Autoresponders - Simple Tweaks That will Improve Your Return Rate

Autoresponders are, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most powerful and important tools available to anyone marketing on the internet today. They allow you to automatically send out a sequential series of email messages to prospects who have signed up to receive your information and who you therefore know are interested in what you're offering.

They make it easy to build a relationship and establish interest and trust with your prospective customer or recruit and they minimise the amount time you need to devote to busy work. By the time your prospect has got through your series of messages, if they feel the need to make further contact with you prior to making a decision, you are at least assured that they are sufficiently interested to merit your manual input and the time taken to communicate.

It depends very much on the type of product, service or opportunity that you're marketing but it is generally accepted that somewhere between 5 and 9 "contacts", or messages, are required before a customer is comfortable enough to make a decision. Seven is often quoted as the ideal number but it does vary and this should not be taken as gospel.

I am constantly surprised by the number of marketers, some of them very experienced, who load up their autoresponders with 7 messages, capture the email addresses of interested parties, send them their message series and leave it at that. If that's what you're doing then there are a couple of very simple tweaks you can make to improve your return on the time and money you spend to collect those valuable email addresses.

The first is simplicity itself and requires very little effort on your part ? no need to even change your message series. Let's assume that your message series consists of the standard 7 and that this suits the type of product your promoting perfectly well (it probably does). You send out these messages spaced one day apart over the course of a week, messages 1 to 5 are probably largely informative and messages 6 and 7 may well contain a "call to action", possibly with a sense of urgency being introduced ? although you may have introduced a call to action earlier in the series depending upon the product type.

Your prospects go through this series of messages and a percentage of them will take your advice and sign up for whatever your promoting. The majority of them won't ? that's just statistics I'm afraid.

However, you can increase your sign up rate by something as simple as introducing an eighth and ninth message. Send message 8 a week after they receive the last in the main series of messages and send message 9 about 3 weeks after message 8. Just give them a gentle reminder about your offer and see if they're still interested. Keep the wording generic and don't repeat a hard sell ? your original message series should have done all the selling ? this is just a reminder.

This is a very simple technique and if it seems obvious to you ? congratulations, you clearly know your stuff. Nevertheless, you'd be amazed at how many marketers omit this easy memory jogger. Speaking from personal experience, I get about 20% of my signups this way, either after message 8 or 9. Some prospects were waiting for pay day, some were going to do it after they came back from holiday, some just plain forgot. Whatever reason they may have had for not signing up at the first or second call to action, this technique boosts my return by 20%.

The second simple tweak takes advantage of the ability of most modern autoresponders to send out a "broadcast" to those prospects on your mailing list. This can be considered as a supplementary message and you can use it to either update your prospects on your original offer or introduce them to a new, but related product or opportunity.

This needs to be used with a little more care. I send out an update at least once every 6 months and preferably once every 3 months (it depends upon the nature of the individual list). I make sure these broadcasts only go to people who have been on the list for at least 3 months. My earlier emails will have already highlighted the fact that they would be provided with important updates in future.

There are plenty reasons for you to communicate. If you are promoting a product you can advise of any feature upgrades or special price promotions. If you are promoting an opportunity then you can update them on any new features which might make them think again. One technique which works very well with opportunity seekers is to update them once about any new benefits they should know of and then, if they still don't sign up, follow up 3 months later with details of a slightly different opportunity.

Both of these techniques work and will produce a welcome boost to your signup rate. Certainly you can expect to get a few unsubscribes, but if they're genuinely not interested that's no great loss. There's no point in making the effort of building your list and then not communicating with them ? both you and your prospects stand to gain from a little extra communication.

Hamish Hayward
Discover the key criteria you MUST evaluate to ensure business success - now available in e-book format.
http://www.perfectsystem.co.uk/

---

Ten Tips to Building Your Opt-in List.

To build and maintain your opt-in list requires constant attention.As... Read More

Should You Be Writing A Newsletter As Part Of Your Online Business?

Let's start at the beginning - why do you need... Read More

Make Your E-mail Signature File WORK for You

You're probably familiar with e-mail signature (or "sig") files --... Read More

How Autoresponders Boost Sales By Up To 400%

Imagine going to bed and waking up in the morning... Read More

The Importance of Building a List

Out of all the possible approaches to affiliate marketing, lead... Read More

Ways to Use Autoreponders To Increase Your Profits

When I was first introduced to an autoresponder I thought... Read More

How Opt-in Email Marketing Helps You In Your Online Business

The consumer of today is increasingly bombarded by marketing messages... Read More

E-mail Whitelist Etiquette

A big-time dilemma is brewing online. In an understandable attempt... Read More

Signature Files: The Easy Way To Create More Business

If you do business as an affiliate, then you're constantly... Read More

Organizing Your Mailing Lists For Your Email Promotions

With all the safelists and different methods for using them,... Read More

The Moneys In The List - But How Much?

The internet seems to be full of hyped up business... Read More

A Little Secret That Produces BIG Results

What if I told you that with each passing day,... Read More

Personal vs Professional Life Email - Dont Squander Your First Internet Impression

My first email address was with compuserve.com back when you... Read More

What Is An Email Signature And What Do I Do With It?

You hear it all the time... email signature, sig file,... Read More

An Unexploited Market: Striking Gold Without Searching for El Dorado

Companies have been focused on using the Internet to market... Read More

Use Permission Based E-Mail Marketing to Promote Your Home Based Business

With all the negative Publicity that S.pam is Getting, Permission... Read More

How Email Etiquette Will Make You More Money through Loyal, Repeat Customers

When it comes to gaining and keeping customers, every website... Read More

Learn How to Double and Triple the Size of Your Opt-in List by Helping Others

I think first of all, everybody deserves to have a... Read More

Email Marketing Tips for Reaching an International Audience

Targeted, cheap, fast, trackable and with more reporting than traditional... Read More

Lesson #1: Autoresponders 101

What the heck is an autoresponder?An autoresponder is much like... Read More

Using Mirror Pages Effectively

Thought I would share with you a very effective technique... Read More

Do You Build Or Buy? (Tips On Leadgeneration)

Every marketer needs leads, they are the lifeblood of your... Read More

Interview With Michael Murray: Autoresponder Basics

This interview is with Michael Murray, the author of a... Read More

Autoresponder Services that Boost Your Business

In the world of ecommerce, millions of sites are fiercely... Read More

The Ultimate Business Network: One Secret Power of the Masters

Dear Friend:If you're out there networking and have been for... Read More

How to Make Your Email Smile

Technology has a tendency to be impersonal and unfriendly -... Read More

Analysing Autoresponders

An autoresponder is an automatic or software-mailing program. Why... Read More

14 Ways To Persuade Your Web Site Visitors To Give You Their Email Address

1. Ask visitors to subscribe to your e-zine. It's a... Read More

Dont Be Viewed as Rude!

All too often otherwise nice folks come off as terse... Read More

The Benefits of Interactive Online Characters

This Stanford University study surveyed the leading research on virtual... Read More

Why Are People Cheesed Off With the Internet?

Having been connected to the "net" now for about eight... Read More

Market Your Business through Newsletters

Most business people on the web subscribe to at least... Read More

How to Laser Your Email Messages

If you're in business and use email, you've likely learned... Read More