| The most valuable asset of the online marketer is, "Time!" Time's an asset,
that for the most part, is taken for granted. It's invisible, odorless, tasteless and
something that goes unnoticed, until you begin to run out of it and learn how much it
truly costs! The key to becoming a successful online marketer lies in the ability to
accomplish multiple, or redundant, marketing tasks at the same time. Wouldn't it be nice
to have a clone, sitting next to you, sending out sales letters, welcome and thank you
letters, order confirmation letters or any other email tasks you deem necessary? Well, you
can have just that, and it's called an autoresponder.
Let's begin by taking a moment and explaining what an autoresponder is.
"An autoresponder is simply a program that runs through an email program that's
designed to automatically respond to any email message sent to it with a pre-determined
response, usually a sales letter, to the email address of the person who originated the
response."
Autoresponders are also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand.
Autoresponders were fashioned from the huge success of fax on demand used in the offline
marketplace.
Autoresponders are becoming a very popular tool in the online marketers toolbox and
it's my belief that autoresponders can increase your profits by as much as 20-25%. The
advantages of autoresponders far outweigh any disadvantages of utilizing this powerful
tool.
So let's rake a look at autoresponders and their essential components, the advantages
and also the disadvantages of utilizing autoresponders.
ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS
Not all autoresponders are created equal. There are thousands of companies online that
offer an autoresponder service and there are just as many options and pricing structures.
Here's my list of the essential components you'll need to make sure your autoresponder
service offers to ensure your autoresponder is an effective online marketing tool and a
valuable partner in your online business.
Autoresponder Naming:
You'll need to be able to have quite a bit of flexibility in the naming of your
autoresponders. In order to have an effective advertising campaign, you'll need to be able
to track the responses to your advertisements. Utilizing the naming feature allows you to
have complete control over your online marketing and advertising efforts. Make sure you
have a wide array of options available in naming your autoresponder. You want to be able
to name your autoresponder something that pertains to your product or business and also
for tracking your advertising effectiveness.
Autoresponder Length:
Make sure you select an autoresponder service that offers unlimited length for the text of
your autoresponders. This may seem like a bit of overkill but this gives you the
flexibility when preparing your sales materials. There's nothing worse than having to cut
down a successful sales letter to fit the autoresponder.
Autoresponder Free/Unlimited Updates:
Make sure you select an autoresponder service that offers free and unlimited updates or
changes to your autoresponders. In the online marketing world you absolutely need the
flexibility to be able to provide up to date product information to your prospects and
clients. Charges for changes to your autoresponders adds up very quickly! You need to have
total control and be able to add, remove or change your documents as many times as you
wish, yourself, without having to pay any extra for doing this.
Autoresponder Keywords:
Many autoresponder services require your prospects to put a keyword into the subject line
or message body. Your potential customers may simply forget or mistype something and
they'll never receive your document. Make sure to chose an autoresponder service that
doesn't require the use of keywords.
Receipt Notification:
This is vital to your follow up efforts. This is simply an email notification sent to you
that someone has requested information from your autoresponder. It provides the prospects
email address and any of their comments inserted into the body of their email request.
This is simply a must have option for any serious online marketer!
ADVANTAGES OF AUTORESPONDERS
Here are a few of the primary advantages of utilizing autoresponders in your online
marketing and advertising efforts:
Speed:
This is why using autoresponders is vital to the success of your online business. We live
in a now environment and the Internet only throws fuel on the fire. When we want
information, we don't want to wait for days, hours or even minutes, we want it now! This
is especially true when we're answering an online ad and requesting more information. A
well written online advertisement will touch prospects emotions and elicit a response,
requesting more information. When emotions are involved in the mix, it's essential as
online marketers to respond with that additional information immediately. By doing this
you'll get your sales message read in the best possible environment, by a hot prospect.
This is exactly why I mentioned earlier that an autoresponder can increase your profits by
20-25%!
Cost:
It costs nothing for a prospect to look at your online advertisement and request more
information. Unlike other advertisements that ask for a prospect to send a SASE or
possibly $1-$2 for an additional report, it costs nothing to send an email. You're dealing
with a base of approximately 75 million who have email access and since they usually have
a single monthly rate, they're not paying for each email. So there is no cost for sending
or receiving a single email message.
