Internet Marketing and autoresponders essentially go hand-in-hand. In today’s online business world, it goes without saying that you simply cannot succeed at Internet marketing without the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders are used to automate many of the marketing tasks that are essential to your successful online business.

Without autoresponders, internet marketing can be very time consuming. Whether you do affiliate marketing or market your own products, an autoresponder can be a big part of your marketing power tool arsenal. Autoresponders are used to automatically keep you in contact with your past customers, and to develop a personal relationship with potential customers.  It's like having your own personal telegraph that sends messages for you ANY TIME you program them to be sent out.

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An autoresponder can be used to deliver sales messages to your opt-in customer list. It can be used to deliver email courses one section at a time, to send out timely reminders, and even to help you build an opt-in list if you don’t already have one. In the following pages you will find many creative ways you can use your autoresponder to make more sales and to build better customer relations.

Any successful marketer will tell you that there are two tools that are vital to any type of online marketing – an opt-in list and an autoresponder. In fact, most marketers will agree that you could take away all of their other marketing tools, but they would fight to the death to keep the list and the autoresponder!

In today’s world of unsolicited email and spam laws, it is extremely important that you learn to use your autoresponder responsibly. Autoresponders make our lives much simpler, and they are very powerful marketing tools, but if they are used in a way that they are not intended, they can quickly turn your life into a nightmare!

First, never add people to your autoresponder mailing list that should not be there. If they have requested information from you, they should automatically be added, and you should have a ‘double opt-in’ method in place to make them confirm that they have requested the information. This serves to protect you and them.

Each autoresponder message should include a link that the recipient can click that will automatically remove them from the mailing list. Without this link, you will be breaking the spam laws, and you risk having your website, your ISP service, your email, and your autoresponders shut down!

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Get the RIGHT AutoResponder

Autoresponders are very necessary when it comes to marketing or taking care of customers. But the power of an autoresponder, or the lack of power, can mean the difference between success and failure.

When you use an autoresponder service, you must make sure that the domain that the autoresponder uses isn’t blacklisted by the spam watch groups. If it is, your messages probably won’t make it past the majority of spam filters, no matter how much you check it with spam checkers.

Also, not having the ability to track responses can cost you business. If you can’t track response rates, you won’t have any way of knowing whether your messages are doing you any good. A good autoresponder will provide the ability to track responses. If yours doesn’t, you really should shop for a new autoresponder.

The ability to add and remove names to your autoresponder manually is vital. Often, people will contact you without going through your autoresponder. These people need to be put on the autoresponders mailing list. If you are moving your list from one service to another, you need the ability to import names and addresses to your list. Again, if your autoresponder service isn’t powerful enough to allow this, look for a different one!

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Many newcomers to the Internet marketing arena are not aware that there is a vast difference between an autoresponder program and an autoresponder service. Not knowing the difference, they often purchase the wrong type of autoresponder, and find out too late that they have wasted money on a program that is useless to them.

An autoresponder PROGRAM is a program that was made to be set up on your web server. This is usually a free autoresponder that comes with your web hosting account. Many people don’t like to use autoresponder services; so instead, they use an autoresponder program that they have more control over. Some of those people don’t like the autoresponder programs that come with their hosting accounts either and purchase autoresponder programs or scripts that must be installed on their web server.

Other people with less tech-savvy, or less time, are quite happy with using an autoresponder SERVICE. This is a service that is usually paid for on a monthly or yearly basis. The fees are ongoing, and everything is browser based. In other words, you can set up your autoresponder messages and manage your opt-in list through your web browser – just as you can with an autoresponder program that is installed through your web hosting account. The difference is that the service runs on the autoresponder service’s web server – not yours or your web hosts.

Beginners are usually better off using an autoresponder service. These services are usually very easy to understand and to use, and no technical knowledge is needed to set things up. As a newcomer to the field, however, you might be concerned about the costs of an autoresponder service. If this is the case, just remember that you have the option of signing up with a free autoresponder service.

