Introduction to Autoresponders Or Automated Email Marketing Services
Let’s look at why and how to use Automated Email Marketing Services, as let’s face it, having an autoresponder email marketing service is essential if you do any sort of marketing online.
Having an Autoresponder is essential for anyone who is marketing online as, autoresponders will allow you to automate all those annoying and nonessential replies, and give you more time and energy to focus on the more important stuff like building your online business.
An autoresponder will allow you to set up automatic messages that you can put together quickly, to be sent out while you’re offline, on vacation, or otherwise unavailable.
The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to
work continual twenty-four-hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they’re
eating up your revenue), you have a problem.
Your autoresponder email marketing service will automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received. Basically, they help one maintain conversational email correspondence. Even just letting your customers know that they will be attended to in a certain timeframe is reassuring for customers.
Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices
give you their feedback about your website – for free!
However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business?
The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails
without you so much as having to click on your mouse.
Take this scenario for instance:
An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It’s a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitor’s large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.
In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust – unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.
Uses for Automated Email Marketing Services
There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email. Here are just a few of them:
- To send out information about your services or products, pricelists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails.
- Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles.
- Advertising your business and then build stable relationships with your customers with the use of regular newsletters and specials.
- Collecting names and email addresses of potential customers, that you can contact time and time again.
Some automated email marketing services can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at a predetermined interval of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire. This will save you heaps fo time, and your customers are recieving all the information that you want them to without you lifting a finger, once you have set it up.
There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge, providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.
I personally prefer to pay for the service, as it looks more professional. I use Flodesk for all my Automated Email Marketing Services.
To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business
cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.
It’s a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it.
The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.
Creating A Personalised Signature…
You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every
staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and
guidelines to creating a personal signature.
Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your autoresponder does not cut off your text!
The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers.
Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company’s reliability and longevity.
More Uses For Autoresponder Email Marketing Services
Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully.
Your website should contain different email addresses for different contact requests.
For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about products. It’s a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.
Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.
Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.
With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue opening your emails.
Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor excited to learn more.
Of course, you have to write up your course before you can offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the material carefully, employing a professional writer or editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your Autoresponder Email Marketing Services / autoresponder.
You could also publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.
You could use the same autoresponder service to publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions.
Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.
Try writing reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder.
Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliate’s page in your autoresponder.
You can also distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you.
A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Let’s say you’ve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief extract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.
Use your autoresponder to distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer rather than gain a sale.
Distribute advertising. Let’s say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospects’ email addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up.
It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.
Use your autoresponder to let your subscribers know when you have posted new content on your site and what it is about.
Get creative and create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be motivated to request answers, and you will have a record of the visitors’ email addresses who took your quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of their entry.
Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc.
People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.
There are a number of free autoresponders you can use. Most of them for a limited amount of subscribers. Here are just a few of them.
- Get Response
- Aweber
- Mail Chimp
- Flodesk
- Send Steed on Leads Leap
Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own! Feel free to comment if you have any questions.
