Feb 102010

Autoresponders – 3 Reasons You Must Have One To Do Business Online

When I received my Bachelors Degree from Saint Leo University back in 1993, the online world did not exist as we know it. Many websites were in existence, but the majority were nothing like today’s websites with flash and video. One thing that quickly appeared was the need for software to send out bulk email, because a lot of new online businesses were developing a following and people wanted more information.

A Little History

Bulk mailing originally happened from your desktop, and one of the best programs in the day was called Group Mail and I was one of the purchasers of this software. It was great, because it allowed you to write one email and send it out to thousands of people without them knowing it was not sent directly to them. One problem with this software is that you could not schedule your emails, and when you did, you had to leave your computer running (and connected to the Internet) while the mailer was running.

Autoresponders Today

Today you can get hosted autoresponders that will mail at a particular time and still make it seem like you are only writing to one person. This software is either run on your own server or you log in to a main server and set up your emails. You create a signup form from the software, and when you set this form on your website, your visitors have the option of subscribing to your newsletter or ezine (e-magazine).

By far the least complicated way to use an autoresponder is to sign up for a monthly hosted plan at a reputable company that devotes resources to making certain your emails get delivered. What happens in these times is that many people sign up for something at 3AM to get a free report, they download the report and then go to sleep, forgetting that they are now on a newsletter. The next day when they get an email from that newsletter, they think it is someone spamming them, so they click on the “Report Spam” button in their email client, where the client (in the cases of Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail) reports this offending email to some of the spam reduction services. The services look at these complaints, and contact the network complaining and they show them that it was a legitimate subscription, which helps the future emails get through.

Why Should An Offline Business Have An Autoresponder?

Offline businesses are spending a lot of money on advertising to keep people coming through the doors on a daily basis. It is not unreasonable to see a business owner spending $2500 to $10,000 per month on advertising to keep their brand alive in their community. They know that the more people see their name, the more likely they are to remember them when it is time to make a purchase of whatever it is that they sell.

Duck Hunting Method Of Advertising

The problem with typical advertising (newspaper, radio and local television) is that it is very inefficient and very hard to track. You have to keep a uniform ad over multiple media to get the best response and avoid confusing the potential customers. But this is a shotgun approach, you are targeting a group and hoping to hit the one person in that group who needs your services. It is much like when you are duck hunting, you take aim at the group of ducks and hope you hit one! (I never actually hunted ducks, but the game on the Wii is fun!)

Direct Response Marketing

The more effective method of advertising is direct response, where you send out an ad to only those who are interested in your business. These people raised their hands and said, “when you have something of interest to us, please let us see it!” How did they let you know? Because they signed up for your newsletter.

Reason 1: Effectiveness

So reason number one for having an autoresponder for your online business is that it is much more effective than the shotgun advertising methods. Your ads are going to people who asked you to tell them when you have a special. They already know you like you and trust you by the time they are signing up for your newsletter, and if they did not, they will if you keep on building the relationship with your contacts.

You can do a few different tactics to get people to get on your email list. We won’t have time to talk about them here, but you are telling your current customers to sign up to get more great savings from time to time. This means that when you contact them in the future, you are going to be telling them about special deals.

Reason 2: Timeliness

When you place an ad, you are at the mercy of the timing of the medium. It used to take a couple weeks to get an ad in the print media, and months to get on radio and television. But they have improved greatly. But after you have placed the ad, you are again at the mercy of the medium. What if they have a typo on your ad? I have seen movie theaters have to turn away people because the time in the paper did not coincide with the actual time in the theater, or maybe a movie was no longer playing, but the paper ran it again.

With direct response ads using your autoresponder, if you are seeing a pattern that Wednesdays are very slow, you can send out a blast to your preferred customers (they signed up for your newsletter, you should prefer those that do) that only Wednesday, they just need to mention the email and get $2 off each admission! All of a sudden, the theater has more people than they can handle on Wednesdays and they are selling tons of popcorn because their preferred customers just saved $2!

Reason 3: Trackability

When you place an ad in the newspaper, radio and local television you are not going to be able to tell how they found out about you unless you ask. Often, people may not remember how they found out about you. But with a direct response ad, you can often tell because they are using the code you sent them, or they printed out your email. If you place coupons in the paper, you can track those, but when you are sending an email on Wednesday and you use a special code for that ad, you can see which ad brought the customer in.

Specials that you make only to your preferred customers, are very easy to track, and they also have an extra benefit. People talk about them. When two people are waiting at the window and one has an email printed out, they will get asked about the deal that they just received. As others are told about the preferred customer specials, these people will want to get on the preferred customer list, too!

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