One of the most important features the Internet offers is interactivity, and the sequential autoresponder has become the most effective tool for the Web marketer to exploit this dynamic.
When used correctly, this tool can be transformed into your obedient, reliabe, productive workhorse and sales representative.
You can have as many autoresponders as you require. They are not difficult to set up and each can be programmed to automate several important tasks, freeing up more time for you to develop new ideas and expand your business.
An autoresponder is essentially an e-mail program that responds automatically to any incoming message to a particular e-mail address.
It can be set up to:
Once started, each of the above assignments can help you generate income 24 hours a day -- automatically, economically and consistently. So, if you chose to take an extended vacation and enjoy lifes pleasures frolicking on a Caribbean beach, you could do so without suffering any loss of revenue.
The autoresponder is a wonderful e-mail tool and here are some specific ways it could benefit your business.
1. Test and Track Specific Ad Campaigns
Place a small classified advertisement in an online publication and include an e-mail address for readers to request more information. That e-mail address takes them to your autoresponder which has been previously set up with the additional information.
The request triggers an immediate and automatic e-mail response to the reader. Its quick and efficient.
By setting up different autoresponder addresses with the same information, you can use the count of incoming e-mails for each address to track the effectiveness of things like:
2. Offer a Preview of your E-book or Software Product
Studies have shown that you substantially reduce buying resistance if you allow prospects to get a sneak peek at what you have to offer. It gives them an opportunity to evaluate your product and determine if it suits their purpose, before plunking down money and possibly finding out otherwise.
At the same time, your willingness to have your product scrutinized says you are confident it will deliver on your claims.
This strategy gives you access to the prospects e-mail address, where you can send instructions for previewing your product. Subsequent follow-ups can be sent at appropriate intervals encouraging the prospect to make a purchase, subscribe to your newsletter, or whatever the case may be.
3. Thank You, Follow-up and Upsell
When someone orders your product, your autoresponder can routinely send a personalized message confirming the transaction and thanking them for the purchase. Three days later a follow-up e-mail can be sent to see how theyre doing with the product, and offering to answer questions or address any problems.
This show of support is very reassuring, helps to build trust, and lays the foundation for developing a positive business relationship.
Four days after that, you can send off a second follow-up message recommending other products the purchaser might find useful. This tactic is effective. It leads to additional sales and is completely automated.
4. Distribute a Mini-Course via E-mail
It is widely known that repeated contacts with a potential customer are necessary before a sale is made. Five to seven contacts is the range that seems to deliver the greatest success. You can capitalize on this by offering a mulit-part course, tutorial or chapters from your latest e-book.
Program your autoresponder to release a new chapter or lesson every two or three days. Make sure that each message includes a reference to your product or service, with links where appropriate, along with an invitation to buy your stuff.
This approach keeps your business fresh in the readers mind. The frequency and quality of the information helps her become familiar and comfortable with you. Trust is developed. Your stock goes up and the reader is more inclined to do business with you eventually.
There are many other creative ways in which this powerful technology is being used everyday to connect with thousands of potential customers. The beauty of the autoresponder is that it can be programmed for a particular function then left alone to carry out its instructions.
With a little effort you can come up with your own innovative ways to automate your business and create new marketing opportunities, improve customer service, establish your brand and boost profits, all without increasing your workload.
Hermas Haynes is an Internet marketer and Webmaster of . He offers an informative blueprint on how to create and manage your own profitable online business in six simple steps. Visit his site today and get your free preview.
Deliverability is todays biggest issue for every email marketer. Email marketers face deliverability problems because of email overload. Many people who spend much time online and that have businesses very much related to computers and Internet often get more than 100 emails per day. Usually, 8 out of 10 emails are considered as SPAM. Problem is that your email message, supposedly that you are legitimate marketer and have permission for contacting, can be flagged as SPAM. This can make harm to your business and reputation.
Here you can find some interesting facts about deliverability and SPAM:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/funfacts
Using some Hosted ASP email marketing software you will loose money because of the fact that you will pay for every message sent and not for every message delivered. Beside that, you will loose money in lost sales. Using desktop email marketing software like GroupMail you will pay one-time-fee for software licence and not for number of messages delivered.
