Auto Responders

An Introduction To Autoresponders


If you are unfamiliar with the word 'Autoresponder,' I would urge you to read this page and take action today!   If you do not have an 'Autoresponder' in place already, your business will not be operating as smoothly and as slick as it should be and could be losing you new customers and potential sales everyday.

Even if you do already have an 'Autoresponder' in place, it could be worth reading this page simply because your existing autoresponder might not be being used to it's full potential.

There is nothing more frustrating when contacting a company via email and you do not hear anything from the company for days.  Not receiving acknowledgement to say that your email has been received, leaves you wondering whether or not your email has reached it's destination.   I fully appreciate that some people do not check their emails on a daily basis but if you are running a business, you should!  If you think that is an impossible task to undertake, then you definitely need an 'Autoresponder'


What Is An Autoresponder And How Does It Work?

An 'Autoresponder' is simply a tool that allows you to manage your emails and email marketing campaigns, even if you are not physically able to respond yourself.  Autoresponders automatically respond to your emails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.  No matter what you are doing, where you are or the time of day.  If somebody sends you an email, they will receive a reply immediately!

How many times have you opened your email account, only to find in your inbox, several emails that had been sent days or even weeks earlier?  It may not have been your fault that you had not been able to answer those emails sooner.   You may have been away on business, ill, on holiday or your computer broken.   Whatever the reason, it does not reflect well on your business and the person whom sent you the email will not be happy having had no reply from you in days!

Imagine how efficient and professional your business would look, when as soon as somebody emailed you, they received a reply within seconds straight to their inbox from you saying something like:

"Thank you for your enquiry. Your your email has been received and a member of our team will contact you shorty regarding your enquiry."

Regards

Your Name


Can you imagine how professional your business would look.  The person whom had sent the email will be assured that their email has been received and that their enquiry is being dealt with.

People expect prompt replies to their emails and even if you do try to answer every email quickly, sometimes, with all the best will in the world, you cannot!

If you've reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you are ready to learn about autoresponders.

Unless you can figure out how to continually work  twenty-four hour shifts or have enough money to hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they're eating up your revenue), you have a problem.  The good news is, an 'autoresponder' is an inexpensive - or even free - method of quickly responding to emails.  What these programmes do, is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.

Whether you like it or not, emails are an integral part of your business for many different reasons.  Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your web site - for free!  However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business?  The answer is simple: use 'autoresponders'. .

The Simple Benefits To Using An Autoresponder And How It Can Help Boost Your Business, Sales And Profile.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an 'autoresponder' besides just answering your email.

• Autoresponders are a fantastic way of sending information about your product or services.  You can inform visitors about new and forthcoming events, promotions and products, price lists or simply to answer repeated questions asked across a large number of emails.

• Autoresponders offer a fast and efficient way of building your customer base and mailing list.  You can offer your visitors a 'Special Bonus', advice or articles.  All of this can be handled by an autoresponder.   Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by simply using autoresponders.

Another specialized use of an autoresponder is to create courses that you can offer visitors to your web site for FREE.  Offering courses to your visitors is a very simple and FREE way for you to attract new customers and build your mailing list.   It should be very easy for you to create a 5 or 7 day course on a topic related to your business.  If you do not feel you could write a course, you could just as easily offer 5 or 7 'great tips' to help your visitor.

For example:  If your business was 'Fitness' related, you could write a course on 'stretching' and write about a different stretch for each day of the week.   If you were offering 7 Tips, you could offer something like '7 Great Tips For Losing Weight' and then provide a new tips each day for 7 days.

Remember, you are a professional in your chosen field and people will regard you as an expert in that field.  You hold valuable information to which they will find useful, regardless how trivial it may seem to you.  Use your imagination, it really is a great way to attract new customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics.  Then offer visitors to your web site a FREE 5 or 7 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic.  The first topic should always be a welcome message to your visitor and an explanation about what is to follow.   Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.  With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products.  At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue reading.  Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information and leaves the visitor lusting to know more.

Once you have your course or tips ready, all you need to do is simply load them into your autoresponder and set the autoresponder.   The autoresponder allows you to set how many days the course will run for and also lets you set the delivery time between each email. 

For Example:

If your course is 7 parts, you would set your first email to be delivered immediately.  Then, you might want the second part of your course (email number 2) to be sent 2 days later and the third part (email number 3) sent 2 days after that and so on.  If your course was 7 parts, it would be delivered over a 14 day period, fully automated and you would not have to do a thing! 

Personalise your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature.  Signatures in this case are much like business cards.  You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers, addresses and a brief message.

It's a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out.  This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it.  The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.

You can create a standardised signature that every employee in your business uses or you can go wild and let every staff member create their own personal signature.  Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line.  Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text!  The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number and any other contact details, such as 0800 numbers.  Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company.  It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products and possibly your company's reliability and longevity.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast.  Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully.  Your web site should contain different email addresses for different contact requests.

For example:  use info@yourdomain.com for information requests or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about sales. It's a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as yourname@yourdomain.com.  This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of potential customers.  This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential customers you usually have contact with, before you make an actual sale.  Essentially, an autoresponder allows you to automate part of your marketing campaign.


Where To Find A Reliable Autoresponder Service


There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders.  Your own web site hosting company might provide you with an autoresponder as a free service but this may be limited to simply sending a single message and will not have all the added facilities that will help boost your marketing campaign.

One of the leading Autoresponder services is GetResponse and it is the one I would recommend you try simply because I have used them before.  You can try it for FREE and see for yourself, just how beneficial it would be for your own business.

To learn more about Get Response, please click here