Your list is the asset you own

What you will be able to do

• Explain the difference between an audience you rent on a platform and a list you own
• Identify the list sources available to your business and design one sign-up offer
• Decide which fields to store for each contact and how to keep the list clean

Your followers belong to the platform. If an algorithm changes, your account is hacked or a platform falls out of favour, the audience you spent years building can vanish overnight. An email list is different. It is a record of people who chose to hear from you, kept in a system you control, and it travels with your business wherever the platforms go.

Read the transcript

Your list is the asset you own.

Your followers belong to the platform.

If an algorithm changes, your account is hacked or a platform falls out of favour, the audience you spent years building can vanish overnight.

Rented land and owned land.

Marketers describe social platforms as rented land.

You can build on it, and you should, but the landlord sets the rules.

What the list actually is.

For an event business, "the list" is not one big pile of email addresses.

It is several groups of people with different relationships to you, and you will talk to each differently.

Where the names come from.

Most event businesses already have the start of a list scattered across inboxes, spreadsheets, booking platforms and phones.

Gather what you have before you chase new names.

A sign-up offer worth an email address.

Nobody wants to "join our newsletter".

People will trade an email address for something that solves a planning problem they have right now.

The fields worth storing.

Store what you will use, and nothing more.

For most event businesses, this is enough:

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

Rented land and owned land

Marketers describe social platforms as rented land. You can build on it, and you should, but the landlord sets the rules. They decide who sees your posts, what you can say, and whether your account stays open. An event business that relies entirely on Instagram for inquiries is one policy change away from a quiet season.

Owned land is the set of channels you control: your website, your email list and your client records. Nobody can turn down the reach of an email you send to a past client. Nobody can suspend your list. The goal of almost every other channel in this course, from social media to wedding shows, should be to move people from rented land onto owned land, with their permission.

What the list actually is

For an event business, “the list” is not one big pile of email addresses. It is several groups of people with different relationships to you, and you will talk to each differently.

Tag each contact with their group from the start. A newsletter that speaks to a bride three weeks from her wedding and to an HR manager planning a holiday party at the same time will feel wrong to both.

Where the names come from

Most event businesses already have the start of a list scattered across inboxes, spreadsheets, booking platforms and phones. Gather what you have before you chase new names. Then add sources deliberately.

• Your inquiry form. Every inquiry is a contact. Add a separate, optional consent box for marketing email so you can keep in touch beyond the quote.
• Booked clients. Contracts and invoices give you names, emails and the event date, which is the basis for anniversary and rebooking emails.
• A sign-up offer. A useful download in exchange for an email address. More on this below.
• Wedding shows and open houses. A sign-up sheet or tablet form at your booth, with a clear statement of what people are signing up for.
• Partners. Business cards collected at networking events, with a follow-up email that records where you met.
• Social media. A link in your bio to the sign-up offer, and posts that point to it.

A sign-up offer worth an email address

Nobody wants to “join our newsletter”. People will trade an email address for something that solves a planning problem they have right now. That offer is often called a lead magnet. It works best when it is specific, short and clearly tied to what you sell.

• A planner: “The 12-month wedding planning timeline for GTA couples.”
• A caterer: “How much food to order: a portion guide for parties of 20 to 200.”
• A venue: “Floor plans and capacities for every room, with sample layouts.”
• A DJ: “The wedding reception run of show, with a must-play and do-not-play template.”
• A rental company: “Linen and table size calculator for round and banquet tables.”

Put the offer on a simple page with a short form: first name, email, event type and event date. The event date is the most valuable field you can collect, because it tells you when the person will buy.

The fields worth storing

Store what you will use, and nothing more. For most event businesses, this is enough:

1. First and last name.
2. Email address, and phone if they gave it for a reason.
3. Group: past client, inquiry, subscriber, partner or corporate.
4. Event type and event date.
5. Source: how they came to you.
6. Consent: what they agreed to, when, and how. The next lesson covers this in detail.
7. Last booking date and value, for clients.

