Autoresponders are a series of emails that marketers write to follow up with prospects and customers. You set up your autoresponder emails just once and program them to go out out at pre-determined intervals.
Some examples of autoresponders:
- A welcome message you send to your prospective customer when he or she signs up for a free report on picking the right aquarium tank for your Betta fish.
- A 3-part video series that shows you how to build an RC plane.
- A multi-part email course that teaches people how to sell their homes quickly and without sacrificing profit.
Basically, it is a sequence of email marketing messages that you send to the subscribers on your list. And you decide in what order and how frequently they will go out.
They are the work-horses of your content marketing team that work day and night without needing vacation time or taking a sick day off. That’s my favourite type of employees.
If you know how to use autoresponders correctly, this tool can seriously supercharge your business. But the daunting part begins when you actually sit down and try to write an email series. Not everyone is a prolific writer, so it’s best to plan out what you are going to write in those damn emails.
Here are some autoresponder ideas that can help you start…
- Share your story. Sharing a little but about yourself.. who you are, what got you started in business, and why you do what you do. All of this information is a great way to build rapport with people and develop a solid relationship with your clients.
- Provide a tip. Offer your subscribers a quick tip or a “secret” technique that they can implement to improve their lives in a measurable way. You will make fans out of your customer base and every time they see your emails, they will associate them with getting value.
- Ask a burning question. Ask your subscribers a question about the challenges they are facing and invite them to write to you. For example, you could ask about the problems they are coping with (that are directly related to the subject matter), and how you can be of help. This is marketing gold! It provides you with tons of ideas for future emails, blog posts, videos podcasts, etc.
- Give them a list of resources. Write up a resources list (like a list of books, free softwares, websites etc.) that will help your subscribers achieve their goals. People love it when you provide them with tools that can make their lives easier.
- Share a success story. If you’ve got a fascinating story about how one of your clients or students got great, measurable results from your product or service, deliver that story to your subscribers with some added motivation on why they should buy from you and they can buy from you.
10 Do’s and Don’ts of Autoresponders
- Give your list what you promised them. If you told your subscribers you will send them a free video, email course, or eBook, then provide a link to download or view the freebie.
- Build trust with your audience. In every message, provide a little glimpse into your life and share with them your vision and ideals and what you stand for.
- Become a useful teacher. Your don’t have to write a long or fancy email; just make sure that your subscribers find value in it. Teach your people something useful in every message you send.
- Share ways to connect with you. make it easy for people, who join your email list, to connect with you on their favourite social media platforms, like facebook, instagram and twitter.
- Plan your email sequence before you start writing. Write down how many messages you will include in your autoresponder and how many days apart will those messages be delivered. This will keep you organized.
Don’ts: Here are some actions that you should NOT do..
- Send multiple messages in one day. Make sure you only send one message per day. Unless you are promoting a limited-time offer that is about to expire, don’t bombard your subscribers with an email message every 2 hours. It is annoying and it will lead the person to unsubscribe.
- Stop at a welcome message. Many online marketers send out a welcome message only to never communicate with their prospects again. Distinguish yourself from your competitors by sending at writing and sending at least 7 messages in your autoresponder series.
- Oversell. It’s not okay to turn every email into a sales pitch. To earn the trust of your prospects, you should give, give, give…and then ask. Provide lots of free value before you ask fro their money.
- Try to please everyone. Don’t write an email thinking you will make every subscriber on your list happy. There will always be people who will complain about something – even the most insignificant thing. Just try to provide useful content that you know most people will enjoy.
- Be afraid of failure. Creating an autoresponder is not rocket science and it is very easy to set up. Most email marketing companies provide step-by-step video tutorials on how to setup an autoresponder. Plus, you can always email their tech department fro support.
So to wrap it all up…here’s a quick, 5-step process to get your autoresponder series up and running:
- Plan out your autoresponder series (i.e. how many emails you are going to write). Five emails is a good number to start with but at minimum, it should be three emails.
- Decide the frequency of emails and how far apart each email will be sent.
- Schedule one or two full days to write out the entire email series.
- Upload the emails onto your email marketing program. (We suggest Aweber)
- Do a test run of the email series to make sure that everything works right.
Once you’ve completed the above steps, you can work on driving traffic to your landing page or opt-in form and start getting visitors to sign-up for your campaign.
Once you have this system going you can rest easy, knowing your autoresponder will take care of the most important part of marketing for you.
Bit by bit, subscriber after subscriber, you will be well on your way to forging a long-lasting relationship with the people on your email list .
