Autoresponder Magic

Will Swayne explains how to use email autoresponders to nurture stronger relationships with your website visitors and drive more sales in the process.

AUTORESPONDERS are computer programs or systems that send emails – or a timed series of emails – to your contacts, prospects and clients.

Autoresponders are one of the most powerful yet under-utilised online marketing tools available to small businesses. They allow you to hold “personalised” conversations with hundreds or thousands of individuals, without any effort on your part. As a relationship-building tool, they’re hard to beat.

This article is a short primer on autoresponders and how to get the most out of them to generate maximum returns from your online marketing.

Autoresponders can send two types of messages – email “followup messages” and “email broadcasts”.

“Followup messages” are emails that you load up into a series for sequential delivery to each person who joins your list.

For example, if a prospect requests a PDF report or White Paper from your website by completing an opt-in form, your autoresponder system will immediately send an email containing a link to the report they requested. One day later, the system automatically sends a “What did you think of the report?” email. Three days after that, an email containing case studies of clients you’ve served is launched.

Your followup sequence can be as long as you like and paced at any intervals you like. Most autoresponder systems also have “field merge” options, which allow you to open with personalised salutations such as “Hi John”.

Especially when your product or service is complex, a series of drip-feed emails is a great way to educate your prospects about the solution you offer and how you’re different. In other words, your follow-up messages are functioning in a “pre-sales” role to warm up potential customers before they enquire.

The second type of autoresponder message – the “email broadcast” – is when you compose an email message and send it to your entire list. The humble email newsletter is a well-known example.

By now, you may be starting to sense the power autoresponders put in your hands – to be able to inform, educate, persuade and sell to a potentially unlimited number of prospects and clients in a personalised way, without your direct involvement or ongoing effort.

Selecting the right technology

There are a large number of autoresponder products and systems available and selecting the wrong one is sub-optimal at best and disastrous at worst. A few years ago, one of our clients made the mistake of selecting an unproven supplier and one day the system malfunctioned and emailed every one of their 3500 subscribers every minute for three hours. Needless to say, our client had a LOT of hate mail in their inbox the next morning!

That said, there are a number of highly reputable suppliers around and the technology is quite mature.

Here are some questions to ask of any potential supplier:

• How long have you been in business?
• How many clients do you have?
• How do you charge (flat fee or per email?)
• Is it a one-off fee or pay-by-the-month?
• What tracking features do you offer?
• Can I import my existing email lists?
• How good is your email deliverability? 
• How easy is your system to use?
  

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