This week Mary sent over an awesome article covering the basics of auto-responders and list-building!
An autoresponder is a key component to list building. People often don’t realize that emails they are receiving are actually coming from an autoresponder. Chances are that you have gotten emails from an autoresponder at some point. An autoresponder is an email marketing tool that sends pre-programmed email messages in a series at a pre-determined intervals to a list of subscribers and also allows the list owner to send broadcast messages at anytime to all of the subscribers on the list. This allows you to continue building a relationship with your subscribers and helping them to feel good about you and the products or programs you are recommending to them.
Here are some definitions of terms related to autoresponders and list building:
1) What a list is: a "list" is a group of names and email addresses that you have gathered by having them opt in to your autoresponder series of messages; the list is accumulated by your autoresponder so you can have on-going communication with your subscribers. Your autoresponder keeps track of the list, so you don’t need to have a spreadsheet or write them down anywhere.
2) Why you want to build one: in order to glean a targeted market out of general Internet users to build a relationship with them to gain trust and familiarity so they will follow your recommendations about purchasing products or services you are promoting. Because people are relationship oriented, marketing is all about how people feel. When people feel good about a spokesperson or mascot representing a product, they are more likely to purchase.
3) What a subscriber is: a person who has opted in to an autoresponder series of messages to give permission to have the messages sent to their email address.
4) What "opt-in" means: this is when a person agrees to give permission to have an autoresponder series of messages to be sent to their email address by entering their name and email address into an opt-in box or send a request to the list.
5) "Opt-in" box: this is a box that can be found on a webpage with name and email fields that someone can fill in to subscribe to an autoresponder series of messages.
6) "Send a request to the list": a person can send an opt-in request to a list by sending an email to “listname@autoresponder.com” where "listname" is the name of list that you created and this will automatically generate an “opt-in” confirmation .
7) “Opt-out” means to unsubscribe to your list. There are two ways for subscribers to unsubscribe to your list: a) They can click on the "opt-out" link at the bottom of all of your messages (this is required to be included in autoresponder messages) or b) They can email you and request to be "taken off of your list" - in this case, you will search your subscribers and find their name and email address and unsubscribe them from your list manually.
8 ) SPAM: SPAM is considered to be unsolicited emails. You cannot SPAM anyone. You can only email people who have emailed you first or who have given you permission to email them by 1) giving you their email address or 2) including their email address in correspondence sent or given to you.
An autoresponder is a powerful tool to use to help you build a list of subscribers so that you can promote products or services that you recommend to them.
