WebMaster Solutions
Email
Marketing
Automate
Your Marketing
with Autoresponders
by Kenneth Catto
Automation is an
important part to any business. The less time
you devote to doing small redundant tasks the
more time you will have to devote to primary
business activities, such as: product
development, advertising, customer service, and
list building. Or, you may want to have more
time for enjoying other things in life other
than working, so the more you automate your
business the more time you will have available
to spend on whatever you desire.
Putting an online
business on autopilot is not very difficult and
much of it can be done by simple using
autoresponders to do many simple tasks for you.
An autoresponder is a software program that you
pay usage fees for, or that you buy and put on
your own hosting account's server. It is a
program that responds to email inquiries from
other people with whatever you program it to
send out. And it can also easily be programmed
to send out email messages that you enter into
it at whatever time you want. Therefore an
autoresponder, abbreviated AR, can be used for
many purposes to assist in handling business
communication activities.
An AR can be used
to promote your products or services and to get
people to visit your website. Just type or copy
and paste your sales or informational message
into your AR and have it sent out to whoever you
have entered into the AR. Then, when a person
receives your message and visits your web site
and makes a purchase you can have your AR setup
to deliver another message to them. The message
would thank them for their purchase and then
deliver their product and receipt to them.
You may also
program it to give your customers detailed
instructions on how to go about obtaining their
products and describing other products you have
to offer that they may be also be interested in
purchasing. In this way you have the ability to
promote more products and possibly make more
sales. You can also program your AR to send out
follow-up messages a day or two after a purchase
to ask customers if they are satisfied with
their purchase. This assists in building strong
customer relations and also gives you another
opportunity to promote more products while
saving your time.
It will also allow
you to make more "back-end" sales by using
follow up messages every few days. It is
advisable to always include some meaningful and
relevant information in your follow up messages
so your messages do not appear to just be
blatant sales messages, which most people do not
generally like or appreciate. The beauty of all
this is that you can be off doing something else
while much of your business communication
activities are being handled automatically by
your AR.
Autoresponders are
great for training and teaching purposes. Many
college professors who teach correspondence
courses set up their lessons in an AR and then
send them to their students at specified times
throughout the semester. And, because the
courses being taught often do not vary much from
semester to semester, or from year to year, the
lessons can be set up one time and used over and
over again with only minor adjustments being
needed.
ARs are great for
providing training lessons to all types of
groups. For example, a 12 week training course
can be written in advance and then scheduled for
deliver when the time is appropriate. The
lessons can even be set up to be delivered to
different groups at different time intervals.
ARs are great for keeping members of an
organization informed of upcoming events,
deadlines, and special offers or promotions.
Promoting products
for sale is one of the most popular uses of
autoresponders in online business. But when
using an AR to promote your sales just realize
that most potential customers do not like the
direct "hard sale" approach and it has been
documented that on an average a potential
customer must hear from you at least 7 times
before a sale is made. It is usually best to
contact potential customers in the first 2 to 4
messages with valuable information that is
interesting for them to read or use in their
lives. It is good to give away something of
interest and value and to thank them for
subscribing to your email newsletter or ezine.
It has been said
that the best way to entice sales is to build
interest slowly and start with an informative
message about something that interests your
reader. And, when you do try to make a sale be
sure to focus on a problem or solution that your
product or service will help resolve for them.
Gain their confidence by providing free
information that is relevant, accurate, and
informative for them.
There are many AR
services available and you can certainly find
them by doing a search with any of the main
search engine services. Many AR services will
give you free limited service, but be cautious
of these AR services because they will put their
advertisements on all of your outgoing messages,
or limited the amount of messages and
subscribers you can send to. These things
certainly will not help your business any. Be
very careful when choosing and signing up with
an autoresponder service to use in your
business.
Some popular ARs
frequently used are listed below:
- http://www.aweber.com/
- http://www.a1ebiz.com/
- http://www.getresponse.com
- http://www.emailgogettersystem.com/
And, of course
there are many, many more so please do a good
and thorough investigation and analysis before
deciding which AR to use. If you are a beginner
then you may want to try the free service listed
on the last line above. It is called, "EGGS" for
short. It is very easy to understand and to use.
It does have some limitations but it has plenty
of functionality for most people and there is no
cost involved unless you would like to donate.
Recommended Reading
|
