Autoresponders
Pillar #4 – Autoresponders
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Autoresponders aren’t just an automatic email response delivered by your
email software when you are out of the office. They can be an extremely
effective part of your internet marketing arsenal. Among other things,
autoresponders can deliver personalized broadcast e-mails and newsletters to
your entire email list – at a predetermined time. Pillar #4 Autoresponders looks at
the best autoresponder software available; how to build a responsive and
worthwhile list of recipients; as well as building relationships with your contact
list so that you improve your email conversion rates over time.

What are autoresponders?
Autoresponders are anything delivered by email automatically at a
predetermined time that can be partly personalized for the recipient.
Because these emails often include people’s names, the recipients commonly
think that they are receiving personal emails from you, rather than an automated
e-mail machine!

An autoresponder sequence can be set up so that e-mails are delivered on a set
day of the month or over intervals of time after somebody subscribes.

Autoresponder sequences can be as long or as short as you want – when people
subscribe to your updates, you can decide if they should receive an email after 2
days, 10 days, 21 days, or even as much as 5 years.

Other uses of an autoresponder service
But autoresponders don’t just have to be emails or email newsletters. They can
also be used to deliver a step-by-step email course. You could perhaps
encourage your website visitors to subscribe to a short email course delivered
over a few days with a view to upselling a better, more informative email course
after building a trusting relationship with the prospect over the free course.

You can also use an autoresponder to deliver a free product, and use this to build
an opt-in list. For instance, if you have a free PDF report that you want to offer
you can deliver it via your autoresponder, and get people to automatically
subscribe to your newsletter or email updates when they request the free report.
Once they have subscribed or opted-in to your list, you can then market to them
at any point in the future, either by using an autoresponder sequence over a
period of time or by using broadcast emails. (Unless they decide to opt-out.)

Broadcast emails
Broadcast emails are an important part of using an autoresponder service. Not
everything can be built into sequence in advance – some items are timely in that
they are focused on products or events that maybe sold out by a certain date. By
sending broadcast emails to people, you are sending them offers or providing
information that is pertinent to a particular date.

By using a decent autoresponder, if you have a list of 1 to a million people, you
can send a personalized broadcast email on a particular issue to your group of
subscribers within an hour.

If I were sending an email for the first time to a list that is business to business,
you can perhaps send one email introducing yourself, your product and/or your
services, without an unsubscribe option. (Please check your own country for
legislation appropriate for you.) However, you should not send emails to private
e-mail addresses who haven’t already agreed to receive an email from you.
A good autoresponder service will automatically include an unsubscribe option
in all of your emails, to allow recipients to easily remove themselves from your
mailing list if they decide that they do not want to hear from you again in the
future. As you do not want to have your email address flagged as a SPAM
sender, this is wise to do.

Newsletters
Email Newsletters are generally a little bit more formal, but can be built into an
autoresponder process as well. You can load newsletters into an autoresponder,
so that they will be delivered either on a certain date or within a certain period of
time after people have subscribed to that sequence.

If you have a period of time available (perhaps a quiet time in your business
year) you can complete the work of writing a series of newsletters for the whole
year. These can be uploaded to your autoresponder, and the recipients will
automatically get the newsletters at specified times throughout the year.

Email marketing software
Which autoresponder should you use? One that I recommend, probably the most
popular one available, is called AWeber, (Figure 4.1) which is probably the
world’s most popular autoresponder service.

Figure 4.1 – AWeber.com
AWeber Communications

The disadvantage with using your own server to deliver email
If you are using your own server to send emails to your list at the moment then
you’re at a serious disadvantage. Your servers will not be trusted enough by
other email programs to get the kind of delivery rate that as service like AWeber
can give you. If you’re currently sending emails from your own domain, you
may be struggling to deliver up to half of your emails without knowing it. This is
probably partly due to your domain’s IP address not being trusted enough by
SPAM filters.

Advantages of using an experienced email marketing company’s server
Because an experienced email marketing / autoresponder service has been
established for many years, this has given them an opportunity to build a trusted
relationship with many email providers. This means that services like Hotmail
and Gmail will know that when an email is sent through a service like AWeber,
the person who is receiving the correspondence has requested to receive it.
This is just one of the reasons why if you are thinking of building up an email
list, then I advise that hosting that email list on an on an experienced email
marketing company’s server, and sending e-mails out from that server is the best
approach.

Emails being sent by such as service can still look as if they are being sent from
you. They can still appear to come from your email address, and you can still
receive replies to your own email address. However you are using someone
else’s more trusted server to ensure that the vast majority of emails reach the
person they are intended for.

More about AWeber
AWeber provides autoresponder and newsletter functionality. It supplies HTML
templates for newsletters as well, so you can easily design your own newsletter,
upload it, and deliver it whenever you want.

