use their lingo. You want to make sure you're speaking the same language.
You want to make sure that the people you're going to are going to connect with
you. If you're speaking a different language or coming across in a way that

they're not comfortable with, they're not going to respond. Knowing who's on
the list that you're mailing to is extremely important.
When I'm working with copywriters like Dan, one of the first things he'll do is
say, "Craig, send me a data card for all the different types of lists who we're
going to mail to, because I want to know who the prospects are, so I can write
specifically to them."
If you don't do that, then you're going to miss out on sales. You've got to make
sure that your message is congruent with those who are on the list. If the list is
made up of seniors, then you want to refer to things
that they can relate with. You're not going to talk
You want to make
about Twitter. sure that the people
you're going to are
If you're going to Boomers, you're going to talk about
things that they can resonate with from their going to connect
childhood, or who they politically stand by or the with you.
hobbies and interests that they would have. You're
not going to talk about sky diving, you’re going to talk about something else.
You want to make sure the message is congruent with those who you're mailing
to.
Mike: Craig, I can't thank you enough. You just gave your 10 steps. For
everybody on the phone, I would definitely re-listen to this and make notes.
I'm blown away, Craig; every time I hear you, I think, "I’ll probably have
heard this before,” and I'm just taking piles of notes here with all this.
Craig, you're on here. You're not selling anything. You agree to come on,
because GKIC just has the best members out there. We've got so many
experts; people like you are truly passionate about it.

You're not just an expert at it, but you like doing this, so you're willing to
come on.
If someone wants more information or wants to work with you after hearing
this, where should they go or what would their next step be?
Craig: The best place would just be to go to my website, which is

www.simpson-direct.com, or just go into Google and type in Simpson Direct
and I'll pop up.
Mike: Craig thanks again for being on today and sharing all this. For those
listening, go back and take more notes on what you’ve got. This is just gold;
it could make you a lot of money, give you a lot of information that you didn’t
have. As importantly, it could save you thousands of dollars from these tips.

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HOW TO GENERATE LEADS THROUGH

LISTS AND LIST MANAGEMENT

With Craig Simpson and Mike Stodola

© 2014-2015 Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

© 2014-2015 Glazer-Kennedy Insiders Circle, LLC. All rights reserved. Page 2

Getting Started in Direct Mail .....................................................................................................................5

Recency, Frequency, Monetary ..................................................................................................................6

Identifying Groups ......................................................................................................................................8

Key Characteristics ....................................................................................................................................11

Finding Lists ..............................................................................................................................................13

List Brokers ...............................................................................................................................................15

Renting Lists ..............................................................................................................................................18

Narrowing Down Your Lists ......................................................................................................................19

Find a Matching Unit of Sale .....................................................................................................................20

Fresh Names and Name Count .................................................................................................................23

Original List Source – Direct Mail ..............................................................................................................26

Continuation and Usage Information .......................................................................................................28

Ask for Sample of Mail Piece ....................................................................................................................30

Congruent Sales Message .........................................................................................................................32

© 2014-2015 Glazer-Kennedy Insiders Circle, LLC. All rights reserved. Page 3

INSIDER SECRETS TO LISTS AND LIST MANAGEMENT

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Craig: Right. I appreciate that.

Mike: We are so fortunate to have you on.

GETTING STARTED IN DIRECT MAIL

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What I mean by that is let's find out:

• What their age is

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A lot of times, it boils down to “they're male,” or

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At Ken Roberts, we were selling a financial course on how to trade commodities,

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Now, having said that, you can look in the Yellow

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Mike: Just be upfront and honest, and do things ethically as in everything we

NARROWING DOWN YOUR LISTS

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Mike: Okay, that makes perfect sense.

FIND A MATCHING UNIT OF SALE Make sure the unit of

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FRESH NAMES AND NAME COUNT

That's also key for when you're looking for list

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ORIGINAL LIST SOURCE – DIRECT MAIL

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It sounds like these data cards are a wealth of information in and of

CONTINUATION AND USAGE INFORMATION

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