You can have deliverability issues because of anti-spam lists, because of ISP filters and because of corporate/user filters. So there are three hurdles you have to jump over to get your messages delivered. So, how can you improve your deliverability rates
Subscriptions
The first necessary step in getting your email message delivered is that you have permission of your members to send them your messages. Never, and we mean never, put people on your list without their permission. We recommend you double opt-in method for getting new subscribers so that they have to confirm their request to be your subscribers. It is recommended to ask them to enter their work email instead of free email addresses. Some companies go that far that they dont allow subscribing if you use free email address. It is because of the fact that work email address is considered as more reliable and stable than a free email address.
Welcome message
So, after they confirmed their request you have to take the next step. You have to automatically send them your welcome message where you will give description of your company, email newsletter and list management info (information about subscribing, unsubscribing, digest mode, archives).
In this welcome message it is very important not to forget two most important things. To tell them to put your From address in their Whitelist filtering rules to ensure that your message will arrive in to their inbox and not in their Bulk folder. And second very important thing, you should ask them to save your welcome message for future reference. Many people forget that they subscribed to certain email newsletter. Because of that they can accuse you for spamming and report you to your ISP or email marketing company.
Regulations, relations and reputations
You have to constantly have good relationship with major ISP in order to ensure good deliverability. ISP relation often can be a complex job so many email marketing software companies have special people assigned for this type of job. They have to actively watch news about ISP politics and to fulfil their request.
For example, some ISP wont deliver your message if your messages dont have a so called DomainKeys or Sender Policy Framework (SPF) key to ensure that the message really came from your domain name and to protect email sender identity. This prevents email spoofing. Some other companies wont deliver your messages if you are not compliant with Habeas Sender Warranty Email Header. The Habeas headers allow you to guarantee that the emails you are sending are not spam and bypass filter systems.
Speaking about DomainKeys, for example if you send your message from one Yahoo email address to another Yahoo email address the recipient will see this info below From name:
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoo.com.
You can have your own DomainKeys so that your recipients get similar message like above only with your domain name in it. Not only that it is recommended to have your own DomainKeys it is also very professional to see that your company is have one. It shows that email communication is very important for you.
For more information about those standards and regulations visit:
http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
http://www.habeas.com
You have to ask your email service provider what steps they take in order to ensure the maximum deliverability. If your email service provider is blacklisted your messages wont be delivered on many places. Also, you have to check whether your domain is blacklisted. You can use different services like http://www.dnsstuff.com, http://www.spamhaus.org, http://www.spamcop.net, http://www.OpenRBL.org. Having a good reputation with major anti-spam lists and policies ensures that your messages wont be filtered.
List maintenance
You have to track which email addresses are undeliverable and if it repeats several times you have to remove those email address if your software wont do that for you. Also, if you dont use double opt-in method for getting subscribers it can happen that someone make a typo in entering their email addresses so instead of, for example, username@domain.com they enter username@domain in your subscription form. Email marketing software like GroupMail (http://www.group-mail.com) has add-on called Email Inspector which removes bad email addresses and can validate recipient addresses by format, using DNS lookup and full SMTP user account testing.
Content and consistence
Content Is King! one of the best known rules on the Internet. In email marketing, it is not only important that you include quality content. It is also important that your message dont look too spammy, that it isnt full of words used by spammers like: free, buy now, guaranteed, limited time offeretc, thay you dont write words all in capitals. It is considered as SHOUTING!
There are several useful tools that will check your content if it is considered as spammy before you send your message. One of those services is EzineCheck (http://www.ezinecheck.com).
Also, you have to follow one of the most important rules in email publishing and that is consistency. You have to choose your From field name and stick to it, you have to make your Subject line in that way that it clearly represents you, to choose one format and always use it.
For example, lets say you have a newsletter called Best Practices Guide. You can design your subject line this way:
[BPG] Article Title, Issue No., Date
This can be your template so it is more likely that your message wont be deleted by mistake. You can make your style even further. You can make a practice that your every article starts with number or question so this template can be:
[BPG] 7 Best Deliverability Tips, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005 or [BPG] How To Get Your Emails Delivered, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005.
We have said that you have to choose your From field name and stick to it. Beside that, your From email address is even more important. Many subscribers make filters based on From email address so if you change your email address it is more likely that your message wont be delivered or read. Thats why your From email address has to be consistent.
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: