Autoresponder Tips and Tricks

byPjGermain

15K followers

7 years ago

Autoresponder Tips

Email marketing is NOT dead and several business owners live and breathe by it. For some, it's still the main traffic puller and a definite money-maker.

Before moving on, I would like to share some email statistics with you

• Email marketing averages an ROI of $38 for every $1 spent. (DMA National Client Email Report 2015)
• For 89 percent of marketers, email serves as the primary channel for lead generation. (Mailigen)
• Email has become the top source of analytics data for marketing professionals, with 41 percent relying on performance data. (Forbes)
• For one in five companies, email marketing provides an ROI greater than 70-to-1. (DMA National Client Email Report 2015)
• Emails that are relevant to the recipient drive 18 times more revenue than general broadcast emails. (Mailigen)
• Email is the preferred source of business communication for 72 percent of consumers. (MarketingSherpa)
• Sixty-one percent of consumers enjoy receiving promotional emails weekly, and 28 percent would like emails to come even more frequently. (MarketingSherpa)

Even if you're new here, you'll want to think about email marketing and autoresponders down the road.

A newsletter is a one-time thing - generally, once or twice a month to announce an upcoming event, perhaps new website features or a new product. But, the autoresponder is much more flexible and it's automated.

Put simply, an autoresponder is a series of "time-released" emails sent out in a pre-determined sequence.

The cool thing is that each visitor to your website (or landing page) will receive the same set of emails in the sequence you scheduled regardless if they visited last week, today or in the future.

Also, the autoresponder helps set you up as an authority on a topic and most of all, it builds trust. And, as we all know, we are much more tempted to make a purchase from someone we trust rather than a stranger.

Many newbies lose sleep over what to deliver to their readers in an autoresponder series. I recall when I first set one up and I hacked away at it for days.

So, I would like to give you guys a few idea to ponder - in hopes of alleviating that all too familiar writing anxiety.....

Option 1: Deliver a Report or eBook via Email

Another cool thing about autoresponders is that you don't have to worry about the duplicate content penalty. Soooo.... you can take an eBook that is related to your topic and perhaps use the outline (chapters) as your email series. Most eBooks have at least 10 chapters. Well, there ya go, 10 emails. Add in a Welcome email and you're all set. Copy and Paste that bad boy! BOOM, you're an expert!

Option 2: Resurrect Older Blog Posts AND Increase Website Traffic while Decreasing Bounce Rate

Here's one of my favorite options because it does so much for you. Let's say you're website is about blogging. You might have a series of posts to help your readers through the various stages of blog creation. It might begin with choosing a host, selecting the right domain name, niche selection, article writing, on-page SEO, etc.

You can deliver snippets of each post within an email and simply refer them to the associated post.

For example, here is a recent one I signed up for:

The Welcome Email :

Notice the questions? Awesome for engagement. And, yes, every link goes to an already published post.

Here's the second email received a few days later:

Notice the link reference to Lesson 1? Yep, that's to a blog post.

See how brief and to the point this message is? Clean and clear call to action.

Cool. Let's take a peek at one more....

The third in the series:

Again, brief and to the point. Clear call to action. But, also notice the wee blurb about "a big relief to me!" - enticing the reader to check it out and perhaps avoid making the same mistake. The fear factor.

The one thing I would add to these though is a P.S. Mannnnyyyy folks are enticed by the P.S. and click rates are high via links included in a P.S. below the signature.

Option 3: Creating Absolutely New Content Not Available on Your Website.

This option is great if you truly love to research and write. It's very effective for signups, because readers FEEL like they are getting access to something no one else is. You're giving them the "insider" information. BUT this, of course, takes more work.

So, as you can see, creating an autoresponder doesn't have to be some magnanimous task. I don't want you to lose sleep over it. I would recommend options 1 & 2 for your first autoresponder setup. Then, you can easily venture on to more advanced email marketing methods like cross promotions, email segmentation and so on.

I hope you found these brief wee tips useful!

Cheers!

pj