Free services make their money by placing advertisements in each autoresponder message that you send out. Sometimes these ads appear at the top of your messages, and sometimes they appear at the bottom. Some of the free services are simply an enticement to purchase the professional version, and have many of the more advanced features, such as tracking, disabled.

More advanced users often choose to use autoresponder programs, simply because they have more control over the autoresponder, and they don’t have to follow some of the stiffer rules imposed by autoresponder services, such as sending confirmation to each and every person who is entered into the autoresponders list.

The autoresponder that you choose is strictly up to you, but in most cases, an autoresponder service should suit your needs. If you are unsure, look for a service that offers free signups, with the option of upgrading to the professional paid version at a later date.

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Using Free Autoresponders

If you’ve looked at the prices of autoresponders that are available online, you may have decided to search for and use a free autoresponder for your marketing needs. Using free autoresponders is acceptable in certain situations, and in the world of Internet marketing, any autoresponder is better than not using an autoresponder at all!

Your first option for a free autoresponder should be the one that comes with your webhosting account – if you have a webhosting account. These autoresponders can easily be set up through the control panel of your website, and they do not contain advertisements from the autoresponder company or the webhosting service. If you do not have a hosting account, or your hosting account does not include autoresponders, there are other options that you can pursue.

There are many free autoresponder services to choose from. These services are free, because the company makes their money by placing a small advertisement in each message that your autoresponder sends out. These advertisements may appear at the top of your auto responses, or at the bottom, depending on which company you use.

Many paid autoresponder services offer a free version as well. These free versions may or may not include advertisements in the outgoing messages. These lighter versions of the paid autoresponders typically do not include many of the powerful features of the paid versions. But if you don’t need the more advanced features, FREE is a GREAT choice.

Most free autoresponders have a limit on the number of subscribers you can have. Many people start out with the limited free versions, and then upgrade to the paid versions once their lists are large enough to exceed those limits. Many marketers don’t feel that the expense of the autoresponder is warranted until the list that they are building is turning a profit. From a business standpoint, this makes sense.

As the owner of a business, you are the only one who can decide whether you need a paid autoresponder service, or if a free one will do the job for you. If your list is small, a free autoresponder should do everything that you need it to do, but as your list grows, you should definitely consider upgrading. However, having the small advertisements that the free services place in the outgoing messages may present a problem, especially if the ads compete with what you are trying to sell. They may even pose a problem if they do not directly compete with your product or business. Again, this depends on what you are trying to accomplish with your autoresponder.

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If you have signed up with an autoresponder service, you need to take the time to read the instructions to learn how to use the service – and do it BEFORE you ever load the first word of your first message! Not knowing how to use the service will lead to many mistakes, and your customers and potential customers will most likely see every mistake you make!

Just as soon as you have complete the sign up process, load one email address into the autoresponders mailing list – yours. If there is a manual or help file for your autoresponder, read every word of it, and really learn how to use all of the features of the autoresponder.

Work with it, sending messages to your own address, until you know your autoresponder service inside and out! SURE. This may take a little time, but after investing just a few hours or so, you should know all that there is to know, and you will be able to set your autoresponders up much more effectively in the future. Taking the time to learn now, will not only save time in the future, it may also help you tweak and tune your autoresponder messages and tracking in a way that increases your responses!

Formatting Your Autoresponder Messages

Have you received emails that were all
broken up? These emails have one or two words on one
line, then eight or ten words on
the next line. In some cases, one word be
gins on one line and ends on the next.

Weren't these emails very hard to rea
d? Didn't they appear to be very unprofessional? Is this what y
ou want your autorespon
der email messages to look like?

WELL! If you don't want your emails to look like that then you need to learn how to format your messages. Start by reading the instructions for your specific autoresponder. Each one operates a bit differently in the way that it handles text. For instance, some autoresponder messages will be messed up if you do put a ‘hard line break’ at the end of each line, while others will be messed up if you don’t! Find out what the right option is for your autoresponder!

