Success University Momentum

Autoresponders: Turning Visitors into Customers

Here is another Team Momentum members’ take on autoresponders!

If you plan to successfully promote anything online, it’s a definite advantage to obtain the name and email address of your website visitors. How can you monetize a prospect if they do not know who you are? If they lack a way to communicate with you or if you do not have a way to get them back to your website, you are losing many sales! Email marketing using an autoresponder is one of the most powerful strategies for an internet business owner to talk to visitors, customers and prospects, for creating interest and ultimately making a sale.

So what exactly is an autoresponder supposed to do and how does it work? Visualize an automated salesperson that never gets sick or has a bad day, treats all customers with sincere respect and appreciation and never gets down when they say, “no.” It is a follow up system that accepts email leads from a sales page, landing page or squeeze page and continually follows up with them until the person chooses to opt-out or the membership period for the email newsletter or mini course expires.

There are two absolute, without a doubt must-haves from any autoresponder service – email deliverability and the option to control double opt-in or single opt-in. Deliverability is the most crucial goal. Your customers must get the message in order to read it or download the purchased content. Commercial autoreponders work closely with ISPs to ensure the highest delivery rates and you must demand this from your autoresponder service. Determining double opt-in versus single opt-in is another absolute must-have. Double opt-ins provides insurance against false spam complaints, and are more likely to read your emails and make purchases. However, when you are just starting out and want to build a list quickly, and you have confidence that your landing pages or squeeze pages will attract only highly-targeted leads to enter their information, then a single opt-in is the best choice.

Selecting an autoresponder service requires investigating the cost, payment options and available features. Aweber and GetResponse, the two most highly regarded commercial email marketing services include the ability to create multiple email campaigns, email newsletters and mini courses that automate follow up at predetermined levels and are highly customizable with personalization features, email link tracking, email web analytics, ad tracking, conversion tracking and split testing.

Aweber and GetResponse cost under $20 per month and offer flexible payment options. The setup process is completely automated and customer support offers a knowledge base and video training tutorials to assist you in every aspect of managing your email campaigns.

Obviously, an autoresponder is an absolute necessity for anyone marketing products or services on the Internet. With all the available features, don’t fail to overlook the most critical component of the autoresponder – the content of the email communications themselves. Writing copy does not require you to be an expert writer, but it does require you to be creative and to use the power of the written word to invoke a response from your subscribers.

Let’s discuss a few tips for email copywriting so that you produce messages that your subscribers want to read, yearn to read, and never feel that they can come too often:

1. Ask a question in the subject line. Questions are a part of everyday emails between friends and colleagues. They are a natural way to initiate a conversation as long as they are straightforward and not suspicious.

2. Use hyperlinks at the top, middle and bottom. Many click-thru responses will come from hyperlinks positioned at the top, middle and bottom of your email message – in this order. So don’t do what many marketers do which is to forget the middle hyperlink.

3. Write a letter, not an ad, and don’t be afraid to be wordy. If your emails sound more like a sales letter than a personal message, go back and change them immediately. Emails perceived to be ads are more likely to be deleted unopened than one that appears to be a personal message – even if the personal message is obviously promotional.

List building and customer relationship management using an autoresponder makes it possible for business owners and network marketers to provide a personal level of service to a massive audience. This flexibility combined with analytical tracking and reporting, and low cost make the decision to incorporate sequential autoresponders into your information marketing blueprint.

Chris Grillo – Team Momentum Contributing Writer
Kymmy Link – Team Momentum Website Manager/Team Leader

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Online Business Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.