Ahhh, autoresponder … is there any sweeter word in the email marketing business? I think not!
I know an online marketer who built up a huge list in the travel niche back in 2000. She didn’t know about autoresponders.
That sucked for two reasons.
1) the people who signed up for her list came in right where the list was. There was no welcome email. No ‘here’s where we are and what we are talking about.’ No ‘read this prior stuff I’ve written that you may be interested in.’
and the big one 2) She couldn’t take a break. She said she would mail on tuesdays and thursdays and she felt compelled to create content and mail on every tuesday and thursday.
Eventually this became too much for her and she said she would mail on the 11th and the 21st of each month. Then she couldn’t stand that either. She started to dread the time leading up to the 11th and the 21st. She knew she had to start creating her mailing …. but it had become such a chore.
So finally, she pulled the plug and deleted her mailing list of 14,000 people. Her subscribers were sad. She was free.
Now, back in 2000, the web was new, internet marketing was new, and ways to make money with an email list weren’t as obvious. So she felt it was no big loss.
A few years later, she learned about autoresponders and knew this was the answer.
With an autoresponder she could write 10 or more (or less) email messages and every person who came to her list would get the same 10 messages, starting with the first one, and getting one a day until they got all of them.
The messages could point her list to her welcome information the first day. The next day they could point her subscribers to her product recommendations. The next day the list members would be pointed to her best information pages. And on and on.
If she had something exciting and fantastic or timely to talk about she could write a message that would be delivered right then. This is called a broadcast message (autoresponder messages are sometimes called followup messages). The broadcast messages were no longer a chore because they didn’t have to be done on any schedule. They could be done when she wanted to do them.
Oh, and by this time, she was making a lot of money recommending certain products relevant to her niche and she knew the recommendations would be perfect for an autoresponder message.
Man did she wish she had those 14,000 subscribers back!
The moral of this story is that an autoresponder is an email marketer’s best friend in the world. Learn them well, use them wisely, and they will never treat you wrong.
How do you use them wisely? Everyone will develop their own style, but here is a good starting point.
1) first message: Thank the subscriber for following up. Tell them what to expect from your list. Deliver any freebies or initial information you may have promised.
2) second message: talk about the very best information you have to give to the people who are interested in whatever you are talking about. Give them such good information in this message (or give them a link to this information) that they start to love you.
3) third message: recommend a long-standing, tried and true product that you really stand behind. Something that you know they’ll like and that you like. (Don’t ever recommend crap anywhere on your list if you want to keep your subscribers)
4) fourth and on message. Keep sending out good information or useful or funny stuff. If you have more good products to recommend you could start a schedule of 2 purely informational messages per every 1 product recommendation. or something like that.
The point is you don’t want your subscribers to feel like they are being endlessly sold to. You want them to value your information and want to keep receiving it.
And that’s it. You could put anything in an autoresponder!
Your initial messages might take some time to set up, but this time will pay for itself over and over again for years and years. Autoresponders are truly the workhorse of the email marketing world. They take only one time to set up, and the give over and over again, every day, for as long as you have a list. What could be better than that? Get your autoresponder set up today.
