In our the last installment of this series we went over how to create your “Initial Offer.” You can see it by clicking here.
Today, I wanted to go over the actual process of how to cultivate a list.
You see most people have a warped concept of what list cultivation actually is.
In fact many of the gurus out there actually don’t even know how to do this themselves.
After speaking with quite a few of these people and my mentors I realized soon enough that most of these so-called gurus never really learned how to actually cultivate a list.
That’s probably the reason why many of these gurus fail to ever successfully build a long-lasting Internet business.
Here’s what I mean…
Most of these guys and maybe this includes you, (don’t be ofended though) understand how to actually build a list – what they don’t understand is how to make that list actually “like” and apprediate them.
Think about this… after a person opts in and subscribe to your newsletter and actually makes the decision that they want your offer, most people tend to send them an e-mail a day for about seven days.
That’s nice but...
What they fail to realize is that human beings take about 45 days of consistent activity to form a habit.
So in other words… they have not formed a habit of actually accepting you into their lives and into their day to day lifestyle.
What that means is that you can send them an e-mail, but if they’ve never built the habit of opening your e-mails and accepting you into their life, you’ll never build that relationship with that person after they opt into your offer.
One of the other purposes of list cultivation is the simple principle of reciprocity. The principle of reciprocity is actually a very powerful human emotional trigger. This trigger almost forces you to give back to those that give to you.
In fact, many religion’s worshiper recruiters use this extremely well.
Have you seen this principle triggered and used by yourself?
This is the primary reason why many corporations and government offices do not allow their employees to accept gifts from outside parties or clients. The principle of reciprocity is so powerful that it is one of the primary reasons why people feel compelled to show unreasonable favoritism to those who have given them gifts… although inside they feel it is unfair.
I am NOT saying that you should cultivate your list in a way that forces them to give you money for just about any garbage product you find; I DO expect that you will use this knowledge in a ethical manner. Trust me, there is usually hell to pay when people figure that out that someone is taking advantage of them.
So here’s how to cultivate a list after they accept your initial offer in how to build a long-term relationship with people who actually want to hear from you and appreciate what you have to say…
1. Once they opt in to give them a high-quality free report or some form of high-quality content. This can be either your free report or some kind of free audio or video that helps them to solve the problem they are looking to resolve.
2. Every other day for the next 45 days you should send your new e-mail subscriber some form of quality content or about their particular topic of interest. What this does is it helps them to realize that you actually do want to help them solve their problem. When your subscribers feel that you’re actually giving them something of value they will not have a problem opening your e-mails and giving you their money… or should we say their hard-earned money (which many of those gurus out there don’t care about)… in return for your solution.
Just remember that people work for their money, so you should have respect for it.
3. Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or you are a product owner, you can freely space offers between the days of content. For example: on day one you give them the actual item they requested when they decided to accept your offer. On day two you begin to ask them how they liked the content and also recommend certain sections all of your content for them to refer back to and why it is important for them to apply or to read that content.
On day three you can freely begin giving quality articles or reference material related to the content they receive when they signed up for your newsletter or offer. From then on every other day in between your content e-mails you can make an offer of some sort. This can be either an affiliate offer for a related product that you are promoting if you’re an affiliate marketer; or if your product owner you can promote your own product or products.
You should continue to do this for 30 to 45 days.
If creating content is a problem for you don’t worry about it. You can easily find the questions people are asking on forums related to your topic or you can simply go to his website like Ezinearticles.com and look for their hottest articles and base your content around those.
What starts to happen as you provide content and offers is your subscribers will feel comfortable and freely open your e-mails read your content and respond to your offers. In other words they will either click through on your offers and check out whatever affiliate offer it is that you’re promoting and either decide to buy the recommended offer OR they will buy your offer.
(Sidenote: Be sure to check out anything you recommend FIRST!)
Remember this… cultivation is not necessarily about trying to make people buy immediately is about building a long-term relationship and trust with your subscribers so that they actually feel and know that when it comes time to delivering content and real value you are the one they want to read and listen to.
Here’s the thing… when my mentors originally opened my eyes to the reality of what cultivation was – I soon understood exactly why I felt so strongly about them as my mentors as well as about quite a few other people in different topics of interest that I have.