Because each email client (that's the people receiving your emails) is different, you should not allow any line in your message to exceed 65 characters. This will help prevent lines from breaking up, and it is achieved by hitting the ‘enter’ key at the end of each sixty-five character line. The best way to be sure that your autoresponder messages are delivered in the correct format is to send them to yourself, FIRST -- before you send them to your list!

Personalizing Autoresponders

Have you ever walked into a store in your town, and someone working there calls you by your first name? This has probably happened to you at stores that you frequent often. The shop owner knows your name, and uses it. He remembers you, and he wants you to know that he cared enough about you and your business to remember you. In the offline world, this is just one aspect of customer support.

Customer service like this is almost impossible to achieve on the Internet, but some semblance of it can exist when you PERSONALIZE your autoresponder messages. Autoresponder messages can be set up to address people by their first or last name – or both. In fact, there is quite a bit of personalized information that can be added, depending on the autoresponder that you are using.

The information is included in the autoresponder messages by using CODES. Each autoresponder will use different codes to insert the information in your messages. You simply write your message, and put the codes where you want the personalized information to appear. For instance, your message may start out with ‘Hello (code for first name)! In this case, the person’s first name will be inserted where that code is.

Personalizing your autoresponder messages will almost definitely improve your response rate. Research has shown that emails that are personalized with the person’s first name are opened more often, and those people are generally more receptive to the contents of the email message. And the best news of all is: it is usually very easy to call your clients by their first names. You write one message, using the codes where you want the personalization, then, no matter who that one email is sent out to, THEIR personal information will appear where the codes are.

Naturally, the autoresponder must collect the information first. This is done with the use of FORMS that activate the autoresponder. For instance, if you are giving away a free ebook, and you have your visitor fill out a form with their email address to receive the download instructions for the ebook by email, that form should collect any type of information that you want for personalization – such as a first name, as well as the email address. If that information is not collected, the autoresponder won’t have anything to insert where that code appears in your messages!

Take a look around the control panel of your autoresponder, and find out what type of personalization you can add to your autoresponder messages. You may be very surprised at how much the results can be improved!

Building customer interest and excitement is the first step to successfully marketing many products. Autoresponders can play a vital role in building this interest and excitement. For instance, if you were developing an ebook, you may want to start telling your website visitors and opt-in subscribers about it. Start building interest; tell them what this product will do for them, and how soon it will be available.

Do more than build interest by telling them about it. Use an autoresponder to let them preview your product! Even though you will be selling the product, you can allow your potential customers to preview the information. Have you ever seen previews for movies that will be playing in theaters soon? This is the same concept.

Load one chapter of the ebook into an autoresponder, and put a form on your website where your visitors can enter their name and email address to receive the preview chapter free of charge. This gets their name on your list of potential customers. Each week, send a reminder email, letting them know how close the release date is, and what they can expect from your product – keep building interest and excitement.

Finally, a couple of days before you are ready to launch your product offer those that received the preview the option to buy a PRE-release copy. You can choose to offer a discounted price, or leave the price as it will be on launch day – the choice is yours.

Take a look at the list of people who signed up to receive the preview. How many of them are still ‘ subscribed’ to that list? They’ve had the option to stop receiving notices about your product, but they chose to keep receiving the information you were sending. These are highly targeted prospects for your product. They have already shown you that they have an interest in your product, and a large number of those people are simply waiting on the autoresponder broadcast message that will let them know that it is time to pick up their copy of your product!

Isn’t automation a wonderful thing? Using an autoresponder, you are able to see how much of a market there is for your product, and build a great deal of interest in it before it is ever released. This is the key to making sales on launch day. Use autoresponders to build the interest. Get your prospects excited about what is about to come – and on launch day, give them what they are waiting for and watch the sales pour in!

Email Courses and Autoresponders

Offering free things to your website visitors is one marketing method that often results in a lot of sales. Free courses that are delivered via email are very popular, and people sign up for such courses on a regular basis to learn more about a topic of interest to them. These courses are best maintained and delivered with the use of autoresponders.