Another thing you can do with AWeber, which is worthwhile considering if you
have or are going to have a blog, is to import RSS feeds into the service, and
automate the delivery of these posts as a newsletter. Many people prefer to
subscribe to email updates rather than an RSS feed, and AWeber can provide you
with the functionality to give your subscribers this opportunity. Of course
offering this service also encourages people to join your email list – and provides
you with a bigger subscriber list for future marketing campaigns.

Figure 4.2 – Writing an email using AWeber

AWeber Communications
Personalizing your automated emails
After you create an account and login to AWeber, you may wish to write your
email content in your normal word processer before copying and pasting it into
AWeber’s text editor. (Figure 4.2) Here you will have the option to include
personalized fields such as the names of people you wish to send your emails to.
You can use a greeting e.g. “Hi,” or and then a variable for their name, which will
automatically insert their name from your email list.

The variable that you use in order to automatically include a subscriber’s first
name within the email is {!firstname_fix}. This variable will include a subscriber’s
personalized first name in each email, but also ensures that a capital letter is used
at the beginning of the name after it is inserted.

Sending HTML newsletters
AWeber lets you send HTML email newsletters as well as plain text newsletters.
A HTML email allows you to use more color and create more visually attractive
designs. However, it’s very important that you test deliverability rates and the
actual design that your subscribers see in different types of email reading
software. (E.g. Outlook, Entourage, Gmail, Hotmail etc.) Just because something
looks good on your computer, don’t assume that it looks just the same on other
people’s computers.

An important rule of thumb is to always send a plain text version of the
newsletter as well as the HTML version. This means that if the HTML version
gets stuck in SPAM filters – or for some other reason isn’t able to be displayed –
then the plain text version should reach your subscriber.

Setting goals for your newsletters
In addition to being useful and informative, the content and format of your
newsletter should relate to the action you wish your subscribers to take after they
read your newsletter. If you wish them to browse through your website navigate
through your items for sale, you should consider including a mini navigation
menu in your newsletter which replicates the selection of choices available in
your website navigation.

There is no definitive answer on whether an HTML or plain text email campaign
will work best for you business – the only way to know for sure is to test, and
good email software like AWeber will have an inbuilt split testing capability
build into its program.

Set an objective
When sending out emails you should have a certain target or objective in mind.
You need to consider your intention behind sending that email when creating
and formatting the content. Do you want them to click on a link? If you wish
them to visit a certain page on your website, you should mention the link at least
twice within the email – and feature it prominently, describing the benefit for
your subscriber to click on the link.

More reasons to communicate with your audience on a regular basis
You can use regular email contact with your subscribers via an autoresponder for
virtually any reason – email is a great tool to build relationships.

Many long-term, successful email marketing campaigns often send out two or
three emails in a row which have no end-goal to ‘sell’ anything. The primary
purpose of these emails is to build a relationship with the subscriber by offering
good, solid, reliable information. The advantage with offering such valuable,
useful content is when you do decide to recommend a particular product or
service in a future email, your subscriber is much more likely to trust your
recommendation and make a purchase decision.

Build relationships first
A significant advantage with using autoresponders is that they give you the
ability to build relationships people on with your email list – without having to
make personal contact with them. An autoresponder sequence can increase the
level of trust that your subscribers feel for you. This increased level of trust, in
turn, greatly improves the likelihood of that subscriber converting to a customer
in the future.

An important tip is to get started on building your email subscriber list at the
earliest opportunity. Even though you don’t have a future email marketing
strategy, by building up a bank of subscribers, you’re safeguarding your
business’ future.

Installing an opt-in form on your website
AWeber (and other autoresponder and email software services) will supply you
with some code to paste on your web pages. This code displays a simple opt-in
form (Figure 4.3). You can personalize the text used to suit your needs. In this
example I’ve chosen to use ‘Free Tips & Updates’.

Having this type of form on your website will let your visitors subscribe to your
future updates – assuming they like your present website content. They can
simply enter their names and email addresses. This in turn allows you to start to
build an opt-in list.

Double opt-in or single opt-in?
AWeber insists on something called a double opt-in, which means that when
people enter their name and email address into your form, they are not
automatically subscribed even when they select ‘submit’. Instead, your want-to be
subscriber gets an email back to their email address saying something like,
“We want to make sure that you did actually request to subscribe to this list, so
please click on this link to confirm”. Your intended subscriber has to click on
that link before they are added to your list.

The double opt-in not only decreases the risk for AWeber that their servers are
being used to send SPAM email. It increases the quality of your own email
subscribers. A double opt-in is not legally necessary, but it is advised by many
because you can demonstrate that your recipients have definitely opted-in to
receive your email updates.

