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AUTORESPONDERS
Autoresponders are a necessary part
of any online marketing campaign,
whether you’re a hardworking MLMer
growing your network marketing business,
or a hardworking solopreneur
growing your consulting (or other) business.
As we’ve mentioned on a few other pages on this website, there are some facts of online life you need to get straight if you want to achieve maximum success. Here are some of them:
1-To succeed at pretty much any business today, you must have a presence on the Net—aka a website
2-For your website to do anything for you—besides costing you money—you must drive traffic to it
3-Not just any traffic, but targeted traffic (how much business would a pet food website get from 10,000 visitors a day who don’t own any pet?)
4-There are probably two dozen—at least—ways to drive targeted traffic to your website, and all of them will cost you something; time, money, or both
5-Once you’ve ‘paid’ for the traffic, you might as well collect the contact information of as many visitors as you can—at the very least, because few people will buy something from you or join your opportunity on a first visit
6-Once you have their contact info recorded in your mailing list, you need to keep them ‘warm’, keep them in the loop
7-An autoresponder system is the only way to keep people ‘warm’ or in the loop
If you’re going to be successful online, you need to constantly remind yourself that consumers use the Internet because it gives them instant access to information—typically FREE information.
Autoresponders are small email programs that automatically send predetermined messages at predetermined intervals to anyone who requests information from you—which they did do if you worded your sign-up form properly (more on that on the Mailing List page).
Here’s how it works (for the very newbies):
A visitor comes by your website and sees that you are offering a free eReport (for example) on a subject that he’s interested in. He (or she) enters his email address and PRESTO! the eReport is INSTANTLY delivered to his inbox in an autoresponder email. This not only provides your visitor with the information he was looking for, it saves you the trouble of manually sending your visitor the information.
And here’s the best part—as far as you’re concerned: since he had to enter his name and email address to receive the information, you now have a record of his address which can be added to your mailing list (provided they double opt-in—more info on that on the Mailing List page).
A person who might otherwise have been a one-time visitor to your site can now be targeted with email promotions every time you send out a campaign. Once you learn how to harness the tremendous marketing power of autoresponders, you’ll wonder how you lived without them for so long.
Now, only two questions remain: what do you put in those emails, and what system to use to deliver them?
What to put in those emails
We’ll start with four good suggestions from one of the greatest minds currently active on the Internet Marketing scene: Derk Gehl, of The Internet Marketing Center. These are excerpted from what we consider to be one of the best and wisest investments we’ve ever made as far as internet marketing goes: his The ‘Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business On The Internet program. We can think of only one word to describe it: AWESOME! Click here to find out about it: http://tinyurl.com/2843er
The best way to use autoresponders is to think of legitimate reasons to contact your customers, subscribers or prospects. This will ensure that people view your autoresponder series as valuable, useful, informative content, as opposed to a stream of pushy sales emails.
1-Sending a confirmation email
Using autoresponders to send instant confirmation email to your customers, subscribers or prospects after they have made a purchase, signed up for your ezine or newsletter, or asked for your free product is a great way to provide people with an additional level of customer service—a level of service that’s become expected. A recent survey shows that 98% of online shoppers expect an email with an order confirmation, 88% expect shipping information, and 77% expect billing information.
Now, what many marketers miss is the fact that these confirmation autoresponders are a great marketing opportunity. Because instant confirmations do a lot to boost your credibility, they are a perfect place for a marketing message.
You’ve responded immediately to your customer’s request, letting him know that you are a reliable, organized, professional person. Why not take advantage of that by inviting him to visit a certain page on your website, watch a video, listen to an audio, or attend a presentation call on such and such a day of the week?
2-Offer the people on your list a weekly or daily tip to entice them to return to your website.
3-Offer weekly or monthly contests or draws.
4-Offer a weekly or monthly newsletter or ezine that contains valuable information, special offers, and updates about your business, your company, or information about new additions to your website.
Wasn’t that helpful information? Now, here is one suggestion from us that we’ve used quite a bit in the past and that we’re thinking of doing again soon; send them articles.
Let’s say your MLM opportunity is about "green" household products (as an example). You go to one of the many article hubs on the Net (do a Google search for "article hubs" or "article directories"). When you get to one of the ‘hubs’, you will find hundreds of well-written and informative articles on the why and the how of using "green" household products.
Select one you like, copy-paste it into an autoresponder email in your series (just make sure to include the About the author part at the bottom of the article) and voila! Instant content!
You could start the email by saying something like this:
Hi (first name),
I found this really neat article I thought you might enjoy reading since I know you are into "green" household products.