An autoresponder can be set up to send out a series of lessons for an email course. The lessons can be set for distribution at specific intervals. You determine how often the lessons for the course are sent to the people who have signed up for it. Email courses are very different from traditional courses, web based courses, or any other type of course.

There is no student and instructor interaction. The instructor writes the information out, puts each lesson in an autoresponder series, sets the timing for the lessons, and the rest is automated. You can opt to have lessons delivered daily, every other day, every three days, or any other time frame that you think works best for your email students.

Email courses are commonly used to sell products and services. For instance, if you sell widgets, you might develop a course that teaches people how to use widgets or how to care for their widget. Experts agree that an email course can be written for almost any product that you can imagine – if you put enough thought into it.

Start by determining what your course will be about, and how long it should be. If the course should be delivered every other day for two weeks, you know that you would need seven lessons. Write the lessons, and load them in the autoresponder. Set the interval for each lesson, which in this case would be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13.

This means that the first lesson would be delivered one day after the person has requested the course, and the second lesson would be delivered three days after the person has requested the course, and so on. The interval for each lesson is set for the number of days after the person has signed up Make sure that everything is spelled right, and that your sentences are grammatically correct. You want the lessons to look and sound as professional as possible.

Next, simply advertise the email address that will activate the autoresponder. Make sure that you run a test first, sending each lesson to yourself. This will allow you to see what your email students will see when they sign up!

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If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product or service, you must be very careful as to how you approach your potential customer. Few people like a hard sale, and marketers have known for years that in most cases, a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before they will make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with autoresponders?

It’s really quite simple, and in fact, the autoresponders make getting the message to your potential customers more than seven times possible. On the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers make the mistake of literally slamming the potential customer with a hard sales pitch with the first autoresponder message – Do the selling in gentle stages and watch your sales soar.

Build their interest slowly. Start with an informative message – a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution.

Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product – giving the reader more actual information with each and every message. Your final message should be the sale pitch – not your first one! With each message, make sure that you are giving the customer information pertaining to the topic – free information! This is what will keep them interested in what you have to say.

This type of marketing is an art. It may take time to get it exactly right. Use the examples that other marketers have set for you. Pay attention to the messages that you receive from other marketers. Start a ‘swap’ file, and keep those messages. Use some of the better sales copy for your own autoresponder messages – just make sure that yours doesn’t turn out to be an exact copy of someone else’s sales message!

Remember not to start with a hard sale. Build your potential customers interest. Keep building on what the problem is, and how your product or service can solve that problem or fill that need. If you are doing this right, by the time the potential customer reads the last message in that series, they will be convinced enough to make a purchase!

Using Your Autoresponder to Generate Leads

Autoresponders are one of the most important marketing tools that you can have if you are doing business online. In fact, the only thing more important that the autoresponder is your opt-in list! But all autoresponders start out without a list – the list doesn’t exist until your autoresponder mailing list starts filling up with names and email addresses!

The easiest and fastest way to build up an email list is to give things away for free. Some marketers will tell you that this is a waste of time – and if you already have a list of one hundred thousand people that you can market to, then it probably is. But for those who do not already have a list, this is the way that it gets built! You simply pay for advertisement to promote your freebie.

Don’t think of this as lost time or money wasted, think of it as an investment in your future earnings.

Give away an ezine, free reports, free ebooks, free access to private websites, or anything else that you can think of. The object is to get people to sign up to receive that freebie, and to agree to receive email from you in the future! It is a win-win situation for everyone, but you get more than anyone else in the deal. The person gets a freebie. You get their name and email address, plus their permission to email them in the future.

But if you do it right, you get even more than that. The freebie that you give away should also be used to promote your products or services. Even if all it has is affiliate links for products or services that are related to the topic of the freebie, it is a way to generate extra revenue. Then, when you send email in the future, you can again promote your products or services. Just be sure to include valuable information in the email as well, or you will have people dropping off of your autoresponder mailing list like flies!

