Lots of people talk about autoresponders and how you can use them to grow your business online. But what actually is an autoresponder?
Quite simply, it’s a piece of software that enables you to send emails to people automatically. This doesn’t mean that it writes the emails for you and it doesn’t involve spam or sending unsolicited email. What it means is that you set up a sequence of prewritten emails that are sent out to prospects on your database at regular intervals.
The importance of this cannot be underestimated. Time and time again internet marketing gurus tell you that the money is in the list. This is not by accident. The online marketing specialists know that this is fact. The more people you have on a mailing list that are interested in your products or services, the more sales you will make.
You can use an autoresponder to essentially send emails out to your prospect list, even when you’re not at a computer. What you do is you create, lets say, a seven part email course. Then you can set the intervals for the emails to, say, once a day and send them one part of the course each day. So you write the emails one time and then anyone joining that list will automatically be sent those emails for the next seven days.
This doesn’t matter if you’re online or if you’re away from the computer. They will get sent automatically. They also get added to the list automatically. And if they choose to unsubscribe, all of that is taken care of without you having to lift a finger.
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The main benefit to using an autoresponder is connected to the fact that the majority of people need to be told about a product seven times before they buy it. So I want to ask you, how many times are you telling your visitors about your product? Chances are it’s less than seven.
They’ll land on your homepage or somewhere else on your website and they’ll look at your offering, but the majority of your sites visitors will disappear. So unless you can get them onto an opt-in mailing list, either a course or free information that is of multi-part format, the chances are you will have lost them forever. You can use an autoresponder to send these messages out to people with their permission convincing them and educating them about your product.
This is simply a form of permission marketing. People will give you their permission to receive emails in return for you giving them free, quality information. Do not load the messages with over-hyped sales pitches, but give them real quality information with a small mention about your product at the end.
What you’ll find is that people come to know you and grow to trust you over time as you send them more and more information. The longer you can maintain this relationship with them, the more likely they are to actually buy from you.
How to Write an Autoresponder Series
Your autoresponder series can take a variety of forms. A series of articles, a multiple part course and additional free bonus offers work well. You can offer an eLetter, ask for testimonials and survey your prospects using an autoresponder.
And the best part is...once you set it up you're done! It will keep on selling without ay more attention.
Write at least 7 emails for your autoresponder and set them to be delivered every 2-4 days over a 2-3 week period.
Always provide a link back to your sales page in every email. The point of your autoresponder is to deliver valuable information to your customers and remind them why they should buy your product.
There are some technical aspects to setting up your autoresponder that are important to consider. First is the type of email.
You can send HTML emails which allows you to include graphics and other effects. I recommend against this option. These emails take longer to load and are often presented differently by different email viewers.
Since your email presentation is hugely important you should go with the simple plain text option. Every email viewer understands what every common font is supposed to look like so you will make exactly the impression you intend to make.
Another aspect is the formatting of your message. Make sure that each line ends with a hard return and is only 60 characters long. This will ensure that your email doesn't look staggered and jagged or worse...run right off the screen in one long line that you have to scroll sideways to read.
Once you've written your entire series of messages you should consider making an opt-in pop-up form for your sales page. The high-end autoresponder services offer a slide in pop-up that can't be blocked by pop-up stoppers.
These simple forms appear a few seconds after the page loads...and they get great results. Go to your autoresponders service provider and find their pop-up generator section. Follow their instructions for generating the code you need.
Then simply copy and paste the pop-up code into the HTML of your sales page. You can keep track of your opt-in form performance with the built in features offered by either of the premium services recommended.
