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Feb 5, 2016

Public Speaker Email Opt-in Hack

You’re a public speaker. You want to build a relationship with your audience beyond the time speaking on stage or online.

What’s the most efficient way to accomplish this goal?

In this post, I’ll show you a simple-to-implement trick for public speakers who want to follow up with the audience.

It’s subtle, not pushy, and will get you more qualified leads.

Audience Members’ Dilemma

There I was listening to an awesome presentation by Bobbie Carlton (@BobbieCarlton) founder of Mass Innovation Nights and Innovation Women furiously taking mental notes.

She was presenting for a storytelling workshop that featured the instant classic ‘Naked Christmas’ story. Please ask her on Twitter about it :)

Naked Christmas is a hilarious story. Feel free to follow me on Twitter.

Then she moved into real value packed slides and I couldn’t write fast enough. I was pissed at myself because I was caught between a rock and a hard place.

The workshop was on storytelling as a speaker. This slide was when things got real in Whole Foods parking lot.

Here was my dilemma:

I can experience the workshop focusing on the speaker and miss some crucial notes.

I can take notes from the most relevant parts of the presentation and miss out on the human connection.

Speaker’s Dilemma

As a speaker Bobbie is superb. She also runs Mass Innovation Nights where startup founders in the Boston area launch products.

Bobbie has 14,000+ emails from attendees of the events.

She emails her subscribers with a newsletter on events and opportunities. She uses emails to build relationships for business development and create potential speaking engagements.

So you know she wants emails of attendees.

The problem is she is not running the event I am attending. She is a featured speaker.

How do you get emails from the audience as a speaker(when you are not running it)?

Old Solution: The Clipboard trick

Bobbie actually implemented the old ‘pass the clipboard sign up sheet’ trick to get contact info for people interested in following up.

There were issues.

1. Sadly, the clipboard did not make it’s way to me or my side of the room.

2. Big audiences may not comply with passing around a clipboard hundreds of times

3. Attendees might feel unwanted social pressure to add their email because everyone else is doing it

New Solution: The Email Opt-in Hack

Here is what I proposed to Bobbie after the workshop.

If you are a speaker who would like to follow up with your audience and add email subscribers, you can implement this as well.

Step 1

Create a landing page

There are so many options for a landing page (Leadpages, Instapage, Unbounce, etc). It would be hard to recommend just one. So pick the one that best suits you.

The objective of the landing page is creating a place where people provide their email and you can provide your slides or other supplementary materials for your speech.

Quick tip: If you want a free alternative that is easy for non techies, just use Gumroad.

Check out the Gumroad landing page for this very blog post:

The demo is a great resource if you want to see how the process is done.

You can create a similar welcome message asking your audience to download your slides or complementary materials from your speech.

Once guests land on your page they will provide their email and get your materials.

All automated for your convenience — FREE.

Step 2

Create a custom link

Go to any custom url service online and create a custom link for your presentation slides.

In the example below, I chose bitly.

Copy and paste the link to your presentation landing page into bitly.

Press Enter/Return to create a shortened version of the link.

Look for the ‘Customize Bitlink’ section on the right side of the page.

Type in an easy to remember word or phrase related to your topic in the customize field.

Name the link and feel free to write notes about it.

Congrats! You’ve created a custom relevant link you can share with your speaking audience.

Quick tip: Make absolutely sure you’ve spelled everything correctly. Custom links cannot be changed in bitly once they are created.

Step 3

Add your new custom link in all your slides

Bobbie added relevant Twitter handles to her slides. All she needs to do is replace one of them with her new custom link.

Let’s Recap

We solved the audience member’s dilemma of whether to take notes or focus on the speaker.

We solved the speaker dilemma of how to generate follow up leads with the audience while delivering their speech.

If you are speaker and want to create a relationship with your audience beyond your speech, try the Public Speaker Email Opt-in Hack.

Want to take the Public Speaker Email Opt-in Hack to the next level?

I’ve recorded a video demonstrating the process and show you different strategies to make this hack even more effective. Click the link below to get access to the video:

Watch Email Opt-in Hack demo video