If you conduct business via the internet you need to know about AutoResponders and how you can use them in your business. Everyone who uses email is accustomed to receiving email from “no reply” email addresses. Those emails were sent to you by an autoresponder, a computer program designed to automatically send out the correct email message automatically without human intervention.
People who publish newsletters use them to send out subscription request confirmation and then to automatically send out the newsletters to everyone on the mailing list. People who sell a product via the internet use them to answer peoples request for information, sending out a series of email responses over a given period of time until their potential customer responds. For the etailer, the auto responder replaces the series of sales pitches that we use to send out by snail mail. If you employ an “opt-in” link on your web site for any thing you need to employ an autoresponder.
If you have been using email for any length of time, odds are that you are familiar with your email clients capability to send out a “one off” automatic message announcing that you are “on vacation” and will respond as soon as possible. Those “turn on-turn off” features are a very simple type of autoresponder, but they limit you to one message only and anyone emailing you gets the same message. They are fine for the purpose they were designed for but for the serious email marketer it’s inadequate, the serious email marketer need a robust “sequential follow-up autoresponder.” Sequential follow-up auto responders include many powerful features that “One-Off” responders don’t.
Think of a sequential follow-up autoresponder as an automated email on-demand system. Anytime the sequential follow-up autoresponder receives an email request from an email or form, it determines which of the responses you have previously loaded into it is the correct response and then sends it out as an email. Here are a few specific ways you might put a sequential response autoresponder to work.
1.If you market a product or service, you could use an autoresponder to email a series of prewritten email sales letters to potential buyers.
2.If you offer an online course where the lessons are to be sent out daily, weekly, or monthly, you can use an autoresponder to send those e lessons off on schedule and in the right order even if you course is open ended where people can enroll at any time.
3.You can use one to create a newsletter or e zine that will be sent out automatically to everyone on your opt-in list.
4.You can create special offers and use the autoresponder to send it out to everyone on your mailing list.
There are some free autoresponder services but most free services bombard your recipients with unwanted and unrequested information which gives your messages the appearance of spam. Besides that, free services don’t have some very important features that you really need, features like
1.Unlimited storage. A full featured autoresponder allows you to create and store an unlimited number of letters as you need.
2.The ability to personalize each message by automatically inserting the recipients name and other important information in all the appropriate places within each prewritten message.
3.The ability to send your message as “plain Text” or HTML based on the persons preference when they entered their email address in your opt-in form.
4.Full service autoresponders offer you the capability to track the response to each of the mailings you send out. You need this capability to determine which of your mailings are most effective and to modify your sales campaigns as needed.
There are basically two ways to incorporate a autoresponder into your operation. If you are technically adept and have a server that’s online 24/7, you can purchase the software and run the autoresponder on your own server. The second way is to subscribe to an autoresponder service provided by a third party vendor. For most of us, the second alternative is the best way to go. Hosted autoresponders are available for a relatively monthly fee and, besides near zero downtime, using a hosted service frees you up to spend your time creating and marketing your product or service and that’s where your income comes from.