There are, however, pros and cons with using single or double opt-ins when
collecting subscriber data. If you use a single opt-in, you’re probably going to
get more subscribers – and you will be able to import subscribers from previous
campaigns to your new email software. If you’re using double opt-in, your list
won’t be as big – but it will be of better quality.

Which ever way you choose to go (double or single opt-in) will have its benefits
and drawbacks. If you are particularly good at managing data, and send regular
updates to your subscribers like clockwork then single opt-in may well be best
for you. However, this is where it’s probably best to seek the advice of a
professional internet marketing consultant before making the decision on what’s
the correct choice for your business.

How to build a bigger subscriber list
Just having the one opt-in box on your site is not going to maximize your
number of subscribers. By solely relying on the one opt-in box on your website
sidebar you’ll be lucky if you get more than one percent of your website visitors
who choose to subscribe to your updates.

There are much quicker ways to build an email list.
Start by focusing on an individual market segment. If you are a reasonable-sized
business you are likely to have a range of products and services within your
portfolio. You should aim to focus on niche markets within your portfolio by
targeting individual pages and offer an incentive for people to receive for
information about the subject matter that interests them.

Optimizing your opt-in request
There are many different on-page aspects that you can improve in order to
increase the likelihood of somebody deciding to submit their personal details
into one of your forms.

Firstly, you need to ensure that your persuasive reason to opt-in is targeted at
exactly the right audience. Secondly, you need to ensure that the reason to enter
their details in your form is as compelling as possible.

If building an emails list is important to your business model – and it should be –
then you should be prepared to test every aspect of your opt-in page or page
section in order to maximize your conversion rates.

Increasing double-opt-in conversion rates
If you’re using a double-opt-in autoresponder service like AWeber, your signups
will reach a page after they complete the form. And you have the option of
personalizing this page in any manner that you see fit.

Should you wish to, you can use this ‘space’ to try to sell a product or service, or
direct your interested parties towards the best free content on your website.
Alternatively, what I would recommend if you are running a double-opt-in
process is to tell people to go to their email service and click on a link in an email
that you have just sent them. This confirms the opt-in. (Hence double opt-in)

Figure 4.5 – Increasing double-opt-in percentages

An example of how to increase your double-opt-in conversion rates
Figure 4.5 shows a screenshot from a page which attempts to maximize double
opt-in conversion rates. This is an example of a page that people might see once
they have completed the first stage of the double-opt-in (filled out the form) but
have yet to click on the link in their email to complete the joining of the list.

By now you should know that if you do decide to use a double-opt-in
autoresponder then there are prod and cons. One of the cons in that you are
never going to be able to get everyone who completes the first stage of the
double-opt-in process to complete the second stage. Some people have an
inherent distrust of clicking links belonging to website domains that they don’t
know. All you can do is try to maximize the percentage of people to go on to
complete the double opt-in. It’s never going to be 100%.

However, selling the double opt-in process to the people that complete your
form (as in the page seen in figure 4.5) should hopefully mean that 85% of these
people go back to their inbox and click on the link in their email.

Remember – this double opt-in process is protecting you as well as your
subscribers. It means that you won’t be in any danger of a competitor trying to
list you as a SPAM sender by subscribing people to your list who haven’t asked
to be subscribed. It also means that you won’t be trying to send emails to fake
email addresses.

More ways to encourage people to opt-in
The more that your opt-in focus is targeted towards a niche market segment, the
higher your conversion rates should be. However, it’s good practice that you
should also consider having lots of different methods of encouraging your
visitors to subscribe to the same list.

For example, you can give away a free eBook as an incentive to join your list.
This can be delivered in the form of a PDF and the whole delivery process can be
automated through your autoresponder software.

An addition or instead to a free eBook how about a free email course, delivered
on a daily or weekly basis for a set period of time? Again, once you set this up
with your autoresponder the whole process is automated. An email course has
the added benefit over an eBook of continually reminding people about you –
and thus automatically building a better relationship with your subscribers.

What to do after people opt-in
It’s one thing building an email list and another thing entirely continuing a
relationship with that email list over a period of time. It’s imperative to
determine a long-term newsletter or email content strategy for your
correspondence with your subscribers.

You need to decide on your message, your communication style and your
message sending schedule – prior to starting a campaign. It’s a big mistake to
alter any of these 3 areas significantly after you start. One of your aims should be
to try to be dependable and predictable for your subscribers.

It’s impossible to say that you should only send so many emails per day, week or
month to your list. Some people are quite comfortable receiving an email every
day if it is good, free information and if it is appropriate to the particular market
segment you are aiming at. If you train your list to expect one email per week,
then that is what you should send. If you train your list to expect one email per
day, then that is what you should send.

Building automated relationships and minimizing ‘unsubscribes’
Once tool I always make use of when giving away free eBooks via an
autoresponder is the automation of a few messages in the days and weeks that
follow after the free eBook has been delivered.