Clean the list twice a year. Remove addresses that bounce, merge duplicates, and update the group when an inquiry books or a subscriber’s wedding date passes.

Worked example: what the list is worth

Lantern & Lane has 210 past clients, 340 subscribers from its wedding timeline guide and 60 partners. Marco wants to know whether the list deserves an hour a week.

Last year, past clients produced 11 repeat or referred bookings that came directly from an email: anniversary notes, holiday party reminders and the newsletter. The average booking was $4,800, so that is $52,800. Subscribers produced 6 bookings at an average of $6,200, or $37,200. Total: $90,000 from about 610 contacts, or roughly $148 per contact per year.

The list took about 52 hours of work in the year plus $420 in email software. Even at a generous $100 an hour for their time, that is a cost of $5,620 against $90,000 in bookings. These numbers are an example. The point is to run the sum with your own figures, because once you see what each contact is worth, you stop treating email as an afterthought.

Start this week

1. Export what you have. Pull contacts from your inbox, booking records and any platform that lets you download your client list into one spreadsheet.
2. Tag and date. Add the group, the source and the date of the last contact to every row. Without the date, you cannot tell which consent still applies.
3. Put one sign-up offer live. Even a one-page checklist, linked from your bio and your inquiry confirmation email, starts the list growing while you work on everything else.

In Canada and the GTA

Building a list in Canada means working within two federal laws. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) governs the commercial emails and texts you send, and the next lesson covers it in depth. Here, focus on the other law: the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which governs how you collect, store and use the personal information on that list.

PIPEDA applies to you. PIPEDA applies to private-sector organizations that collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activity, and personal information means information about an identifiable individual, in any form. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner says PIPEDA generally applies to private-sector organizations doing business in Ontario. A list of names, emails, event dates and budgets is personal information. So is a guest list a client sends you. See the OPC’s summary of PIPEDA.

The principles in practice. PIPEDA sets out ten fair information principles. Four matter most for a small business building a list:

• Identifying purposes. Say why you are collecting the information when you collect it: “We will use your email to send the timeline and our monthly planning newsletter.”
• Limiting collection. Collect what you need for that purpose. A guide download does not need a home address or a budget.
• Safeguards. Protect the list with strong passwords and two-factor authentication on your email platform and CRM, and limit who can export it.
• Openness. Your privacy practices must be clear and readily available. The OPC says to make available the name or title and contact details of the person accountable for privacy, how people can access their information and complain, and what information you disclose to other organizations and why.

Tell people who receives their data. Your email platform and CRM are other parties that hold your contacts’ information. The OPC’s guidance on meaningful consent says to emphasize what information is collected, which parties receive it and for what purposes, in plain language. Name the type of service in your privacy policy, such as “our email marketing provider”.

Breaches. If your list is exposed, for example through a hacked account, you must report to the OPC any breach that poses a real risk of significant harm to individuals, notify affected people as soon as feasible, and keep a record of every breach for 24 months, whether or not it meets that threshold.

Do not buy or borrow lists. A purchased list of “GTA brides” or “Toronto HR managers” fails on both laws. The people on it never consented to hear from you, so CASL’s consent rules are not met, and their information was collected for someone else’s purpose. A partner who offers to forward your promotion to their own list is a better route, because they send it under their own consent and relationship.

Local habits that help a list grow

The GTA’s wedding show season, which runs mainly through the winter months, is the single best list-building moment for wedding vendors each year. Bring a tablet with your sign-up form rather than a paper sheet that someone must type up later, and state on the form exactly what people are signing up for.

Corporate contacts change jobs often. When an email to an office manager bounces, look for their replacement and their new employer. Both are potential clients, and a short note to each is ordinary business, not spam, when it is based on a real relationship. For corporate buyers, the best time to grow the list is late summer, ahead of holiday party planning.

Finally, think about language. If a large share of your clients prefer a language other than English, offer your guide in that language too, and record language preference as a field so you can send the right version.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)