Using With Your Web Site:
This is an excellent opportunity to provide a number of ways to integrate autoresponders
into your online marketing strategy. A problem almost every webmaster faces is how to get
vital information on the visitors to their web site, their visitors! You can get this
vital information in an number of ways, such as, via guest books, online order forms,
ezines subscriptions and especially by offering additional free information via an
autoresponder. You can offer via autoresponder, updated price lists, product listings, or
any other information you wish to distribute. When a visitor uses this "mailto"
link they'll receive your marketing information and you'll capture their email address.
It Automates Your Online Marketing:
As I mentioned earlier, time is a valuable and vital asset to every online marketer!
Anything that an online marketer can do to automate daily tasks makes them even more
effective. Using autoresponders is the easiest way to automate the selling process! If you
don't have to spend hours going through your incoming email and manually sending out your
replies. If you use autoresponders in your online advertising, your prospects will get the
information they want immediately and you'll have be able to utilize your time for
additional online marketing efforts. Now your marketing like the pro's and are essentially
doing two things at the same time. Then once a day sort your requests in your follow up
folders and you've just opened up a large chunk of time to use more productively.
DISADVANTAGES OF AUTORESPONDERS
There are hardly no disadvantages of using autoresponders in your online marketing and
advertising but here are a couple that might become minor disadvantages:
It's Almost Impossible To Personalize Your Autoresponder:
Since you're basically mass marketing with your autoresponder you can't personalize each
response. There are many services out there that do include a simple addition of the
requesters email address in a hello line but it's still not personalized. You want to make
sure you check the body of incoming autoresponder requests for any additional or specific
requests for more information and reply to those as soon as possible. You can also tell
your prospects that they are requesting information from your autoresponder in your
advertisement which tells them that they are going to get immediate information from your
autoresponder.
Spammers Collect Your Autoresponder's Email Address:
When you begin marketing online you'll find that occasionally, your autoresponder's email
address will get collected by the spider software used by those who collect and sale email
addresses. Then an Internet newbie buys these email addresses and sends out their bulk
email message and doesn't hide the email addresses, your autoresponder's email address is
now exposed. Then an upset recipient sends his reply back to the originator of the spam by
using their "reply to" button on their email program without deleting the
laundry list of other email addresses. Your autoresponder sends your sales letter to the
sender and they just think they were spammed by you too! Multiply this by 10 and can you
see the possible disadvantage? This has happened to me. It's fairly easy to fix by
emailing any of the recipients who complain to you and explain what happened when they
send their reply to the entire list and you might add they could also be accused of
spamming by their actions. This will usually do the trick.
AUTORESPONDER RESOURCES
For The Best Autoresponder Packages On The Web
Autoresponders can help you explode your online profits, for complete details on how to
get the best autoresponders on the web, visit his website at: http://www.intersuccess.com/ar.htm
Search Engines
You can always go to the search engines to find what you're looking for. Just use the
search word "autoresponders" and you'll have enough resources to sort through to
find the information you're looking for.
For example, I did a search of the following search engines and here's the results:
- Infoseek: Found 5,021 pages containing the word autoresponders.
- AltaVista: About 1475 documents match your query.
- HotBot: Breakdown: autoresponders: 11109.
- Open Text Index: Found 1,206 pages containing: autoresponders.
- WebCrawler: Top 25 of 1353 for autoresponders
So you can see there's plenty of information out there.
A FINAL THOUGHT
You can take advantage of autoresponders in any number of ways. These are very powerful
online marketing tools that increase your productivity, provide a means to automate tasks
and free up your time, provide immediate information for your potential customers, provide
customer service and can increase your profits. If your not currently utilizing this
valuable asset in your online marketing and advertising your costing yourself potential
sales and creating more work. When you consider the cost for this resource, I think you'll
agree that there isn't another online marketing tools that produces these benefit for the
price.
Good Luck and To Your Productive Online Marketing! |