Using every opportunity that is presented to you in the world of Internet Marketing is vital to your success. You have the opportunity to earn money in the freebie that you create, you have the opportunity to earn money when you send the ‘thank you’ email after a person has requested your freebie, and you have the opportunity to earn money every time an autoresponder message is sent out to that list in the future! Don’t waste those opportunities, and put it all in automatic mode with the use of an autoresponder.

Using Articles

Writing articles to market a product or service is an excellent way to build business. The articles should be very informative, providing the reader with information that is relevant to a specific topic. The article usually includes a link to a web page for more information. The web page, of course, is designed to sell a product or service that relates to the topic of the article.

These articles are commonly submitted to article banks, websites, and ezine publishers. This is one of the most effective ways to market a service or product on the Internet, and it can become even more effective when it is combined with the use of an autoresponder.

Begin by setting each of your articles up in your autoresponder. It is important that each article have its very own autoresponder address, so you will need an autoresponder service that will allow you to do this. Next, make a master list of your articles, with the autoresponder address for each article listed beside the title. You can even add descriptions of the articles on your master list if you want to.

Advertising your articles one at a time can take a great deal of time…but advertising one autoresponder address – the one for the master list – won’t take very much time at all. Simply put it in your newsletter and on your website. You can even allow other ezine publishers to use this is a free resource for their subscribers!

Autoresponders and Shopping Cart Integration

When people place orders through your website, it is always a good idea to immediately acknowledge the purchase. One way to do this is with the use of an autoresponder that can be integrated with your shopping cart. In fact, many shopping carts that are available today have their own autoresponders built into the system.

When you set up your autoresponder to send a message to someone that has placed an order, there are several things that should be included in the message. This is an opportunity to ‘speak’ to your customer, and to let them know about other deals that you have or special items that you have available. You should not miss this opportunity.

Do not try to get your ‘thank you’ sales message on the same autoresponder as the customers email receipt. Putting the sales message on an email that is automatically sent to grant the customer access to their purchase is also a bad idea – that would go better with the receipt. Make sure your ‘thank you’ sales message is a message that is sent out all by itself, so your customer can focus solely on that!

Thank the customer for their recent purchase. Tell them how much their purchase will help them, and then tell them about other available products that work well with the one that they just purchased, or that are similar to the one that they just purchased in some way. For instance hair conditioner works with hair shampoo. Vacuum cleaner bags or carpet powder works well with vacuum cleaners. Just let them know about the various products that you offer that will compliment their purchase in some way.

The important thing is to not let your customer get away without further contact! Think about being in a brick and mortar store. When you go up to the counter to pay, there are many items there for sale. These items are meant to be picked up as last minute purchases, or impulsive purchases. Your ‘thank you’ sales letter serves the same purpose.

Don’t make the mistake of bombarding your customer! You can usually send them periodic information about your specials after they have made a purchase through you, but emailing them on a daily basis with your offers is not good business! Use your autoresponder responsibly! Make sure that your autoresponder is set up to handle automatic remove requests, and make sure that the information that you are sending your customers is of value to them.

Giving Access to Your Secret Pages
with Autoresponders

People love to have access to things that other people can’t get. It makes them feel special, and it is a marketing tactic that really works. Granting access to secret pages works well on the Internet. It works best when it is limited. For instance, you can grant access to only a lucky few, or you can have a time limit for accessing the pages. You can grant access to secret pages on your website with an autoresponder.

The way this works is quite simple. You create a directory on your website that is password protected, with one login and password that everybody can use. You then create some valuable content for that directory. You can call this your secret vault or your private stash or anything else you want to call it – as long as it sounds like something that your visitors may really want to get their hands on. For instance ‘the secret tools that helped me earn thousands each month’ would probably entice many people who want to learn how to make money.

Once you get the directory and the pages set up, put the URL of the pages and the login name and password in an autoresponder. Write a sales page and distribute it to your opt-in list, or have other list owners distribute it to theirs. Make sure you ‘limit’ the offer. Don’t let people assume that you are going to share this secret information with the rest of the world – they want to be the only ones with this special access!