It’s all well and good to get people to fill out the form, perform the double opt-in
if appropriate, receive your eBook and then be subscribed to your updates.
However, if your new subscriber receives an email that isn’t much to do with his
free eBook shortly after subscribing, there’s a very good chance that this new
prospect – a prospect you’ve worked very hard to obtain – will instantaneously
decide to unsubscribe from receiving future correspondence.

You need to remember that the people who have just decided to fill out a form to
receive your free eBook probably haven’t heard of you before – and almost
certainly haven’t subscribed to your email updates before.

Because of this, in order to try to minimize the likelihood of your new lead
deciding to unsubscribe immediately, you should deliver some email
correspondence initially that relates directly to the eBook – or adds value to the
eBook. For example, a week after delivering the eBook you may want to
automate the sending of an email that covers the common questions that people
have from the eBook. A week after that perhaps you may wish to deliver a
follow-up chapter. Perhaps after that you could ask your new subscriber for
some feedback on the eBook. All this communication continues to build a
relationship with your new prospect while training them to expect good,
relevant information from you on a weekly basis.

Building Relationships by Surveying
As per the previous paragraph I suggested that you may be able to request some
customer feedback as part of your autoresponder sequence. In other words, you
can continue to build relationships with your list of subscribers by surveying.
For example, you may wish to send out a survey to your longer term subscribers
saying something like, ‘We are thinking of offering these products in the future
and we are considering between these three or four different widgets to include
as part of the product features – which features would you prefer?’
This is fantastic tool for market research as it targets your existing customers.
Not only is it market research, it’s a great way of building relationships with
your list at the same time.

Perhaps you want to consider building a monthly survey into your regular email
communication with your subscribers. This will provide invaluable information
and the whole process can be automated through your autoresponder. The only
caveat I’d put on implementation of this is not to do it too often – perhaps a
maximum of one in every four emails.

Survey software
Another method of starting to add surveys to your online marketing strategy is
to publish them as a blog post – this has added value because you’re displaying
‘social proof’ when you demonstrate to other readers that you have many people
who are interested in participating in the vote. If you use WordPress then you
can add a survey as a plugin. One of the most popular WordPress survey plugins
is called SurveyGizmo.

By adding a survey as part of your website interaction, it encourages your users
to become a little more ‘sticky’ – that is, a little more likely to stick around for
longer. People will be more likely come back to your websites in the future. If
you wanted to add a survey to a stand-alone website, (where there isn’t a
WordPress blog installed) there is a good free service called SurveyMonkey
(Figure 4.6) that you should consider using.

Note: SurveyMonkey also offer a paid service as well, which will let you create
everything with your own branding as well as receiving more survey results.
However, the free version is great too.

Figure 4.6 – SurveyMonkey.com

You can use survey monkey to easily create online surveys

Why building a list of interested subscribers is so important
If you build a list of relevant, interested subscribers it means you won’t have to
rely on the search engines in the long term for your Internet marketing. And like
any business, if you have just one customer, or you have one source of
customers, and that source suddenly dries up, then your business will suffer.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to drive lots of visitors to your website
from search engines, then take advantage of that by preparing for an uncertain
future – just in case. Convert those website visitors into leads by using an
autoresponder to deliver additional content that isn’t available elsewhere. By
doing so you’re reclaiming greater control over your website visitor traffic.

Pillar #4 – Autoresponders Summary
•Autoresponders are a great way for you to build relationships with your
customers. They can deliver virtually anything by email on an automated,
pre-meditated and usually personalized basis.
•Broadcast Emails are informal emails which are usually personalized to the
receiver. They are great for sending up-to-date news and building better
business relationships. When creating the text for e-mails they should be as
personalized and relevant as possible to cement the relationship.
•Newsletters are a more formal, professional method of keeping in touch with
your client list and are a great reason for regular communication with your
customers. A newsletter can be sent immediately, or pre-loaded into you
autoresponder to be delivered on a certain date. They can also be part of an
autoresponder sequence, delivered so many days, weeks or months after the
initial sign-up.
•Building a list of relevant subscribers is an essential aspect of successful
internet marketing, and you can greatly speed this process up by offering free
bonus content or a PDF eBook as an incentive for people to subscriber to your
newsletter or email updates.
•Having a large, responsive email database will take the onus off relying on
search engines for traffic in the future. It’s never good to have total reliance on
something that brings in a lot of business which you don’t control.
•By building a thoughtful, relevant autoresponder sequence into your new
subscriber process you will be automatically building business brand loyalty
without having to speak to your subscribers personally.
•Use autoresponders to survey your subscribers. This is a great way of
conducting market research in addition to continuing to grow the quality of
your subscriber relationships.