Note: Learn how to get new patients and boost your profits, even in a bad economy, by using mailing lists wisely. Whether you work in the restaurant industry or health care field, mailing lists can be vital to your management marketing and practice advertising.

1. Why do you call this mailing list collection program Infrastructure?
Because it is the infrastructure of your whole marketing process and without it nothing will work the way you want. It is like the road system, or the sewage system. If you do not have it, or if it is faulty in different ways, trouble will occur. Why do you think the USA is more prosperous than India? Because we get more done in less time and often get a higher quality that is consistent. And why do we get more done better? Because we have a better infrastructure of roads, sewages, mails, phones, general communication systems, etc. A good infrastructure speeds up the process, and speed is money, as you will have many very successful people confirm. Move fast and you will win, move slow and you will lose!

2. Which lists are the most important?
All are important, just like in a car. You cannot leave out car parts. You cannot leave out groups of people, which means it is impossible to leave out different mailing lists.

3. Which list should I do first?
Here is a general idea of which lists you will collect first.

• The local newspapers, radio, and TV. Do not forget the ethnic papers and stations, and the religious papers or other special interesting papers
• The community leaders, such as fire department, schools and principals, police, city contacts, churches and their leaders, etc.
• You must purchase the school teachers’ mailing list separately. (Usually it costs $120 for a 5-7 miles radius around a doctor’s area).
• All practitioners of all professions, except your own – and even those might have a purpose once a year.
• Some special businesses, which are good for potential networking, such as lawyers for chiropractors
• All businesses in the area
• All locations of street events. Your marketing person must also compile this list
• A list, even if somewhat loose and unofficial, of establishments such as grocery stores, donut shops, beauty salon or any other store, where they let you post flyers about your social events. Those stores which let you do that are easy to convince to let you have a booth as well. It’s all about getting your foot in and breaking the ice, making friends, and being different as a person rather than as a professional.

4. How do I collect those lists?
First of all, almost all lists – except the media list – could be obtained easily from mailing lists companies. (You can even check with us if we have such lists.) Those lists are about 65% – 75% good. This means that of all available names in your area (usually a 3 -5 mile radius), the lists will have about 70% of those names and be able to reach them.

5. How do I get the rest of the 30%?
You could, and down the road should, start hiring telemarketers, who can call to gather those addresses. For community leaders and doctors this is recommended, but for businesses it is a bit of a waste of time as they change so fast that you will never catch up. The whole maintaining of a good database is actually quite a job. Anyhow, for starters, you are a lot better off doing this than doing nothing, which is what you have done before.

6. Why can’t you get me a better list?
The numbers change very fast, so when you get the yellow page to your door 25% of all numbers are already bad. We do buy some of the better lists available and any upgrades would cost fortunes for very little in the way of better results. But look at it the good way: having 65% or 70% of all names in the radius, where you do business, is probably infinitely more than what you have done so far. So, be happy and run with it. It will change your marketing efforts drastically.

7. Do all names have fax numbers?
No, they don’t. Fax numbers are hard to come by, since they usually are not published and some businesses do not have dedicated fax lines. For our customers that get their mailing lists from us, our online program will give you a count on how many names, fax numbers, e- mails we will provide you with. This does not mean they are all good and deliverable, as I have said before.

8. Did you say somewhere that faxing is illegal?
Yes, I did. Read the section well. It says that unsolicited faxing for the purpose of selling or promoting goods or services is forbidden, and can get you a fine of $500 to $1500 on a state and on a federal level. So, why do we talk about faxing?

Again, read the statement about the law I have made in the program: “Unsolicited for sale and promotion. When we are telling you to fax we are also telling you to use it ONLY for announcing social messages for the purpose of helping someone, but absolutely no promotion for your service or product.”

9. Is it possible that someone still sues me?
Absolutely. You live in a country where we have more lawyers than the rest of the planet together. So, what do you think those lawyers have to do? Right, they have to sue someone. And just because they might lose, that does not discourage them to start a lawsuit, which is why the very, very vast majority of lawsuits are settled out of court.

10. Do you advise about faxing and about the legal aspect? And are you a lawyer?
No, my advice is not legal about faxing or the law about faxing. I am also not a lawyer. My advice is not even an advice. It is my opinion only. You should check out with a lawyer even about the paragraph about what constitutes unsolicited faxing.

I am only a marketing guy who does not care about this aspect very much; who does believe that it is totally within the law; who would fight it if someone sues, and who has seen no problem of any magnitude when I and my clients have faxed, as I have described, for over a decade now. But you, and you alone, must be the judge about it. There always are letters, postcards, phone calls, emails left to use if you decide not to fax. And, of course, you can call and ask for permission to fax as well, something we do strongly recommend if you do fax for advertising purposes.

11. There seem to be very few fax numbers for community leaders, church leaders, etc. on the list, which you provided.
Yes, churches and just about all community leaders should be called for their fax numbers and any other data that is missing, and at the same time they should be told about whatever social event you currently are doing. They should also be asked whether they know of any street events happening in town during the year.

12. Why should we send a letter to each school teacher, when we have already sent a letter to the school?
The fax, or even a letter to the school, will usually end up with one and the same person all the time. If that administrative person does not pass it on to the principal, then you have lost out, but if 30 school teachers get a postcard or a letter, then your chance just improved by 30 times. One of the teachers will use it for his/her class, and/or will talk about it to other teachers enthusiastically, and even may present it to the principal. It’s all about getting your foot into the door and getting your messages to many hands.

13. Does e-mail marketing work?
Yes, it does and it starts working more and more. Now, when I say it works, it does not mean that it will bring you dozens of patients or clients and that you can drop other marketing. It does not even mean that I am basing my comment on any percentage at all. I do not believe in estimating any results of anything based on known percentages very much. All I am saying is that you would get some attention, which you would not have gotten otherwise, and this attention is gotten in an inexpensive way.

14. What is the best method of contacting potential buyers?
There is no best method. There might be here and there some methods better that another, but you should never be looking for that best way. I know of no one way which gets all the business you need, but I do know of about 10–20 ways which will get you all you need and more.

15. Why would it be better to hand address the letters to teachers (and anyone else for that matter) if printing labels is faster and cheaper?
Because a handwritten letter to a teacher might come from a parent or a handwritten letter to a doctor might come from a patient, and thus about 50 times more people will open a hand-written envelope. You can hire college or high school kids to hand-write letters for you. If you put an ad on Craigslist.org on the internet, you can probably get many people who are willing to write envelopes for you by project.

However, printing labels and getting the letters out is still 100 times better than not sending anything out.

Remember: Dental practice advertising and practice management marketing will improve your income, even in a bad economy, with the proper use of mailing lists. Doctors and small business owners, you must know that prospective new patients and clients won’t know you exist if you don’t tell them you are here. So get out those mailing lists and get to work!

 

Category: Healthcare Marketing.