Keep access to the secret pages free. The goal is to get people to those pages, so that they can purchase your products or services. However, remember that you’ve advertised secret tools or secret information. Therefore, when they get to those pages, there must be something of value there for them to collect – for free in most cases. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you will be losing money by giving something away for free – you won’t. In fact, you’ve already gained by collecting the names and addresses of the people who were interested in your secret information!

Again, this is a marketing tactic that really works, and it is a great way to use an autoresponder. Once people have requested the information for your private pages, you can email them periodically, using your autoresponder, to let them know about updates to the secret site. While you are updating them, you can also tell them about other specials or new products in your line.

Ideally, when you perform customer service, it is done on a one-on-one basis with each of your customers. That works quite well in the offline world – but on the Internet, that simply will not do. Your customers are literally all over the world, and there is no way that you can really deal with each one of them personally. That is where an autoresponder comes in.

Customer service with autoresponders is quite simple. When an order is placed, an autoresponder can send out the receipt for the sale, the information for accessing the product, and a ‘thank you’ email. This happens whether you are logged in to your computer or on vacation in an exotic location! But customer service doesn’t always end right there, and if you are away from your computer, you may be letting your customers down!

For instance, an elderly gentleman sees your product advertised and places an order. Everything goes through just fine, and he receives the receipt, the download information, and your ‘thank you’ email. Your product is an ebook, compiled into a PDF file. This particular gentleman doesn’t understand what a PDF file is, and he has no idea what you mean by ‘right click to download.’ He needs additional customer service for the product that he has purchased, and there is nobody available to help him – nobody but an autoresponder.

Set up an additional autoresponder that will send out a list of frequently asked questions or problems that deal with customer service or how to access the product. Also set up a support autoresponder. If he sends a message to support, he should get an instant message back letting him know that his message has been received, and how soon it will be addressed. This will give him some measure of comfort, and in most cases, he will wait that specified period of time for assistance.

However, if he doesn’t know how to download the product, and he sends a message to support, and nothing happens, he will most likely become very dissatisfied in a very short period of time. The difference between a patient customer and an irate customer is one simple autoresponder message that can and should be set up in under five minutes.

Really think your ordering process through, and consider the potential problems that may occur for your customers. Get an autoresponder set up to address those problems, and you will find that your customers are more satisfied with your products, and extremely satisfied with your customer service – all because your autoresponders handle their problems right away!

Motivate Your Downline with Autoresponders

Many affiliate marketers have a hard time building a downline – and an even harder time keeping downline members motivated and selling. If your income depends on the sales of others, you should strongly consider keeping them motivated with autoresponders.

You can load your autoresponder with positive messages, sales tips, and news related to the product or service that is being sold. Many affiliates fail simply because they don’t know how to market a product, and they have little or no support from affiliate managers or up line members! With the use of autoresponders, all of that can change.

You should definitely write on some marketing tips, specific to your product or service, and set you downline members up in the mailing list for that series of messages. Send broadcast messages once a month congratulating the top sellers. Send short motivational articles that will keep your downline member upbeat.

Failing to communicate with your downline members is the same as ensuring that they fail at the business in most cases. If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, you have to take steps to help your downline succeed!

Tracking Your Autoresponder Responses

As an Internet marketer, it is vitally important to know how well your advertising campaigns are doing. Advertising campaigns cost a lot of time and money, and campaigns that are not doing well need to either be changed or scraped. When using autoresponders for purposes of Internet marketing, you will be able to tell how well your autoresponder messages are doing by using response tracking.

Autoresponder response tracking is usually easily set up with the higher quality paid autoresponder services. Using the tracking set up tool, you simply enter the web site address that you want your readers to visit, and the software generates a brand new URL. This URL is used track the number of clicks that you have from the autoresponder message to the website that you are promoting.

When a person clicks on that special URL, the click is captured, and they are automatically redirected to the website that you intended them to arrive at. The visitor does not know that they have been redirected in most cases. You can monitor the results through the control panel of your autoresponder service account. The control panel will tell you how many messages were delivered, and how many clicks were received. Most quality autoresponders will even include a feature that allows you to track how many of the emails were opened. This is a great marketing research tool for mass email marketing.

