In this article I will try to give you a definition of what an autoresponder is, how it works and why you should use one. I will also try to give examples of the best ways to use an autoresponder and some thoughts on what kind of people that should use one. Is it only to be used if you have a business online, or should you consider buying one even if you have no intention of earning money online?
The definition of an autoresponder is something like this; it`s a software that automates the task of sending e-mails to a list of people. Yes, it`s really that easy. I could probably write a more complex definition, but I think it`s important to focus on the true value of the software.
3 ways to use an autoresponder
- prewritten messages
- broadcasts
- rss feeds
With
prewritten messages, you can write messages and have them sent out automatically whenever you'd like. For instance, I have heard somewhere that it takes (average) seven e-mails to make a sale. If you have ten e-mails sent to your list every fourth day, you will have a good chance of making a lot more sales. You just have to write the e-mails, and as soon as you are finished, you can start marketing your "report".
Most good autoresponder software got a feature to send
broadcast to your list. What you do is write a message and send it directly to all the people on your list. It's sort of like an ordinary e-mail, but the difference is that you can personalize it. This is a feature a lot of Internet marketers use, as they got new products to offer.
With a feature like an
rss feed broadcast, you send your latest blog posts to your list of people. As soon as you have published a post, all the people on your list can get an e-mail with the title of the post and a few sentences with information about the post and a link to read the rest of the post. This is a great way to market your blog to people that might not read your blog on a daily basis.
3 reasons why you should use an autoresponder
- You want an audience
- Automate your sales process
- Personal contact through e-mail
Even though you might not be trying to sell something, there can be other reasons why you would like to have a large
audience. If you are an author like Lee Child, you could want your readers to sign up for a newsletter or to just sign up so you can keep in touch with them about upcoming books and information regarding your thoughts and ideas. If you use an autoresponder for this, you will have all your e-mail contacts (your audience) in one place.
If you are selling something, using an autoresponder will make the sales process a lot easier. You can write as many messages as you'd like, and you can tell the system exactly when each message should be sent to the people on your list. This way, as soon as you have a new person inside your autoresponder, the rest of the sales process is automated. All the e-mails you have written about your product or your service will be sent automatically to the person, and you can be anywhere in the offline world.
One great feature with an autoresponder is that you can
personalize each e-mail. This is a way to communicate on a whole new level. Usually, if you send e-mail to a list of people, you can't write personal e-mails using each persons name, because everybody on the list will receive exactly the same email. But with an autoresponder, you can send a different email to each person. Well, the content is almost identical to each person, but you can small parts of information that you can personalize. You can add the first and the last names of people inside each email. Instead of receiving an e-mail with just the words Hi or Hello, I will receive an e-mail with Hi Jens or Hello Jens. This makes a huge difference.
I don't believe that you need to sell something in order to use an autoresponder. You can be an author wanting to have personal contact with the readers, and especially if you have a large group of readers. Or if you are a SEO of a large company, you might want to use an autoresponder for internal communication. This way you get more personal with your colleagues. Or maybe if you are preselling something, like if you are working at a university and you'd like to be communicating with people that might be interested in attending the university, but they are not really sure, they would like some more information about the various courses first. By using an autoresponder, you can be sending them all the various information automatically.
Examples of autoresponders you can use
There are many ways to use an autoresponder, some creative and some rather standard, like the ways I described today. There might be a lof of different reasons why you should start using an autoresponder as well, but I am just describing three reasons that are rather obvious. You could start using either one of the five top autoresponders listed above, or you could start using AWeber because that's the one I have been using for years.
