Put Your Internet Business on Auto-Pilot using Email Autoresponders
Success in internet marketing world partly depends on how many marketing tasks you automate. Many successful internet business owners use some kind of tools to put their internet businesses on auto-pilot. Imagine having a high traffic website and answering every customer response manually. That’s a daunting task. But you can automate your daily tasks by using autoresponders.
Simply stated, an autoresponder is a program designed to automatically reply to any email query with a pre-written message. You have probably seen autoresponders in use many times before. If you’ve contacted a company via e-mail or contact form and received the message into your inbox, saying that your message was sent successfully, that probably was a pre-written autoresponder message.
4 Effective Ways of Using an Autoresponder
Maybe an auto-reply message saying that your request has been sent isn’t very useful automation for your business. But it’s not the only way how you can use auto responders. Here are a couple of more useful tips that you can adopt:
- Email Course – You can put several pre-written messages into your autoresponder and offer an email course to your visitors. Whenever someone subscribes to your auto responder, they begin receiving your lessons every day or every week, depending on the time interval set.
- Free Report – Offer your visitors a free report. It can be an article about the industry that you specialize in, delivered automatically when someone requests it. You can include links to your products or affiliate websites.
- More Information – Use autoresponders to give your visitors more information about your company or services. You can send people a list of your products, services or price list. You can set up an autoresponder for each product or service separately.
- Announcements – You can use your auto responder to announce subscribers when you update your website. When a new article is added, when you add another product or service, whenever there’s some news in your industry.
3 Types of Autoresponders
There are various types of autoresponders that you can use for your internet business. Which auto responder is the most suitable for you, depends on your needs and your budget.
- Autoresponder Services
Autoresponder services are popular these days, because they’re easy to setup and start using. Usually your mailing list resides on the company’s server, so you don’t have to worry about your own server’s downtimes.There are free and paid autoresponder services available. Paid services usually have more features than free ones. Some paid services will require you to pay monthly payments, but you can find one that has a one-time setup fee.Free autoresponder services will usually include advertisements in your messages. If you want to look professional, then you might consider using a paid service, however if you’re on a string budget, then the free one might be a better idea. - Web Hosting Autoresponders
These days almost every hosting provider includes autoresponders in their hosting packages. However, features of this type of autoresponder are very limited. You will be able to send only one auto-reply message without the ability to follow-up with your customers. You can use it for people who request more information or thank you messages. But you’ll not be able to capture e-mail addresses of other people. - Autoresponder Software
This option also has some pros and cons. You can download and install it on your computer quite easily. It has a lot of features. However, you have to be connected to the internet all the time of you want this software to work. If someone requests information when you’re off-line, then they won’t receive any message.
What to Look for in Autoresponders
When choosing an autoresponder service or software, pay attention to these factors:
- Personalize Email Messages – Make sure that your autoresponder gives you ability to personalize emails that you send. For example, if person’s name is John Smith, You will be able to insert his name in the email. This will look like: “Hi John,” or “Good day Mr. John Smith”. Be careful, send some email to yourself first and make sure everything is correct. Otherwise, your subscribers will get something like: “Dear <%NAME%>”.
- Limit of the Size of Your Auto Responder Text – Make sure there’s no size limit of the messages you can send. If there is, be sure it’s enough for your email text. Some companies charge extra for bigger email messages.
- Specified Time for Sending Messages – Make sure that a service gives you ability to send a number of emails at a specific time intervals. It is very important. If you want to offer some email course, you need to be able to set some interval between messages. For example, 5 email course messages each sent every day, or once a week.
- Configure Email Messages Many Times – Make sure that a service gives you ability to change a content of a message unlimited times. It is very important in your email marketing campaigns, because you’ll want to test different messages and see what results they bring.
- Auto Responder Request Logs – Finally, make sure that you can view statistics and see how many times your auto responder messages have been requested. In this case, you’ll be able to track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.
Many auto responders will give you all the features described above and even more, like being able to use many auto responder messages and testing several campaigns at the same time. Just do some research and you will find the one that fits your needs and your budget.
Summing Up
Autoresponders are powerful tools. These small “robots” work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can save you tons of hours by automating various tasks. Autoresponders give you ability to connect and follow-up with your target market, thus enabling you to promote your products or services. If you’re serious about the growth of your internet business, pay attention to autoresponders, because these tools can save you lots of time.