Not all autoresponder services offer tracking abilities such as this. If tracking is important to you, you need to make sure that this is one of the features of the autoresponder service before you sign up. This feature gives you the ability to know whether the message you are sending out is effective, or if changes need to be made. It also allows you to see if the sales copy on your website is effective, in a ‘round-about’ way. For instance, if you are getting thousands of clicks from the autoresponder message, but very few clicks from the sales page to the order page, you know that the autoresponder message is working, but the sales copy is failing.

If you have never tracked your autoresponder responses before, you should definitely consider it. Again, this information allows you to find out what is working, and what is not working. It will essentially make your autoresponder marketing much more effective and profitable. You will most likely be very surprised at the results of the tracking!

Using an Autoresponder to Publish Your Ezine

There are many uses for an autoresponder. One such use is the publishing and distribution of an ezine or newsletter. Since autoresponder services usually are set up to send automatic responses to the people on the list at certain intervals after they sign up, setting up an autoresponder to send out an ezine can be a little confusing.

Depending on the service or autoresponder that you are using, you will need a ‘broadcast’ feature. The broadcast feature works essentially the same as the autoresponse feature, with one big difference. The messages are not sent out at intervals. The messages can, however, be scheduled to go out on a certain day, which has no bearing on when the subscriber was actually added to the mailing list. Broadcast messages are ‘one time’ messages that are only sent to your current mailing list. People who sign up for your list after the broadcast has been sent do not receive it, unless the specifically request it with an autoresponder address, which you must set up.

Using the broadcast feature of most autoresponder services, you can simply go and either type your newsletter, or copy and paste it into the editor, then choose to send the broadcast to your entire mailing list. More advanced autoresponder services will usually have broadcasting features.

Using an autoresponder to maintain a mailing list and to distribute a newsletter is a wonderful idea. Your subscribers can easily opt-in, or opt-out, and all of the distribution is handled for you, based on the schedule that you set. List maintenance can become very difficult without the automation that autoresponders provide. You can write each issue of your ezine or newsletter well in advance, and have it delivered to your mailing list, no matter where you are or what you are doing. That is the beauty of automation!

Since all past broadcast and autoresponse messages are saved, you can easily refer back to old issues, or allow people to request past issues. You can also use the tracking feature throughout each issue of the newsletter to determine how many clicks you are getting for the various products or websites that you promote in your ezine.

If you have not yet purchased an autoresponder or signed up with any autoresponder service, make sure that you inquire about the broadcast feature first. Not all autoresponders or autoresponder services have this feature, and as your marketing progresses, you will find that this is one of the most useful features of the service or program.

Autoresponder Training Sessions

Autoresponders work very well when it comes to training others. This is why autoresponders are the perfect way to conduct email courses. But there are other types of training that can be done with autoresponders as well.

Even college professors have found a use for autoresponders. They can use them to remind students about upcoming tests, or to deliver study guides. Since the information in that professor’s course is taught over and over again each time a new class comes in, this saves the professor a great deal of time.

Autoresponders are also used by colleges to remind faculty and students about upcoming events. Because events are scheduled in advance, these autoresponder messages are set up in advance, and nobody has to depend on a secretary to get those notices out!

Many businesses use autoresponders to keep their employees trained. When new equipment is brought into the office, and employees need to know how to operate it, an autoresponder can be set up with training instructions.

No matter what kind of business you are in, there is a way that autoresponders can be used. The use of an autoresponder will save quite a bit of time, and it can also serve to make the people in your organization much for effective.

Business Automation with Autoresponders

Automation is important to all businesses. The less time we have to spend doing small tasks, the more time we have to make more money – or we could spend that time doing something besides working. Putting an online business on auto pilot isn’t difficult at all – and it is all done with the use of autoresponders!

