Autoresponders are excellent promotional tools, essential for Internet business.
Some call them by the technical term, whilst others say automatic eMailer, eMail
responder, autobot or mailbot. Whatever you call them the important thing is that
they automatically respond to incoming messages, hence the name, and they do so
without human intervention.
Autoresponders are great time-savers and you can use them for a variety of tasks.
They never take a break, work 24/7 all year for no extra pay and hardly ever check
in sick (providing you use reliable suppliers). Autoresponders never query the task
you set them and they follow your instructions to the letter. You will notice the
plural being used, so you can see that more than one autoresponder is usually required.
With the Internet constantly growing, and new users coming online daily, you have
a truly international marketplace at your disposal. Competition is fierce, especially
in certain markets. Many thousands of companies are already competing for business
so you must do whatever it takes to give you an edge. The last thing you want is
to gain that edge, attract hundreds of visitors daily, and then fail to capitalise
on the advantage you worked hard to gain.
All the companies and experienced marketers know that getting visitors is only the
first step in business. What comes next is conversion; turning those visitors into
customers. They know they won't convert all their visitors to customers, and they
also know, or soon learn, that few visitors buy anything on their first visit. It's
commonly stated that it takes an average of 5 to 7 visits before a visitor will
make a purchase. The key to your success on the Internet lies in bringing those
visitors back for further visits until they buy.
And that's where autoresponders fit in. Successful businesses know they must bring
potential customers back, and the best way to bring them back, achieving a good
conversion rate at the same time, is by using autoresponders. You do this by offering
your visitors something as an incentive to return. The offer can be for additional
information in keeping with site content; maybe a Free eBook or a Free report.
If your website has lots of really useful content, and/or you produce a regular
newsletter, your offer can be for Free notifications of website updates or a Free
subscription. Anything of quality will do as long as it's on the same subject they
came looking for, or closely related to it. Set up an autoresponder and it will
generate a code for you to put a form on your website. Place the form beside or
beneath the offer and interested visitors can fill in their name and eMail address.
You will need to write a generic response to the subscriber's request and load it
into your autoresponder. As soon as someone fills in your form and hits the 'Submit'
button their message goes to your autoresponder and your message goes back to them
right away. This will show you're serious about serving the customer and give them
the feeling of personal service. Personal service on a scale a single person would
be unable to provide to thousands of customers, clients and enquirers.
Customer service is a major key to business success and autoresponders provide that
service better than humans. They do exactly what you tell them and what the client
asks. You can purchase or license scripts to install and run from your website,
programmed to run on servers, or pay for the services of one of the many autoresponder
providers.
Your main objective is to make sales but your first priority should be to provide
useful information and to capture as many names and eMail addresses as possible.
Put faithful autoresponders to work for you, establishing a sense of trust in your
visitors, and the sales will follow. Your autoresponders will help keep your customers
and leads happy and up to date on your business, feeling special because you're
sharing and taking care of them.
Autoresponders, used correctly, can be the pulse of your email marketing campaign.
It's a good idea to ask someone you trust to recommend a good supplier rather than
choosing a supplier at random from the search engines.