Enjoy.
Then you include the article.
Just make sure to add an article that will not sound dated six months later when people who have recently been added to your list receive that email. So nothing 'newsy' like the G8 Summit, or the "latest discovery in XYZ". There is plenty of generic info available on the article hubs.
That’s our suggestion as far as using autoresponder emails goes. But we have one more excellent one that comes from Bob Cefail, CEO of In Touch Media Group. Here it is (again using the example that you are building a multi level marketing business that sells "green" household products):
This is an 8-step process;
1-Make a list of 10 (or as many as you can) benefits and ‘differentiators’ of your products and your opportunity (what are the best benefits, and what makes it unique?)
2-Pick the top five
3-For each of your picks, write a short but potent 2-paragraph text where the first paragraph states a problem (the reason WHY someone would be looking for your products and / or opportunity) and the second paragraph offers a solution to that problem—the HOW you will fix that problem, which of course is your awesome products and your incredible business opportunity.
4-After the second paragraph, you include a specific command (e.g. "Please click here to find out how XYZ Bathroom Cleaner can keep your bathroom clean and the environment green"). Include a link that takes your reader DIRECTLY to that one place on your website (or your company’s) where they will find out all you want them to learn about that great solution of yours.
5-For each of the 5 texts, write a provocative, challenging or curiosity-inducing subject line that will entice the recipient to open your email. "Bob, here’s some info about XYZ Bathroom Cleaner" won’t do it!
6-Put each of these "articles" you just wrote into an email that you now add to your autoresponder program and set them up so they are sent every 3 days. That means you will ‘drip’ 5 emails over a 15 day period.
7-Next, take the same top 5 benefits and repeat step 3, 4 and 5, but write different texts, still addressing the same WHYs (the problems) and the same HOWs (your solutions).
8-Put those new texts in your autoresponder program and set them up so they are sent every 3 days, just like you did in step 6. That means you will ‘drip’ a total of 10 emails over a period of 30 days.
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We think this is a great suggestion for ‘drip marketing’. That’s what online marketing gurus call this marketing method. Once you have someone on your list, you ‘drip’ a series of messages over a certain period of time. You have to be careful though; if your messages are more ‘pushy-salesy’ than informative, your marketing campaign will be perceived by your subscriber as ‘Chinese water torture’ and they will unsubscribe from your list. Just make sure you ’drip’ good stuff!
What system to use to deliver your emails?
In the last few years, a TON of new companies have started to offer autoresponder services. Do a Google search for "autoresponders" and you’ll find that choosing the best service available is no easy task.
This is where we can help out.
We have narrowed down the dozens and dozens of possibilities to three: Constant Contact, Mailloop and aWeber. Let’s take a quick look at each and you can use the link provided to go do more of your own research before deciding on one.
Constant Contact:
With Email Marketing by Constant Contact®, you'll discover that you can quickly create affordable, professional-looking email campaigns that help you better connect with your customers, clients, members, subscribers or prospects. And with Survey, their online survey product, you can better understand their needs and wants.
Best of all, with Constant Contact, you have the same support and personal coaching more than 100,000 businesses, associations, and nonprofits trust to help them build strong, lasting relationships.
We know many of these businesses and organizations personally, and they are very happy with that service provider. Go here to find out more www.constantcontact.com
Mailloop:
Mailloop comes as a software package you install on your computer. It’s not cheap, but when you consider that once it’s all set-up you’ll never have to pay another monthly or yearly fee—not to mention the fact it includes ALL the bells and whistles you could think of, for which most of the other service providers charge you extra—Mailloop is a very attractive package.
We know quite a few people who are using it and who are very happy with the software, and the customer support and service offered by The Internet Marketing Center (you read that name previously on this page when we introduced Derek Gehl’s suggestions for autoresponders content—Mailloop is one of their most popular products).
Because of that, we highly recommend you get Mailloop if you can afford the initial investment:
Go here to find out more http://tinyurl.com/yoh3cy
aWeber:
Having said all those good things about the other two choices, the one we recommend the highest is the one we use ALL the time. We use it daily.
We use it to store and manage our numerous mailing lists. We use it for ALL our autoresponder emails. We use it for our ‘broadcasts’—which you use when you want to send one special email to EVERYONE who’s on your list(s).
We like the user interface, we like the customer service, we like their pricing structure. We are very happy there and have no intention to move for now.
Go here to check them out yourself and take a Test Drive http://tinyurl.com/yv8qrt
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