One interesting topic I have a very very strong interest in is self-help. No we’re not talking about the the law of attraction gurus and that sort of stuff. What I am talking about is how people in the self-help industry tend to always give you some level of high-quality content that has the ability to help you.
As a result of this content we generally stay focused on what they have to say and follow through on what they ask us to do.
So basically to cultivate a list your only requirement is to… give something of value in your initial offer, give quality content at least every other day for 30 to 45 days, make recommendations and offers between your content days.
If you did nothing else (bare minimum stuff) and all you did was build your list through your initial offer and allow that lists follow through on your cultivation sequence which you will place in your auto responder, you will literally have autopilot income coming in to your bank account 24/7/365 like clockwork!
This is one of the ways I’ve been able build the kind of income that I now have.
PPV and other advertising methods have been VERY good to me but that is one-time income and I need to keep advertising in order to sustain it.
When you build a list and cultivate that list; no matter what industry it is; you now have the ability to make money on demand.
In my next installment I’ll discuss how to create backend offers for your new cultivated list.
This is not the same thing as making offers and between your content e-mails.
If you have questions regarding this post please feel free to leave your comments below…
Please only comment on subjects related to this post… all other comments will not be approved by my staff.
Love and peace,
John
Tags: list building, list cultivation, make money with email
what list building software and auto responder do you recommend
Hi Chris…
For autorepsonder software I recommend Getresponse as it is simple and effective. The only issue is that it will get pricey as your subscribers increase.
Aweber is another great one and its pretty darned cheap for what you get… the downside is it is a “double opt-in” service. That usually means you lose access to sometimes half the people that sign up IF they don’t confirm their optin.
Honestly, I’ve been finding that these new traffic generation software coming out are actually best for list building. Once you have an offer, you can simply focus on driving traffic to that offer. Most other things are simply BS!
I’ve so far resisted the idea of this kind of marketing because speaking as a customer my own reaction to getting this many e-mails is generally that once the novelty wears off, usually after about the 3rd e-mail, I just never get around to opening them!
However, being in the self-help industry myself I accept that people with a problem to solve may be more likely than most to read a whole lot further than that, so I’m now planning to give it a go.
I do have one question, though – about how long should my “content” e-mails be?
I imagine there’s a fine line between “short & to the point, but with way too little content” and “informative, but too involved and long to hold the reader’s attention”. Problem is, I don’t know where to draw that line!
From your experience, could you give me an idea of what would be about the right number of words, both for content-rich e-mails, and also for the offers interspersed between them, please?
Thanks
Hi Aislinn,
Yes, I agree to an extent about emails however, the truth is, IF it becomes a chore for your reader to open your emails OR they are simply NOT interested in your emails enough to open them.. then there’s the issue that it is YOU who is not doing your job with your email marketing. This is not directed at you specifically Aislinn just speaking in general here.
One of my mentors helped to build a 7 figure business in self help in the past so you may have an easier time with that industry, however they can and DO tend to need real motivation to take action on your emails.
Content emails can be anywhere from 300 to even as much as 1,000 words however I would suggest using your blog as the place you direct traffic to for long emails, as they sometimes get stuck in Spam folders unnecessarily. Your promotional emails can be as little as 50 words as long as they are powerful enough to “GET THE CLICK” and let the sales material do the work. This issue is one that we will discuss in another post. We will also discuss another commonly overlooked issue with email marketing as well. Hope this answers your question.
Thanks for posting… and yes I DO send a lot of emails myself.. but it’s always for something I actually have faith in unlike some gurus out there, whose names we’ll keep off my blog… who will promote ANYTHING to make money. Oh the stories I could share…lol
Love and Peace,
John
Hi John:
Yesterday I purchased your Rapid Income Creator package. So far, so good – still on the Intro page…(who is that “partner”? I recognize the voice but can’t quite place him.)
Today I got your e-mail subject line : “Read this FAST, Lucy” Seems like this guy’s program program is pretty similar to yours. Why would I need it if I’m going to get rich using your program?
Just looking for some enlightenment.
Lucy in Paradise
Hi Lucy,
Thanks for posting. Great going.. stay focused. The reason I recommend new programs and methods is because not every program and method is for every person who uses them. The other program has more nuts and bolts of online marketing. My method is a unique method of advertising sites without actually owning one.
Love and Peace,
John