Seven Things

Seven Things #3: Second Chance Offers

Stu McLaren (The Nicest Guy on the Internet) interviewed me live last night in between Jim Edwards and Joel Comm.  When he asked me what's the most signifcant change I made in 2008, the very first thing that came to mind, and therefore the thing I blurted out, was "automation."

If you can write a quick e-mail, or article, or blog post, chances are you can write 2 more really quick posts, even if they say nothing but, "Remember a few weeks ago when I said this?"   Then lead into the exact same call to action...

Answering Stu's question reminded me of when I was at the Warrior Event in Austin earlier this year, when I picked up a really great tip from Ron Capps -- the NicheProf!

We were talking about sending offers to your list and how we both sometimes send new offers to our list for old products.

Ron will send a mailing out to his list promoting a product,
then send the same offer out again in 90 days!

On average, he promotes the exact same offer 5 or 6 times (one time every ninety days) before it completely runs out of gas.

That is a freaking cool way of looking at mining gold from your list.

That's what our plan is with the Daily Seminar membership site... simply because of attrition.  I launched my first recurring membership site almost three years ago and it began with a big splash, but we didn't market it after that, and the membership slowly died off.

But you can do that with your one time products as well!

Two Products a Week?!

At one point many people on forums thought I was a machine -- that I pump out two products a week consistently. Not true. I just have so many products I created in the past year or so that it seems that way.

People forget. People don't read every single e-mail. People will look at your offer and save it for "later" ... which ends up being never.

In fact I promoted a product from 2001 (Software Secrets Exposed) ... all I did was I took an old product, slapped a dimesale onto it and told my list. $1200 in a day -- on a SUNDAY -- probably about an hour's worth of work total.

Nevermind the costs I put in, I'd already broke even on the resale rights from an earlier promo I did for that product.

The best thing was... because I had it on a timer... I didn't even do any work that day.

Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)

Here's what I want you to do: The next time you send a mailing out to your list, write the mailing a second time and save it as a timed mailing to get sent out 90 days from now.

If you do that now, then just before Valentine's Day 2009, you'll get a nice little surprise bump in income!

It doesn't have to stop there. You know that 2001 product? Someone bought it and saw the 2001 copyright and asked how could the info still be relevant.

I responded with an e-mail explaining how 100% of the stuff in the book still applies today and how all the predictions Ben Prater made in 2001 are now true today.

After responding to that message, I worded it into a quick follow-up and added it to my autoresponder to go out SIX months later. Hit on an extra benefit in the follow-up that people missed or forgot about!

p.s. How's this for automation?  I wrote this blog post on April 24, 2008, when I was in a blog writing frenzy, and scheduled it for December 2008... so I wouldn't overload my readers.  It's only now being published 5 months later.  Just before it went live, I took about 60 seconds to make it current.  Best of both worlds.

Here's what we learned today:

1. Send the same offer to your list every 90 days.
2. You can promote the offer 5 to 6 times. (Over the course of 18 months.)
3. Have it on a timer so you don't have to worry about it.
4. If you can take the answer to a common fear and turn it into a sales message, do it!

Have you resurrected any dead offers successfully?  What about when you failed, how was that different?  Please leave a quick comment below.