Using an Email Autoresponder

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Collecting email addresses is one of the THE most important tasks you can complete if you're goal is to make money from your website.

Why, you may ask?

Because people don't generally make a purchase the first time they visit your site.  You need to build a certain level of trust in your site and recommendations and this is not generally done on the first, or even the second visit.

To overcome this you can setup an email autoresponder to stay in touch with your visitors and remind them why they should re-visit your site and/or purchase products you recommend or sell.  If done effectively, it could increase your sales tremendously.

For those of you that may not know, an autoresponder is an automatic message or series of messages that are sent at certain intervals specified by the sender.   

They are great for following up on purchases and promoting additional products you may have to offer. Autoresponders are also good tools for building relationships with your existing visitors who have never bought from you.

However, before you start collecting those email addresses, there are certain things you should keep in mind:

1. Be sure you know your visitors and their needs.  
The more you know about them, the better you can tailor your messages to their wants and desires.  You want to be able to push those emotional buttons, answer any questions, and provide solutions to potential problems.

If you start sending out junk, you'll lose your subscribers in a heartbeat.

The AWeber autoresponder let's you customize a form which allows you to not only collect email addresses, but you can get other information about your subscribers (age, sex, hobbies, etc.) and this is all stored in a viewable report so you can review at any time.

2. Keep your messages relevant.  
If you go off on too many tangents you may lose the interest of your subscribers.  Stay focused and remember how important it is to keep your visitors interested.  Put yourself in their shoes for a minute and think about what you'd want to know if you were in their position.

3. Don't be too anxious to close the deal.
If you try to throw one sales pitch after another in your emails, it will become obvious that the only thing you're trying to do is get the sale.  Obviously, that's what you want to happen in the end, but you can't make it so obvious to your leads.

Now there is an exception to this.  Let's say your autoresponder is setup to send emails to people who have already purchased something from you and your goal is to promote the other products at your site.  

You can be a little more forward about getting the sale in this situation because these people have already purchased from you before.  Your conversion rate will probably be a lot higher with these people than a person who has never bought from you.

4. Add value to your subscription
You've worked hard to get these email addresses so you want to keep them.  Offer freebies to your subscribers and let them know that the offers are only for subscribers to your newsletter.  

However, make sure the free offer is relevant to their needs and is of good value.  Don't insult them by offering some cheesy product that they won't want or need.

5. Show some personality
People want to know there are humans behind these emails and sale pitches.  It adds a nice touch to a world where can't see faces.  Don't be afraid to add a bit of humor every now and then to lighten up your messages.

My Favorite Autoresponder...

I use AWeber on my flat-stomach-exercises.com site. I send out my weekly Tummy Tips, and their autoresponder comes in handy because I can set the tips up in advance and AWeber sends them out at the interval I specify.

The Tummy Tips are a huge hit with my audience and it's amazing how many people think I am manually sending those messages each week. They don't realize it is all setup on autopilot.

It took me a while before I broke down and made the autoresponder investment.  What finally closed the deal for me was when I read a book called "Super Affiliate Confessions" - an eBook with numerous interviews that exposes how everyday people are making money with affiliate programs.

So many of the successful affiliates said that the autoresponder was their most effective marketing tool and most of them use Aweber.  They kept stressing how important it was to build relationships and conduct follow-ups via email.

Aweber's autoresponder lets you send an unlimited amount of follow-up messages at the intervals you specify, and they provide great reports that include "open rate" and "click-thru rate".   They allow you to create as many different lists as you want and you can even send HTML emails.

For details on Aweber's autoresponder and a free trial, click here.

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