Dream direct mail scenario: evergreen list and evergreen offer. I.e., offer can be mailed repeatedly with necessary ROI, and list replenishes quickly enough so you never run out of names. 

Otherwise, you want lists large enough to yield enough names after deep multiple selects, and also to roll out successful campaigns. Either way, it seems you need a BIG universe of LISTs, but it’s not efficient to build your own.

So what do we do? Parasite other people’s lists. But they won’t just let you in. So, what else can we do? Be attractive to list owners — Influencers. Attract influencers in order to get at their lists.

How? The Inn itself has to become a reputation behemoth. One way is the Huffington Post model: Attract influencers to write – influencers pull in their people. Influencers’ content & references back -> reputation up -> have more rep to bestow on future guests. Do not follow Twitter/Facebook’s model of non-persistent pages. At the Inn, every post ought to live forever.

Need to be attractive to Influencers. Attractive enough for them to want to play here, and bring followers over to play here.

But which Influencers to attract?

Although attracting influencers can be a scalable way to build the Inn’s list (1 influencer brings N followers), it’s still not the most efficient. We ought not to look for raw numbers. We’d rather not play the large numbers game. Instead, we ought to filter and attract multi-buyers. Because, you only need a small number of affluent multi-buyers to be as productive as a large number of one-time buyers.

E.g., makers and doers are multi-buyers, because usually never stop making or doing. Also, winners who have a habit of winning.