Autoresponders can be used to get people to your website, or to promote products and services. Simply plug your sales message into the autoresponder, along with some valuable information that your potential may want or need, and advertise that autoresponders address.

Once the person arrives at your site, and goes through your ordering process, another autoresponder kicks in. This autoresponder should send out a receipt, as well as information that will grant the customer access to whatever it is that they have purchased. Another autoresponder message should be sent out after this, thanking the customer for their business, and letting them know about similar or related products or services that they may be interested in.

The beauty of this is that while all of this ordering is going on, and these important customer service emails are being sent, you can be off doing something else! The more automation you can integrate into your online business, the better off you will be.

Avoid the Improper Uses of Autoresponders
at ALL Costs!

Autoresponders are wonderful! They can be used for a variety of things, but there are several ways that autoresponders should not be used. Using autoresponders in improper ways will make things a bit more difficult for other people, and it could make things really bad for you!

Having one autoresponder respond to another autoresponder creates chaos, and in some cases, it can overload servers. This happens when you sign up for something, using your autoresponder email address. You sign up, and a message is sent to someone else’s autoresponder, which responds to your autoresponder, which responds to that autoresponder – and this continues on and on until it is manually stopped and straightened out.

Some people use their autoresponder address on purpose when they sign up for discussion lists. In effect, this causes an their autoresponder message to be sent to the entire list, or to one person on the list, each time a person sends a real message to the discussion list. Needless to say, discussion list members and owners frown on this practice, and the autoresponder owner gets banned.

Avoid these problems and use your autoresponder in ways that it was meant to be used. Do not use the autoresponder irresponsibly! Not only will you create problems for others, but you may find that you get reported for spam!

There are laws against sending spam. There are even laws that you must adhere to when you send out email that was requested. No matter what type of email you are sending out, the chances are good that the anti-spam laws apply to you in some way.

In order to be in compliance with the anti-spam laws in various states in the US, each commercial email that you send must include your name or business name, your street address, city, state, zip code, and phone number. You must also include instructions that will allow the recipient to remove themselves from your mailing list. If you fail to do any of this, you are essentially breaking the law in various states – no matter what state or country you live in!

Protect yourself from spam complaints in any way that you can. Make sure that when a customer requests any type of information from you that an email is sent requesting confirmation before any other email is sent. If someone is placing an order from you, include a check box on the order form, asking for permission to send them periodic emails. Never use your autoresponder to send unsolicited commercial email!

How To Get Your Autoresponder Messages Through The Spam Filters

In light of the spam problem, most email clients now have spam filters installed. These filters catch spam email and either move it to a ‘spam folder’ or automatically delete it. After spending a great deal of time laboring over your series of autoresponder messages, it would be a shame to find out that the majority of the messages that are sent out end up in the spam folder, or are automatically deleted as spam!

You can avoid this in two ways. First, when anyone signs up to receive information from your autoresponder, have them automatically redirected to a page that gives them instructions for ‘white listing’ you. Email clients have an actual white list where the owner of the email client can add specific addresses that should never be considered spam.

The other way to make sure that your autoresponder messages get through the spam filters is to check them using one of the various spam checkers that are available online. These programs are often web based, and free to use. They check your message for words or phrases that commonly trigger spam filters in email clients. Don’t send out any autoresponder messages without doing a spam check first!

Invoicing with Autoresponders

If you have recurring invoices that you send out, you can easily automate this process with autoresponders. Many business owners find that they spend a good portion the day sending out invoices, or trying to collect on unpaid invoices! This can easily eat into the time that you could be spending generating new business.

If the amounts invoiced are the same each month, and due on the same day each week or month, you can easily automate the invoicing process with the use of an autoresponder. Many shopping carts that have autoresponders built in work well for this. Others may take a little time to set up, but in the end, they will save a great deal of time overall.

Get extra usage out of the automated invoicing process by adding small messages to the invoices that alert these clients to new products or services that you offer. Think about your phone bill – doesn’t your phone company send out additional sales material with each bill? There is no reason you shouldn’t use this same marketing technique with your autoresponder invoices!